ã€ŠAre You Even Humanã€‹


 1. At Least We Still Have The Internet

    I scowl at the glass door in front of me, but despite the righteous fury of my expression it stubbornly refuses to open itself. Normally this sort of thing wouldn¡¯t really bother me, but this is the local Selective Service headquarters. A government building. Aren¡¯t basic accessibility options like¡­ the law?

    Leaning heavily on my cane, I reach out and grasp the handle with my other hand, pulling on it with the limited strength available to me. Holy crap it is heavy. This thing is all glass and metal. I could¡­ probably squeeze myself in there. Probably. But I¡¯m not really in the mood to risk falling on my face today. I turn slightly backwards to call out to the massive van that¡¯s waiting by the curb, doors all hanging open in a vain attempt to combat the unusually hot Chicago weather. I clear my throat.

    ¡°Um, Peter?¡± I call out, putting on my best and most innocent smile. ¡°Could you get the door for me after all?¡±

    The boy in the passenger¡¯s seat snorts, stuffing his phone into his pocket as he twists to more-or-less fall out of the side of the car, landing easily and strolling up to me with a smug look on his face.

    ¡°Told you,¡± he brags. ¡°It¡¯s less of a bother if you just let me do it from the start, Jules.¡±

    I chuckle apologetically, making a conscious effort to not get on his case about calling me by that stupid nickname. I like my full name. A long, beautiful name like Julietta is just the thing I need to distract from how hideous I am. ¡®Jules¡¯ makes me sound like the bench warmer for a boy¡¯s little league team, which frankly quite oversells the athletic ability of a girl who can¡¯t even open a pull door by herself.

    ¡°Sorry, Peter,¡± I say instead. ¡°You¡¯re right. I feel bad making you follow me everywhere, is all.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± he brushes off easily, holding open the door for me. ¡°Seriously. Now do your best in there, okay?¡±

    ¡°I suppose I¡¯ll try?¡± I answer hesitantly. I¡¯m not really sure exactly how my best or my worst will make any difference, though, since I¡¯m just here to sign up for the fucking draft. And I, for rather obvious reasons, will not be accepted into the military unless I am the literal last person left alive on Earth.

    ¡­Which I¡¯m perfectly okay with. The person behind the front desk can¡¯t help but stare at me as I slowly hobble inside and make my way towards the counter, but it¡¯s fine. I¡¯m used to it. Everyone stares, their eyes roving over my body without even an ounce of self-control. It¡¯s not an outright leer, of course. More of a glance, then an awkward redirection of their gaze, then another look that they secretly hope is respectful this time, then a realization that it isn¡¯t, and so on and so forth until they have accomplished what could have just been a straightforward stare if they had bothered to commit.

    ¡°Um, how can I help you, miss?¡± the man behind the counter asks.

    ¡°I turned eighteen today,¡± I answer, ¡°so I am here to register for the draft.¡±

    ¡°Oh! Yes, of course,¡± he nods. ¡°Driver¡¯s li¡­ er, identification?¡±

    I suppress a sigh and pull out my passport. I have never once actually used the thing to pass a port or any other barrier between countries, but (correct guess, Mr. Front Desk Man, ten points for you) I cannot drive. A different government ID is therefore needed.

    I hand it over to him and he looks it over, noting that today is indeed my birthday and the lumpy movie monster in the picture is indeed my face. A solid ten minutes of bureaucracy later, I am given leave to sit down and complete a fun little questionnaire about myself before a nurse pops in from the back and invites me to take a medical examination.

    Or¡­ well, she¡¯s dressed like a nurse, but she looks more like an MMA champion. Her tan skin and military-cut hair are framed by a mountainous mass of muscles, the kind someone working ten hours a day as an underpaid health professional likely doesn¡¯t have time for and definitely doesn¡¯t need. Her nametag, which reads ¡°Lance Corporal Erna Shuzen,¡± confirms that this isn¡¯t her only day job¡ªor at least it wasn¡¯t. A nasty scar crawls up her right thumb, the whole hand stiff and subtly shaking even when not in use. Recent transfer, then.

    ¡°You¡¯re¡­ Julietta Monroe?¡± she double-checks, glancing at her clipboard.

    ¡°I am,¡± I nod.

    ¡°Medical papers?¡± she prompts. I pull them out of my handbag and pass them over to her without a word. There¡¯s nothing quite as fun as getting all your private health information printed out in a big packet to hand over to the government. I try my best to not look too excited.

    But I admit, I''m begrudgingly impressed when Lance Corporal Shuzen has the absolute balls to whistle after reading them for a bit.

    ¡°...Wow, quite a lot here,¡± she says, a smile on her face. ¡°Limited mobility, limited flexibility, limited strength, limited stamina, bad eyesight, bad grip¡­ you¡¯ve got quite the collection!¡±

    ¡°Thank you?¡± I manage.

    ¡°Well, get in,¡± she says, jerking her thumb towards a small private room. ¡°We¡¯re gonna scrub you down and test all of it.¡±

    ¡°Um, what do you mean by ¡®scrub me down?¡¯¡± I ask, slowly making my way into the room as instructed. It looks like a pretty normal doctor¡¯s office, at least. Nothing too weird.

    ¡°I mean I am going to physically scrub you with a mild solvent to see if all that crap on you is real or makeup,¡± she says.

    ¡­What.

    ¡°What?¡± I say.

    She shrugs.

    ¡°Just protocol, hun, nothing personal. Draft dodgers get real creative when they want to. Hop up, you won¡¯t have to strip or anything. Just an arm or two will do.¡±

    Well. The ¡®crap on me,¡¯ as she puts it, is quite real. So¡­ I guess I have no reason to object, beyond trivial things like respect and decency. I struggle onto the raised examination table and hold out an arm for her. She takes the arm I don¡¯t offer. Huh.

    ¡°...Does this seriously happen that often?¡± I ask, letting her scrub at me. I hope she¡¯s not scraping me up too hard; I can¡¯t really feel it, so it''s hard to know if she''s injuring me.

    ¡°Well, with how wide we¡¯re casting our net here you need a pretty specialized set of problems to get out of service,¡± the Lance Corporal answers. ¡°So people have to fake¡­ well, a lot of stuff.¡±

    ¡°Huh,¡± I manage.

    ¡°...Wow, this really isn¡¯t coming off,¡± Lance Corporal Shuzen says, almost excitedly.

    I¡­ okay. I¡¯ve never had this one happen before, I¡¯ll admit. This is new. She gets points for that.

    ¡°That is because,¡± I say slowly, trying not to sound too condescending, ¡°it¡¯s real.¡±

    ¡°So it seems,¡± she nods, moving to my other arm. ¡°Wow! This is just¡­ it¡¯s almost comical, you know? Your file is a little difficult to believe.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t really know what to tell you,¡± I say, since there is truly no other polite and honest way to respond to that.

    ¡°Well, okay. It¡¯s true, then? You lost all your skin in Denver? All of it?¡±

    ¡°I¡­ yes,¡± I frown. ¡°Pretty much. It was burned off by acid, apparently. I don¡¯t really remember it well.¡±

    ¡°Well that¡¯s probably good,¡± she laughs. ¡°How¡¯d you live through something like that?¡±

    ¡°Regenerator was at the field hospital. Which is why I have skin now, it¡¯s just¡­¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s all scars,¡± Lance Corporal Shuzen finishes for me. "Yeah. Because he makes you heal faster, not cleaner. I''m familiar."

    She waves her own injured hand. I almost snap ''then why did you ask,'' but I guess this was just all part of the test. To prove I''m actually what I say I am. I swallow my irritation as best I can, but it''s difficult. Being accused of lying always rubs me the wrong way. The accusation just hits too close to the truth sometimes.

    "Faster saves lives though," she continues, "especially when he''s that fast."

    I know this. I had all my skin burned off, plus a good chunk of stuff underneath it. I''m not a nurse, but I''m pretty confident most people don''t survive that sort of thing. I am insanely lucky, not just that Regenerator was there but that he was close enough to actually have me in his effect radius. But I don''t really want to talk about it¡ªespecially not with the rude woman rubbing my arms raw enough to likely cause me problems later¡ªso I just shrug.

    The subsequent tests aren''t as long, but they do their best to be just as demeaning. The fitness tests seem mainly designed to get me to slip up (I technically do, in the sense that she has to catch me), the vision tests involve flashes of light to see if my one blind eye reacts in ways a working eye would (it does not, because it is blind) and the usual reflex hammer-to-the-knee stuff is largely waylaid because she can''t actually find my patellar tendon under all the scar tissue (I don''t blame her, there''s a lot of it).

    The good news is that most of my body can''t really feel pain, so it''s all just annoying and mildly demeaning more than anything.

    "...So, um, I take it your hand has a similar story to mine?" I venture, trying to make this a bit less embarrassing by getting her to talk about herself instead of jabber about me.

    "Well, I don''t know how it compares to you, but yeah. Nearly lost the thumb trying to retake Nebraska. Can''t hold a fucking gun anymore, so I work here now."

    "Why not just retire?" I ask, honestly curious. "You, uh¡­"

    Don''t seem to have the disposition for a job like this? No, she might take offense to that. Are clearly too much of an asshole to be working as a nurse? Wait, that''s worse.

    "...Have certainly earned it?" I venture.

    "Eh. I''m on the list for a prosthetic, and while I doubt I''ll actually get one I''ve wanted to fight the good fight since I was a little girl. Not gonna quit now just because my actual fighting days are done. All these jobs are important, y''know? We might even get you in, despite all this. You need all kinds to keep an army working."

    "Huh," I frown. "What inspired you to join the military in the first place?"

    She looks at me like I''m crazy.

    "Well, it''s the apocalypse, innit?" she says, quirking her head. "Of course I want to fire lead up its ass."

    Right. Of course. I guess I should have expected that.

    By the end of this entire humiliating endeavor, I am left with a small card that proves I went and a polite assurance that I will be sent a message if I am selected for the draft, which I of course will not be because I can barely walk. Even if they need someone for a desk job, they''re going to exhaust most of their options before they ask me because I can barely read either. I was homeschooled, like most people, but my foster parents aren''t really the most dedicated to education and the fact that I am farsighted as heck no matter what attempts at corrective lenses I''ve been saddled with doesn''t help either.

    And yes, I''m farsighted and I have no depth perception. It is exactly as fun of a combination as it sounds.

    "Jules, you made it back!" Peter waves at me as I stagger through the much-easier-to-operate push door that should still definitely just be an automatic. "You were in there for a while!"

    "Yes, well, it turns out it''s a lot harder to fail the draft than it is to get added to it," I answer, trying to inject some genuine humor into my tone. I probably succeed.

    "You can fail?" Max asks worriedly from the back of the van, sticking his head out between the middle seat and the door so he can see me.

    "I can fail," I correct. "You should be just fine, don''t worry."

    There was, after all, no IQ test.

    "They''re not shipping you out, then?" Andre asks. Of all my foster brothers, he is the one who cares about me the least. I''ve never held it against him; if anything, it makes him easier to deal with.

    "Sorry kids, I''m afraid you''re all stuck with me," I smirk, my grin only widening as the entire car immediately protests the label. I''m the oldest, but not by much. I just had my birthday first, is all.

    "It sucks that you don''t get to fight, though," Max sighs. The others in the car¡ªincluding my foster dad at the wheel¡ªnod in agreement. I nod along as well, a look of melancholy on my face while, internally, I remain as baffled by this general opinion as I have ever been.

    Why would anyone want to go fight extradimensional horrors to death? Like seriously, I get that we have to. When aliens start pouring in from cracks in the universe and killing everyone they find you can''t just ignore that. A military response is needed. Fine. But why would you want to be part of that military? Why would you want to subject yourself to that horror? I''ve been in an incursion, and a flying, acid-spitting bug monster removed all my skin, and I am not exactly in a hurry to go back to that sort of thing! Do people actually look at the commercials and propaganda and recruiter videos and genuinely get excited for them?

    It makes sense that fighting to save the world is an obligation. But as an aspiration? I don''t understand it at all.

    "Well, go ahead and get in, Julietta," my foster father calls out. "We''ve still got to go home and have your birthday party!"

    "Home?" I ask. "Aren''t we picking up Emily first?"

    "Eh, sorry, Julietta," he shrugs. "She texted to say something about her girlfriend dragging her out of town. She''s apparently not going to make it."

    What? Okay, screw that. I pull my phone out of my handbag and slowly tap away at it so I can call the one kind-of-sibling I have that I actually like. I have one of those oversized models for old people, with the huge buttons and the big text so I can actually use it and read the letters and numbers and whatnot, but I still much prefer calls to texts. Plus, they''re harder for Emily to ignore, even with her asshole girlfriend pressuring her.

    "Um, hello?" she squeaks in answer, picking up on the third ring.

    "Emily!" I whine. "Are you really not coming to my birthday party?"

    "J-Julietta!" she stammers. "I''m so sorry, it''s just that I thought¡­ you know, we were going to, um¡­"

    "Hey, is that your sister?" a muffled voice says in the background. "Put her on speaker."

    "U-um, okay," Emily says, and soon I hear the fuzzy buzz of background sound getting amplified.

    "Jules!" Emily''s girlfriend greets me. "Hey, happy birthday! How''s it going?"

    "Well, Lia, it would be going better if Emily was attending my party," I say flatly.

    "Ah, geez, I''m sorry," Lia sighs. "It''s just, y''know, Emily really wanted to go to this place in Chesterton today, so we made plans, and just¡­ gosh, I''m sorry. We both completely forgot."

    That''s a lie. I know that''s a lie. There''s no way in hell Emily forgot my birthday. She''s better at remembering my birthday than I am. But I just say nothing. Calling her on the lie would derail the conversation, letting Lia focus on the minutiae of who is and isn''t responsible to satisfy her obsessive need to save face. If I just don''t give her that opportunity, it keeps her on the backfoot, and her narcissistic need to seem kind and reasonable will lead her to offer a concession instead.

    "...I''m sure we can swing by for a little bit, though," she offers after barely a few seconds. "I drive fast. We won''t miss the reservations if we just say hi."

    "Thank you, Lia," I say, forcing a smile on my face to make my voice sound more honestly happy. "I''d really appreciate that."

    "Please don''t drive too fast," Emily whines, though Lia doesn''t even answer and Emily doesn''t act like she expected one. It will be slightly harder than usual to not try and strangle that rich bitch when I see her, but fortunately my arms are very weak so I can usually just remind myself it wouldn''t work anyway.

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    We exchange a few more pleasantries and hang up. Talking to Lia always makes me feel dirty. I''ve tried to get Emily to see that she''s an abusive, narcissistic bitch (without quite using those words) but she just doesn''t want to listen, and that means I''m stuck constantly having to step in to make things less awful for her.

    Is getting her to delay her date so she can come to my birthday party an entirely selfless motivation? No, of course not. But Emily planned most of my birthday party. I know for a fact she wants to be there, at least for a while. But she just lets Lia walk all over her and do basically anything she wants. It''s sickening. I wish I could do more, but the only other thing that would help is if Emily just dumped Lia''s ass.

    Of course, Emily insists that they love each other. No matter how miserable she seems.

    I groan and lean back in the seat as the old van chugs to life and sets off down the road. I probably shouldn''t have to deal with this kind of thing on my own damn birthday, but it''s whatever. This isn''t the first time I''ve had to play emotional manager for my so-called ''family'' today, and it won''t be the last.

    I''m used to it.

    "...So, I hear there will be a moonfall over Florida in a couple days," my foster father says, awkwardly trying to change the subject as I put away my phone.

    "Do the aliens have Florida?" Max asks.

    Yes, obviously the aliens have Florida. They have every single coastline and Florida is a peninsula, you stupid brick. ¡­Is what I''m thinking, but of course I don''t say that. Max is kind of a living human brick, though: short, stocky, and constantly a strange red hue due to being baked in the sun. Oh, and dumber than a box of rocks.

    "They do, but the Russians are finally playing nice with their spaceport, so we should be able to launch a group into low orbit to intercept," Peter says. Peter has always been my favorite foster brother, mainly because his mission to annoy everyone he ever meets seems to specifically exclude me. It''s probably pity, but he''s never made it feel like pity, presumably because he exudes a constant aura of aloof apathy that makes it difficult to imagine he''s capable of feeling any emotion other than schadenfreude. Perhaps he is simply content soaking up the constant misery I passively exude by existing.

    But anyway, he''s pretty cool. He''s also, apparently, the hottest member of our little faux family according to the limited selection of girls I know outside said family, but a combination of getting most of my body replaced with insensate scar tissue and the resulting surgeries required to open back all the parts of me that sealed up very wrong means I do not have functioning versions of any of the organs responsible for sexual attraction, except probably the brain. So naturally, I have no idea what any of them are talking about. He''s got short, naturally spiky blonde hair, he''s¡­ tall? I guess? And he has the face of an utter bastard. If that''s the recipe for hotness, I''m happy to be obligatorily ace.

    "They might not even be contested," Andre says. "The aliens are oddly unpredictable in how they react to moonfalls. A lot of the time, they don''t even try to fight over them, or they fight in a way that indicates they''re just trying to hold their territory and nothing else. They may not understand their significance, or even be sapient."

    "They''ve gotta be sapient," I grunt, getting into the conversation despite myself. "They''re too good at tactics and coordination."

    "Ants are good at tactics and coordination," Andre counters. "We have a lot of evidence to indicate these might just be very large eusocial hives."

    I sigh, not really wanting to argue further. As long as I drop the subject, Andre will assume that means he won the argument and be very pleased with himself. He''s the middle brother in age, height, and maturity, with dark skin and perpetually messy long hair that''s so unkempt it constantly gets on our foster mother''s nerves. He just sort of doesn''t seem to care, though; if you don''t engage with Andre, Andre rarely engages for long with you, and that''s often a blessing.

    "Wait, can we back up a second?" Max asks. "Russia has a spaceport?"

    ¡­Of course, if you don''t stop engaging with him, Andre won''t stop either.

    "Russia has a lot of things," Andre shrugs. "They''re holding territory surprisingly well."

    "Even aliens fall to the classic blunders!" Peter grins. "Never get involved in a land war in Asia!"

    Andre scowls, because Peter just quoted The Princess Bride, a pre-invasion movie in which there is a character played by a man named Andre who is portrayed as, shall we say, less than excellently intellectual. This offends our Andre, as he apparently holds all Andres to a very high standard, even while they happen to be professionally pretending to be someone with a completely different name. Peter knows this, of course, which is why he quoted The Princess Bride in the first place. ¡­That and because it''s a pretty funny movie. Pre-invasion movies are great.

    "Why do we even call them aliens, anyway?" Max asks, once again valiantly yet vainly attempting to expand his scope of knowledge. "They''re not from space, right? So they aren''t really aliens."

    "...Yes, they are?" Andre blinks. "The word ''alien'' doesn''t mean ''from space,'' it just means ''foreigner.'' Like, if someone came down from Canada, they''d technically be an alien."

    "Woah, dude!" Peter gasps. "Not cool! You can''t call Canadians aliens, that''s racist as hell!"

    "Wh¡­ no, I''m not¡­ obviously I wouldn''t call them that, I¡ª"

    "You just did!" Peter accuses, his tone appalled but his face grinning ear-to-ear. "That''s fucked up, man!"

    "N-no, I was just explaining that at the time the term was coined it had a completely different meaning, so¡ª"

    "Every pre-invasion movie I''ve ever seen has the aliens from space," Max says. "Wouldn''t that have been the meaning ''at the time?''"

    "Yeah, I think you''re just trying to get us to use slurs, Andre," Peter accuses.

    "Andre''s right," our foster dad butts in. "Three decades ago we would call people who entered the country without the right paperwork ''illegal aliens,'' for example."

    There''s a pause.

    "Well, everyone knows that old people are racist, so I think we can all agree this proves my point," Peter says happily, and the car erupts into further argument. I try, for once, to tune it out. I shouldn''t have to mediate stupid stuff like this on my birthday, so I look out the window instead, scowling northeast at the Chicago skyline. It''s not pretty, but it''s definitely impressive. The towering structures looming over Lake Michigan are quite the testament to human achievement. They never fail to make me feel small.

    It''s scary to think about the fact that this place was busy, once.

    I''m told there used to be a time when Chicago was clogged to the brim with people, the roads full of practically-parked cars too overstuffed to actually move down the street. Every room in every floor of every building was supposedly used for some business or apartment or whatever. I can''t imagine what that many people in one place would look like, since it''s all pretty empty now.

    There are other cars on the road with us, sure, but at least sixty percent of the property in the city is vacant. Entire neighborhoods might have only one or two houses with people that actually live in them. More than anything, I think that''s what drives home to me that we are losing. Despite our supposed air superiority, despite our technological advantage, despite the literal superheroes we have now¡­ we''re losing.

    The fact is, when people turn eighteen they go off to war, and most of them don''t come back.

    To be fair, it''s not always because they die. The American government has been full-on state-of-emergency military-ruled totalitarianism for longer than I''ve been alive (as has basically every country on the planet, with some handling the transition better than others). This means that a lot of essential industry has been deprivatized, be that food production or weapons development or medical technology or whatever, so a lot of people end up getting ''drafted'' into the ''military'' and then work on a farm with the rank of Private First Class for the next twelve years. It''s a little fucky, but the end result is that basically everyone eighteen and older has their job assigned by the government until their mandatory service period runs out. I will almost certainly be one of the few exceptions, since I am completely dependent on others to live, but hey, maybe they''ll stick me in a cold call center for propaganda or something. If there''s one thing I''m actually good at, it''s talking.

    ¡­But it''s my birthday, and I really don''t want to. I pull out my phone again, stick my earphones in, and turn on the book I''ve been listening to. It sucks that humanity will probably go extinct in my lifetime, but at least we still have the internet. People wrote so many good stories before the war.

    I like stories. They''re a lot happier than reality.

    "I''m telling you, that''s how the word was used!" Andre practically shouts, my earbuds no longer sufficient to stave off the ever-growing argument. "It doesn''t just mean ''from space!''"

    "I''ve never seen that!" Max snaps. "We watch movies about this all the time, and I''ve never seen that!"

    "You''re both right!" I butt in before I can stop myself. "Yes, the common usage was obviously about space, but we thought they were from space! Because of the moon?"

    I point at the sky, where the offending celestial object is currently visible in the daylight.

    "We assumed they were from space for like, twenty years or something," I continue. "And it''s not like anyone can ask them what their names are, and the scientific term is dumb, so we still just call them aliens. That''s it. Stop arguing about it."

    There''s a silent, awkward pause, my foster family quietly shocked by the loud interjection. I cringe internally, not having meant to sound that angry. I''m usually much better at controlling my tone.

    "...Oh," Max mumbles. "That makes sense. Sorry, Julietta."

    "Sorry, Julietta," Andre parrots.

    Ugh, they probably think I''m grumpy because I won''t be drafted rather than because they were loudly arguing about stupid shit.

    "It''s fine," I wave them off, even though it kind of isn''t. "Sorry for raising my voice."

    "You barely even did that," Peter notes with a smirk, but I don''t respond and neither does anyone else. We finish the trip back home in silence, giving me a welcome reprieve with my book.

    Our home is¡­ decently sized. Property is apparently a lot cheaper than it used to be, despite how much less territory we have to actually put stuff on. My foster parents also just get a lot of money from the government for housing orphans; there''s always a surplus, so people who have children or raise children tend to get paid a lot for it. The government is trying really hard to get more people to make babies, but¡­ well. I don''t see why you''d want to bring a child into a world that doesn''t have much time left.

    Though I suppose if you listen to the propaganda¡ªand most people seem to¡ªthe war is starting to turn around. Personally, of course, I remain skeptical.

    The point is, our three-story townhouse isn''t exactly the height of luxury, but it''s pretty big, even with seven people living in it. Peter helps me out of the car once we park, and I hobble the rest of the way inside on my own. I head to my room on the ground floor to sit back down and take my shoes off, hopefully scoring a few quiet minutes alone before the party starts. I don''t really like birthday parties, but it''s important that I have one and it''s important that it goes well. It''ll make everyone else really happy, especially Emily and my foster mother.

    Gosh. This is really it, huh? I''m eighteen. It''s the day I''m supposed to leave home, join the military, and help save the world, but as everyone probably expected, that won''t be happening. I''ll just remain here, a problem in the pockets of my foster parents that happens to get them a little more government funding. I do my best to be as useful as possible, of course; I''ve been handed off between homes too many times to assume this is guaranteed to be my last one, even now that I''m an adult. So I help them manage the others, even though the ''kids'' should all be more than old enough to manage themselves. I work a call center job whenever I have the energy to, which is unfortunately not often. But more than anything, I do what I can to ensure people are happy.

    If they associate seeing me with becoming happy, I figure they probably won''t throw me away.

    So! Birthday party. I take a deep breath, rest my legs for as long as I dare, and stand back up, hobbling into the dining room where my foster mother is putting the finishing touches on everything.

    "Hey Mom," I greet her, because she likes being called mom. "Is there anything I can help with?"

    "What?" she asks. "Oh, Julietta, no, it''s your birthday! Sit down, sit down. I just need those useless¡­ PETER! ANDRE! YOU BOYS BETTER NOT BE SLACKING!"

    "We''re coming!" Andre yells back from upstairs.

    "DON''T SHOUT AT ME, JUST GET YOUR ASSES HERE!" my foster mother roars. I do my best to visibly not react. "Right, so, did your SSS visit go well?"

    "It was mostly physical tests," I tell her, which I figure is answer enough.

    "Ah," she says, which¡­ yep. "Well, don''t you worry about that, darling. Your father and I already told you that you''re welcome to stay, and that will always be true."

    "Thanks, Mom," I say, and I mean it. I need somewhere to stay, after all. Despite everything, I don''t want to be alone. Even if it was an option, I wouldn''t want to be alone.

    The boys come downstairs and my foster mother starts loudly ordering them around, but the bickering is light enough and the four of them are busy enough that I judge it safe to put my earphones in and continue listening to my book. Normally I wouldn''t do this unless I was in the car or alone, but it''s my birthday and I think they''ll forgive a little self-indulgence.

    I sit back, close my eyes, and let myself enjoy what little time I''ll have until my party starts. I figure I have a solid fifteen minutes until Emily and Lia show up, and that''s the effective minimum. Sure enough, my guess is pretty spot-on, and I pause the book to check just in time to see the two of them walk inside.

    Lia walks in first, smug and proud as she holds the door open for Emily. She has black hair, dark skin, and long, fake, blue fingernails colored to compliment her light purple spaghetti-strap top and white short-shorts. She''s pretty toned, but nowhere approaching buff; just the kind of body a person has when they go on a run every morning to keep in shape. Expensive bracelets and earrings flash jarringly in the light, and I suspect quite a few other piercings hide underneath her clothes.

    Behind her, Emily seems like Lia''s total opposite: pale skin, blonde hair, and the hunched, timid posture of a person expecting the room to somehow attack her. However, on a second look it''s clear that Emily puts nearly as much effort into her appearance as Lia does, if not more. Detailed, intricate braids loop beautifully through her hair to keep it at shoulder length, though I know it falls nearly down to the small of her back after she unbraids and washes it. While she''s unadorned by jewelry and wearing a much more modest outfit than her girlfriend, Emily''s clothing is no less professionally made, and it is both taken care of and worn pristinely.

    I hate to admit it, but seeing the two of them always makes me jealous. Downright envious even, in Lia''s case. It''s petty of me, but beauty is something I will simply never have, and both of them wear it effortlessly. Still, I shove those thoughts away, put on a big smile, and slowly stand up to hold one arm out to my foster sister.

    "Emily!" I greet her happily. "You made it!"

    "Y-yeah, I¡­" she stammers, though she freezes for a moment when she stares at me, looking shocked. Oh shoot, is there something on my face? She quickly rallies though, and walks up to accept my one-armed hug.

    "I''m glad I could make it!" she says with a lot more confidence than before. "Sorry, it just¡­ it totally slipped my mind. I hope you can forgive me."

    I glare at Lia, who smirks at me. Bitch.

    "It''s completely fine," I assure Emily. "I''m just glad you''re here. Looking forward to the party?"

    "Y-yeah, haha," she agrees, clinging to me a little tighter than usual. Hmm. Something''s up with her.

    "Emily!" my foster mother shouts from another room. "Come here, help me with the thing!"

    "C-coming!" Emily agrees, breaking out of the hug and rushing away, leaving me with Lia. Hmm. Well, no sense playing dumb.

    "What happened," I demand, watching Emily go.

    "Don''t ask me, Jules," Lia shrugs. "I was hoping you knew."

    I blink, turning to look at her directly. That''s not exactly our usual script.

    "What?" I ask.

    "You heard me," she frowns. "Something''s wrong. I think she did actually forget your birthday."

    "Bullshit," I hiss.

    Lia raises her hands in surrender. Again, that''s not a Lia thing to do. It''s not how she manipulates people. She looks¡­ actually concerned.

    "I''m not fuckin'' with you this time, Jules," she insists. "Something is up. What happened last night?"

    Well that''s not a good question. I frown, thinking back. Nothing happened last night. Nothing weird, anyway. It would be just like Lia to be the cause of the problem and not be able to see that, too. But it''s because she can''t see it that there''s no benefit to pointing it out.

    "...I''ll talk to her," I sigh.

    "Thanks, Jules," Lia grins. "I can always count on you."

    Ugh. Like I want to hear that from you. I just smile and nod, though. Well, this will give me something to focus on during the party, at least.

    It doesn''t take long for my foster mother to order me to the dining room table, after which a burning cake with eighteen candles is walked into the room to that ever-classic and ever-irritating tune. Peter, as he does for every birthday, goes extra ham with it, belting out the entire happy birthday song in a deep, operatic baritone. He''s actually an extremely talented singer. It''s annoying.

    "Make a wish!" my foster mother orders like some demonic, cake-obsessed genie. I spend a few seconds pretending to think of one, and then blow out the candles.

    "What do you wish for?" my foster mother presses.

    "You know that''s a secret," I tell her, giving her a coy smile and wagging my finger. She pretends to look put out. We''ve done this for the past three years, and I haven''t actually made any wishes. That''s okay though, because she likes it. That''s really the point of all of my birthdays.

    Hours pass and presents open, some of which are actually, genuinely good. My foster mother gives me more of the thick socks I like, Peter gives me a pimp cane (which I will never use, but is very funny), and Emily gives me an audiobook that I''ve never heard before but actually seems interesting. More importantly, she seems to relax more and more as the party continues, and is talking and smiling normally by the time everything starts coming to a close and my foster mother sends my foster father out to pick up dinner. I finally get my chance to talk with Emily in private when I find her out on the front porch, staring at what''s left of the moon before it dips back over the horizon.

    "Hey," I greet her, sitting down on the bench next to her. "You doing okay?"

    "W-what?" she jolts, turning to me with a startled expression. A single laugh manages to make it out of my nose before I stop myself. With the way my cane clonks on the wooden floor, I''m not exactly stealthy, but Emily somehow manages to find herself consistently snuck up on regardless. It never fails to make me smile.

    "You seemed out of it today," I tell her. "Lia and I both thought so. I just wanted to check in and see what was up."

    "...Lia thought so?" Emily says hesitantly, unconsciously playing with her braids. "Sorry. I didn''t mean to worry you two. It''s nothing, really."

    "It''s hard to believe it''s nothing," I press gently. But not, apparently, gently enough. Emily glances away, something almost like bitterness passing over her face for a moment.

    "Can I not, occasionally, simply appear something other than happy?" she asks. "It irritates you too, doesn''t it?"

    My mind freezes. What is she¡ª

    I don''t get to finish that thought. No thoughts, in that moment, get to finish. They are all simply cut in twain. We feel it, in that moment. The whole city feels it. But Emily and I, staring out at the sunset, get to see it, too.

    I''ve experienced something like this before. Back when I was small, back when I was more than scar tissue and bitterness. This time, it is not at all the same, but I still recognize it instantly. How could I not? What else could be happening?

    There are now two skies.

    This is not, I feel the need to clarify, because a sky has been added. There is not a new, additional sky that has been grown or superimposed or inserted alongside the first. The sky is how it always was and always has been, but now it is two instead of one. It has been divided, split, sundered, and unequivocally made into two parts that I can no longer conceive as a single concept. At first, nothing actually separates them; it is simply a fact that the sky is no longer one, and I know this before I can actually see the crack with my dull, struggling eye.

    But then I see the crack get wider, and the incursion alarm starts to blare.

    What a shame, I think to myself. I really didn''t want to die.

 2. I Want Lasers

    It''s an odd feeling, to know for the second time that you''re definitely going to die.

    The first time was pretty straightforward. Mom and Dad¡ªmy real mom and dad¡ªthey spent the entire time we were fleeing reassuring me that we would be okay. That I would be okay. Now I realize they were mostly just reassuring themselves, but I was a child and at the time I believed them. Up until the moment when the acid chewed through them, of course, leaving nothing but a caustic sludge.

    They tried to shield me with their bodies, and they did, it¡­ technically worked. I lived, barely. You''d think something like that would be pretty traumatic, but¡­ honestly, I feel like I''ve always handled it pretty well. I don''t remember my parents all that clearly anyway. It was, of course, agonizing beyond compare, but one of the nice things about an experience that''s agonizing beyond compare is that it makes you go into shock, and memories of events that happen while you''re in shock tend to get pretty muddled. So, y''know, it was pretty awful at the time but in retrospect it''s just¡­ a thing that I lived through. Somehow.

    This time, though, I don''t think I''ll be that lucky. I''ve read the statistics on incursion survival, and ''being close enough to see the scar'' leaves me at single digits. And let me tell you: I am not the ninetieth percentile on anything good. It requires someone truly special or truly lucky to make it out in my situation, and, y''know, it also helps if you can fucking run away.

    But I can''t. Not again. No superhero is going to just happen to be in the right place at the right time. Lightning doesn''t strike twice. I''m going to die, for real this time. Which sucks, because despite everything I really don''t want to.

    The crack in the sky opens wider, and I see something moving on the other side of it. Something aches behind my eyes, but I ignore it.

    "Emily!" Lia shouts, bursting out of the front door. Heh, she''s so distressed that her hair is actually a little messed up. "Oh thank fuck, there you are! Come on, we gotta go!"

    She grabs Emily''s wrist in a panic, yanking her to her feet, but Emily pulls away.

    "Wait!" she insists. "We have to bring Julietta! Help me carry her to your car!"

    Huh? Me? What good am I going to?

    "We don''t have time for this shit, Emily!" Lia snaps. "We have to go. Now!"

    For once I kind of agree with her; I don''t like Lia, but she''s trying to save Emily and I won''t be able to do anything but slow them down.

    "We. Are. Taking. Julietta!" Emily insists anyway, and my heart cracks a bit.

    Lia seems startled at Emily''s sudden fury, and she glances back and forth between my foster sister and me for a moment before groaning and reaching down to grab my ankles.

    "I got her feet, come on!" Lia barks, and a relieved Emily grabs my armpits. As selfish as it is, I can''t bring myself to argue, so I just let the pair of them start dragging me towards Emily''s car, leaving my cane behind.

    While she doesn''t have much of my respect in the first place, Lia certainly doesn''t lose any for being reluctant to bring me along. Her car is a tiny, sporty little two-door thing with nowhere near enough space to take our entire foster family, so exiting with the one member of it she actually cares about and leaving the rest of us has a certain practicality to it. And I, in particular, am just not really worth the effort of saving. Still, they toss me into the passenger seat and, my entire body shaking, I manage to struggle a seatbelt on as Emily hops into the back behind me.

    "Wait!" Peter calls out as Lia starts the engine, he and Andre rushing out of the house. "Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!"

    "Not more of this shit!" Lia growls, but she doesn''t drive off. Hmm. Did I misjudge her, or is she just anticipating that Emily will throw another fit? ¡­Honestly, I''m not sure if Emily would throw a fit for Peter and Andre, so who knows.

    "Dad has the van, and I am not staying here and waiting for him with Mom," Peter insists. "Take us with you!"

    "Me too!" Max yelps, rushing out of the house behind them. "Me too, me too!"

    "My car doesn''t fit six fucking people!" Lia growls as Peter and Andre leap past me into the backseat. "The back isn''t even supposed to fit three!"

    "Pop the trunk!" Peter says, leaping past me and claiming the backseat with Emily. "Hop in if you wanna come, Max!"

    "Are you crazy!?" Max asks, and then the sky bleeds flesh.

    It starts with the Leviathans, as it so often does. We do not know why. The enormous, thick-skinned snakes, each larger than a building, are clearly adapted for an aquatic environment. They are the largest and heaviest of the enemy, little more than a long, finned tube with enough power to crush entire skyscrapers to smithereens. They are great serpents of death, cascading down from the sky like living rivers.

    It''s a devastatingly simple foe, but for whatever reason they''re almost always too large, too unwieldy to slither properly on land. They pour out of the incursion scar like an oil spill, obliterating enormous swaths of the city and its suburbs in seconds. Many of them likely die on impact, too, but if there are any survivors they''ll doubtlessly infect Lake Michigan and turn this entire section of the continent into enemy territory. Still, the thought of them always chills me, and the sight of them is worse. Such massive beasts must require an enormous amount of resources, right? So why are they so often wasted, left to simply die from the fall?

    The shockwave of their impact hits us seconds after we see them land, and Max decides his objections to riding in the trunk are relatively trivial after all. He jumps inside and shuts the hatch the moment Lia slams on the gas.

    Step one to surviving an incursion is pretty fucking obvious, all things considered: get as far away from the scar as humanly possible. Not just because they''re where the enemy comes from (though that''s a pretty good reason all on its own), it''s also just because incursion scars themselves are weird. This time, the separation of the sky is the scar, but they often look different. In Denver, for example, I don''t remember the sky being shorn into two, but rather¡­ changed. Like someone took a picture of it and touched it up in Photoshop until it shined as some impossibly perfected ideal of the horizon. Incursion scars are almost all different, though I''ve heard their effects repeat occasionally.

    ¡­I think you''re also not supposed to look directly at them, but I can''t peel my eyes away. It hurts, I''ll grant that, but what am I going to do in these last moments, but look? I need to see what''s coming next. We were lucky when the scar didn''t appear directly overhead, but the falling of the Leviathans is only the start. Next comes the real horror.

    The Wasps.

    They pour out from the ever-growing scar, its influence widening as clouds rush away from it, like even the very atmosphere wants to flee its presence. Long, spindly legs like mayflies, attached to a headless torso and held up by giant, buzzing wings. I may be a bit biased against them, since this is the same sort of creature that burned all my skin off, but personally I think they''re the worst.

    Lia hits a bump in the road, jolting me out of my thoughts. She''s swearing constantly to herself, her eyes locked on the road as she shoots down neighborhood streets at upwards of seventy miles an hour and accelerating. It''s a bit terrifying, but any slower and we''d likely be overtaken by the alien air force, and I do have to admit I don''t want to have my skin burned off twice, no matter how briefly the second time would last.

    My heart jumps up into my throat and I grip the door handle with all the limited strength I have as Lia screeches around a turn, the wheels on my side of the car briefly leaving the ground before slamming back down. Right. Right, okay. I''m not currently dying. I''m actually being rescued from potential death, in a manner that has some non-zero chance of success. I should probably stop with the doom and gloom brain and try to do something helpful.

    My eye roams back to the scar. I can handle a bit of a headache if it means we have a better idea of what''s coming after us. The Wasps are already spreading out in a circular pattern, freakishly coordinated as they sweep the city to kill everything that didn''t get crushed by a Leviathan. And no, the irony of the creatures that gave me my scars emerging from something called a ''scar'' is not lost on me. I guess the aliens couldn''t stop at merely giving one to the world.

    The scar continues to widen, the division of sky and sky breaking the two ever further apart. My head throbs harder, but I ignore it. It''s just pain, and my body hardly feels that anymore. From within, more monsters emerge, but the more I stare the more it feels like something else is emerging with them. I don''t know where the impression comes from; it''s certainly nothing I can see, and yet I can''t shake the thought regardless. Something is emptying into this world, and it approaches us far faster than the aliens.

    I brace for an impact I''m not sure how I know will come, and the gentlest of breezes washes over me. A curious touch, a light and hesitant squeeze. I jolt and look around at the others in the car, but none of them seem to notice.

    And then I black out.

    "Juli¡ªoka¡ªseizure!"

    Flashes of consciousness blink in and out around me. My body thrashes, held in place only by the seatbelt. Through it all, as my eyes flutter and my mind breaks, pain blooming brighter in my skull while blood trickles down my nose, I feel something. A presence. An interest. Something I invited by accident.

    And whatever it is, it''s killing me.

    It''s hard not to know that. I swear I can feel my brain leaking from my ears. And that kind of sucks, because I don''t want to die. I don''t. Honestly. It''s just that¡­ I''ve been dying since I was a child, you know? It''s a miracle my body works at all, but it has never worked well and every day I expect it to finally give out on me. Every step I take, I anticipate finally stumbling, collapsing, and losing everything. Falling apart like a doll with her strings cut. It''s always just a matter of time. It''s hardly startling now that the time has come.

    I wonder if there''s a life after death. I hope it''s relaxing.

    Pot--tially, my head throbs. PossIBly. PoSs¡­

    ¡­Huh? Well, yeah, it might be. But I doubt it. Any afterlife I go to would, at the very least due to my presence, contain people. And people¡­ exhaust me. Sometimes it''s in a good way; I can''t function on my own, after all, so I have always relied on others, and it can feel really good to be able to do that. Overall, though? Despite all the help I need, it seems like everyone else has to rely on me. Because no one knows how to have a basic conversation with each other, no one knows how to communicate like a goddamn adult.

    Com--NicAte, my agony repeats. YEs.

    A rush of experiences I have no context for, like faded memories of smells, overwhelm my body. My arm seizes and cracks into the side of the door. I think I hear something break, but I don''t feel it. That''s my life, though. That''s my body. My complete fucking shitstain of a body. It''s fine, of course. I''m used to it. I might need help sometimes, but I''m capable. I know how to manage my lack of touch and smell and taste. I know how to look for the signs of injury I can''t feel. I know how to handle myself, and it grates when people think I can''t. It grates even more when they''re right. I want to be like everyone else. I want to have that infinite potential of just being able to run. To function in this stupid, oppressive world that doesn''t give two shits about me.

    LiKe. Every, my breath catches. Have. EVERY.

    I¡­ are those words? I''m pretty sure that''s not normal seizure stuff. I vaguely feel the pressure as someone in the backseat grips their arms around my head, pulling me as firmly as possible into the headrest to prevent me from getting a brain injury. Thanks, whoever you are.

    JOY, my dopamine sings. APPREciaTION!

    I seize again, the presence in my head blasting unfettered excitement through my nervous system. Yeah, okay, that''s definitely not normal. But it''s so hard to focus on, it''s so hard to focus on anything for¡­ for some reason.

    "She''s¡ª! Hold h¡ªet us killed!"

    Right, yeah, the seizure. I hope I''m not making it difficult for Lia to drive. Emily''s in her car too, after all. I hope she''s safe.

    SafE, my brain screams.

    Yes, seizure-induced-hallucination-slash-possible-eldritch-alien! Safe. The thing I''ve never been. Not safe from monsters, not safe from abusive households, not safe from myself. Can you believe that this dysfunctional mess of a foster family is the best one I''ve ever had? I''ve said it before and I''ll say it again: I don''t want to die. I''m just a little too prone to it.

    AGREEMENT, my ears rupture.

    I feel myself seize again, and then my sense of balance¡ªone of the few I still have¡ªgoes absolutely haywire. My body is tossed randomly around by more than its own muscles as I realize the car has started to roll. Oh, fantastic. This will definitely help me not die. Thanks, freaky hallucination.

    JOY, my muscles tear.

    ¡­And you don''t understand sarcasm. Phenomenal.

    NeW ANd wonDERFUL, my mind weeps.

    I''ll regret my next questions as soon as I ask them, I suspect. This conversation has not exactly been delicate on my brain, but it''s mostly just pain. And the thing with pain is that it doesn''t matter to me. It never has. So fuck it, here goes: who are you, anyway? Why are you here? And what do you want?

    The presence answers immediately, a curse and a law and a declaration of all three answers in one.

    WHAT IF, my everything becomes, and my eyes open to blood on the ground. Or is that the ceiling?

    Oh. It''s both. The car is upside-down, and I''m still stuck in the chair by the seatbelt. If I had any hair it would be cascading down around my face, but since I don''t it''s the blood on my many head wounds that drips down over my eyes instead.

    I''m in pain, which is notable because it generally means I have a serious internal injury. Broken bones, torn muscles, damaged organs, things like that are all my body is capable of feeling. So even though any degree of pain I happen to experience means something is very bad, I''ve never really been debilitated by it all that much. I guess I don''t need to worry, though; the blood loss, seizure, concussion, and probable stroke have all got me covered on the debilitation front instead. Every thought feels like it''s being pulled through gelatin and popping out stuck to all the wrong things.

    I hear the unbuckling, clonking, and shuffling of everyone else freeing themselves from their seats, but I don''t even think to try. My body and mind are unresponsive, but I still instinctively turn my head towards the sounds, ignoring the sharp pain in my neck as I do so. Andre, Emily, and Peter scrabble out between the front seats, rushing free of the car through the driver''s side. Emily runs around the front of the car to my door, while Andre and Peter head for the back. I don''t see Lia, but I hear her swearing somewhere nearby.

    "Hey, Julietta," Emily says, her voice full of adrenaline and horror and the need to project a calm, even tone that people get when talking to someone who isn''t all there. "Hey, I''m gonna get you out of there, okay? Are you awake? Can you talk to me?"

    "Emily," I say, because that''s her name.

    "Yep, that''s me," she says, the words ping-ponging around the inside of my skull. I smile. Yeah, that''s Emily. "You''re gonna be okay. We''re both gonna be okay."

    Peter pops open the trunk, and Andre vomits as Max''s battered corpse tumbles out onto the ground. Up above, the sky buzzes with Wasps, hovering low to the ground as they expand outwards in an ever-growing spiral, wiping the Earth clean of human life. They travel together in startlingly large groups, rather than the unorganized swarms I remember from last time. Fuck, I hope the aliens aren''t getting smarter.

    "I don''t think we are," I admit.

    "Yeah, not since you fucking made me crash the car!" Lia shouts.

    Oh. There she is. Lia storms up behind Emily as she fiddles with my seatbelt, fury and blood on her face. Does she think the car crash was my fault¡­? But she was driving. Although¡­ I was having a seizure. Maybe I kept smacking her in the face or something. Is that how seizures work?

    "Calm down and help me get her free, Lia," Emily says evenly.

    "Calm down? Calm down!? I told you to leave the bitch, Emily! Now we''re fucking dead because of her epileptic ass, and you think I''m going to waste time escorting her again? We need to start running. Now."

    "No, we need to free her and take her with us, because she doesn''t have epilepsy," Emily snaps. "She has powers. Julietta just became our only chance at getting out of here alive."

    "What the fuck?" Lia asks. "How do you¡ª"

    Emily just holds up my hand, and for some reason that shuts Lia up. I can''t really see it. I don''t entirely want to. I just feel tired and loopy and in pain. I definitely don''t feel powerful. I just want to rest.

    "Okay," Lia hisses, kneeling down to help Emily get me free. "Okay, does this actually help, though? Can she fight monsters?"

    "It''s not really about fighting the monsters," Emily insists. "Look, just¡­ trust me?"

    "Nope, I don''t think I will," Peter says, backing away from the rest of us. "Fuck this."

    The lopsided grin that''s always on his face looks a little strained as he stares at Max''s body. Then, he turns and sprints away. Emily''s eyes narrow, but she doesn''t say anything. She just lets him run. We all do, even knowing he almost certainly won''t make it alone. We probably won''t make it either, so why bother? Andre, meanwhile, seems to not notice any of this is happening. He''s still staring at what''s left of Max.

    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    It isn''t pretty, honestly. The car was moving fast when it started to roll, and trapped in the trunk like he was, Max never stood a chance. It''s a hollow feeling, staring at what was once a person, but I''m mostly just concerned that I don''t feel anything beyond that. I suppose I never liked Max much, and the gore doesn''t really impact me, but still¡­ nothing? Hopefully I''m a good enough person to cry about it later, but I suppose I''m still pretty concussed.

    Speaking of, I nearly hit my head again as Emily finally frees me from the seatbelt, she and Lia barely catching me as I fall. They drag me clear of the car, my head lolling painfully in Andre''s direction as he continues to hyperventilate.

    "Come on, Julietta," Emily encourages. "Get up."

    I groan and try to do just that, but the overwhelming wave of nausea I get from trying forces me to squeeze my eyes shut and stay still.

    "...Can''t," I tell her.

    "Shit," Lia hisses. "Shit, shit, shit. This is our one chance to get out alive?"

    "Yes," Emily insists. "We''ll need her if an Angel or Queen emerges. Come on, grab her legs, we''ll carry her. Andre!"

    He twitches at the sound of his name, staring blankly in our direction.

    "Come on," Emily says. "Help us if you can. We need to make at least another mile in the next half-hour or so, and that''ll be tough if we have to carry Julietta the whole way."

    "Then we should leave her behind," Lia hisses.

    "Do you wanna run off on your own away from the person with superpowers, Lia? Do you think you can outrun a Behemoth?"

    Lia groans, but she does ultimately lean down to pick me up by the ankles. Emily shouts at Andre a bunch and soon enough he starts to follow us as well. I''m still feeling¡­ out of it. But there is one little detail that I think might be the problem.

    "...I do not feel like I have powers," I croak.

    "Oh, great," Lia grunts. "And you know what that feels like, do you?"

    "I¡­ should?" I manage. "Because¡­ if I have powers, then I should feel like I have¡­ power. Or something. Right?"

    I loll my head from side to side, which hurts and makes me nauseous again, but it''s kind of hard to care.

    "Julietta, you just stared at a tear in reality until every hole on your face started bleeding and instead of dying you just started¡­ not bleeding anymore," Emily says. "I''m pretty sure that means powers."

    "...Oh," I blink. "Maybe people should look at weird tears in reality more often."

    "No they shouldn''t, because it kills people," Lia grunts. "I get a splitting headache just glancing at the thing. I have no idea how you managed to stare."

    "Pain doesn''t really hurt, when you think about it," I mumble. "What are my powers?"

    "How should I know? Something about healing, maybe?" Emily answers. "It shouldn''t matter. Just rest, okay? We need you to be functional."

    It shouldn''t matter? Why wouldn''t it matter? What does Emily know about powers? Can I even afford to worry about this while my brain feels like it''s been hit by a train?

    "...Okay, I''ll rest," I sigh, and close my eyes. I''m still not sure any of this is happening, but it''s just so hard to think. I should just trust Emily until my brain starts working again. Everything is so weird right now, so surreal. We just crawled out of a car crash on the side of the road, the apocalypse is escalating behind us, but more than anything our surroundings are just¡­ quiet. We''re deep inside an urban sprawl, one of the many neighborhoods with hardly anyone alive, and everyone who was here has already evacuated. Occasionally, I hear a car zoom by, but they''re too far away to help us and likely just as unable to hold everyone in our group as Lia''s car was.

    Doom hasn''t caught up with us yet. ¡­But it will.

    Still, my ravaged body desperately craves sleep, so even though I''m being yanked around by the armpits and ankles my head only seems to get fuzzier. It''s nice to have my eyes closed, crisis and all. One of the nice things about being nearly insensate is that it''s not too difficult to get comfortable for sleep. Normally I''d have a sense of balance that might mess with my ability to rest while being carried around like an oversized potato sack at a farmer''s market, but the concussion is really pulling some work on my inner ear and making everything just feel equally awful. It''s not difficult to sleep while everything just feels generically awful. I''m used to that.

    The more I doze off, though, the stranger my ride seems to become. In my exhausted haze, I start to feel a strange tingle around my ankles, one that I can''t really recognize until I wonder if that''s what touching somebody feels like. Then it clicks for me; I''m dreaming. I''ve dreamed about the senses I used to have before, after all. I don''t remember how to touch or taste or smell, but I definitely used to be able to do those things, so some part of my brain must still feel like it knows how.

    Yet the more I think about it, the more detailed the feeling becomes, beyond any dream I can remember. At first it''s just a tingle, but soon I can make out the sensation of each of Lia''s fingers, the way they close around my skin, the pressure of her nails as they dig into my ankles, the angle of her fingers as they bend how hands are supposed to bend, the interconnected tapestry of her muscles, woven together like fine cloth to provide the needed force to move. Every crease in her palm is worn there from how the skin bends whenever her hand scrunches. So, too, are the lines in her wrist formed, out of sight and out of mind because who thinks about that sort of thing, the way every cell of her epidermis slowly but surely works its way into little ruts over time, as the body adapts and grows and learns what parts of itself will and will not be folded. These details aren''t just part of her DNA, aren''t mere facets of the programming her body was constructed on (and isn''t that just fascinating all by itself) but instead emergent consequences of how that programming reacts to stimuli and trauma and wear and tear, and when all those things build on each other over and over and over the end result is far more than even the tens of millions of¡ª

    "Julietta!" Emily whispers into my ear. I flinch. I blink. Wait, were my eyes open?

    "What¡ª" I try to say, but she slaps a hand over my mouth.

    "You were hyperventilating," she says. "It was getting loud. We really need you to be quiet right now."

    I blink some more, looking around. I''m¡­ not being carried anymore. I''m sitting on the ground, inside a small office building. The lights are off, and it''s not quiet outside anymore. There''s too much buzzing.

    "Oh," I whisper.

    "I think they''ve mostly passed for now, but we need to stay hidden until the military clears them out," Emily whispers. "We should have a brief window of safety between the Air Force showing up and any Angels emerging."

    I take a slow, deep breath, nodding while my mind races. I''m feeling¡­ a little more clear-headed now, and I really want to know what''s up with Emily. She''s not normally so¡­ assertive. It''s almost like I''m talking to a different person.

    "How do you know this?" I ask quietly.

    She shrugs.

    "I don''t want to die," she says. "And this sort of thing is always a risk, so I made sure I''d know what to do if it happened. That''s all."

    I frown, not exactly buying it. Emily seems confident about military response time statistics. That''s not exactly a normal level of investment into emergency procedures, but I guess it''s not secret knowledge either. Emily''s not the sort of person to do anything halfway. She''s very meticulous about anything she sets her mind to. Still¡­ I kind of expected her to be the kind of person who collapses into a sobbing wreck during crises like these, not someone who turns into a hyper-competent commando lady.

    Not that I''m complaining, especially after she saved my life. It''s just¡­ weird.

    My thoughts are torn away from such musings by the screaming sound of fighter jets flying overhead, finally heralding the arrival of help. Andre picks me up by the armpits this time, Lia still on my ankles as Emily signals us all to rush out of the building we''ve been hiding in and continue down the road. I glance up at the sky, seeing the horrid Wasps swarm upwards towards the aerial invaders. I can''t help but note that these Wasps look different from the ones I remember, with only four limbs that each end in such sharp, rigid blades that I wonder how the monsters could even stand on them. Maybe they don''t, and they just fly forever until they die.

    Dying is definitely what they start to do, at least. Four F-22s shriek towards the incursion scar, flanking not a lead plane, but a bright, glowing woman. She''s a blinding white streak in the sky, only identifiable as a person because everyone recognizes Agnus Dei. Phosphorous streaks of machine gun fire complement searing laser blasts as her strike squad pierces through enemy territory like an arrow. Missiles erupt from the planes as the squadron opens fire on the incursion scar itself, attacking the hole in the world with the rage of our entire planet at their backs. I watch, awed, as the missiles seem to slip into the scar, attacking the hard-to-discern shapes beyond it.

    I realize, belatedly, that I probably shouldn''t be staring into it at all, but doing so doesn''t hurt my head anymore. I''m not really sure what that means.

    The squadron banks away from the scar and takes another pass at the Wasps, raining down lead and light with unmatched lethality. I don''t know how fast Agnus Dei can fly, but I do know she''s leading a squad of fighter jets that outspeed Wasps by two orders of magnitude. While Wasp acid can eat through whatever jets are made of, it requires a very lucky alien or a very bad pilot to actually risk getting hit by them. I watch in awe as mere minutes pass before the skies are clear of monsters.

    These are the moments they show you in those propaganda videos. These are the triumphant victories we get drip-fed to keep up hope, to allow morale to stay high enough that people keep signing up for war. And I''ll give them this: the skies truly are mankind''s domain. Though nature may have never intended us to fly, no one matches us at it. Giant winged monsters are scary, sure, but they aren''t supersonic warhead-armed death machines. But that begs the question, doesn''t it? If our air superiority is so absolute, why do we only have one squadron up there in the sky? Where''s the entire rest of the Air Force?

    "...Shit," Emily swears, and it''s still so weird to hear her swear. "Even the military thinks we''re going to die. Julietta, are you ready?"

    "For what, exactly?" I ask. "I''m feeling a bit more lucid, if that''s what you mean."

    "Yeah," she sighs. "Okay. You''re going to need to protect us."

    "How?"

    "Yeah, how?" Andre gasps. "This is¡­ this is impossible. Didn''t you say you saw Behemoths touching down? We''re going to get overrun."

    "I don''t know!" Emily snaps. "We''re just going to stay close, and you''re¡­ you''re going to figure it out, alright?"

    Oh. Okay, no pressure I guess.

    "O-okay, just¡­ help me stand up, then," I stammer, taking deep breaths to try and get my brain working again. "If somebody acts as a cane for me I can probably hobble a little faster than this. And¡­ I guess I should get some blood flowing."

    "You had blood flowing," Lia snorts.

    "...In the right places, I mean," I correct. "Um. Am I really not bleeding anymore? I can''t actually tell."

    "You''re dry as a bone," Emily sighs. "Alright, get her on her feet, I''ll be her support."

    Geez. That''s¡­ a little wild to think about. Powers, huh? Shit, I''m going to have to join the military if we survive this after all. Andre and Lia set me down, helping me to get an arm around Emily''s shoulder. Now that I''m finally not trussed up like a dead pig, I can briefly pat myself down to check if¡­ uh.

    I try to give myself a once-over, but Lia beats me to it, her hand shooting in out of nowhere and brushing my face exactly where I was going to do it. It can only be Lia''s hand, with her horribly smooth skin and disgustingly perfect nails. It feels weird, which is particularly strange in that it feels like anything at all. And it''s even more strange when I notice that Lia isn''t standing anywhere close enough to touch me.

    I''m touching me.

    I flex my fingers, and Lia''s immaculate digits obey. The hand is also, quite clearly, attached to my ratty-ass arm and not hers. But from the wrist down, there are no scars. No burns. No numbness. Indescribable sensations jolt through every inch of skin, and I have no way to know if they''re completely random or just based on stimuli I simply don''t remember how to identify. I flex the fingers, slowly, watching them move at my command without shaking, without catching on the hundreds of little problems that would normally prevent me from making a fist. Lia''s hand is mine. It works. It''s¡­ fixed.

    ¡­I hate it.

    How do I change it back? I don''t know how I changed it in the first place. But it''s constantly scratching at my attention, like someone following me around and playing the world''s worst music. This is my power? My motherfucking superpower is to have the basic functional capabilities of Lia? Fuck off, eldritch sugar daddy. I don''t want this shit, I want lasers!

    As if on cue, lasers streak overhead as Agnus Dei launches more death beams out of her hands, because her powers are cool and useful and relevant to the current wartime situation. She''s basically Superwoman and nothing short of an Angel can even cause her to blink. I, meanwhile, can look like a girl I hate and heal from concussions slightly faster. ¡­Okay, well, realistically the second one there might actually be useful again soon. But I hope it won''t be!

    "Quit staring at yourself and walk, Jules!" Lia snaps. "Come on Emily, we need to move!"

    "Y-yeah," Andre agrees. God, he''s so out of it. I mentally mark him as a panic risk if we run into a beastie. Which... yeah. This is a crisis situation. I can worry about my superpowers later. Like in a couple minutes, when I die because of how useless they are.

    With Emily supporting me, we stagger forward at a bit quicker of a pace than before, hurrying away from the scar as best we can. The rumbles and cracks of the aerial battle behind us almost distract from the screaming sensation of my new hand, but I do my best to ignore both and just keep putting one foot in front of the other. It wouldn''t do to trip and slow everyone down even more.

    About fifteen minutes of fleeing pass, and though we''re making decent distance it''s not becoming any less stressful. There are still Behemoths back there somewhere, trying to track us down and crush us into paste. We can hear the occasional thunder of one of them knocking over a building, and they only seem to be getting closer.

    "Okay, I need a break," Emily pants. "Swap with me, Lia."

    "Fine," Lia grumbles, grabbing my other arm and letting me lean on her so Emily can step away. My foster sister glances between us, worry on her face as she takes in how ragged we are.

    "...Thank you for sticking with me, Lia," she says quietly. "I know you didn''t want to."

    "Uh-huh," Lia grunts. "Well, you owe me when we get out of here."

    "Yeah," Emily smiles, a flash of worry on her face. Fuck, I hate whatever that implies. Can''t deal with it now, though. "Andre? You okay?"

    "A-as okay as I can be, I guess," he mumbles.

    "That''s good. Stick as close as you can to Julietta, okay? The only way we''re getting out of this is together."

    "Right," Andre nods. "Yeah."

    Emily frowns, probably thinking exactly the same thing I am: still a flight risk. Andre is always prone to trusting himself over everyone else, even at the worst times. If we had time we might be able to talk him out of it, but we don''t. It''s going to be a disaster if something unexpected happens, and that''s basically guaranteed. The question is, what''s it going to be? An alien jumping into the middle of the street? A stray shot from the good guys getting a little too close? A car barreling out of nowhere to run us over?

    We all feel it as the skies rip again, like someone took the sound of tearing metal and turned it into a physical force. What was two becomes four, as the long tear in reality becomes an X-shaped break. A second cut, further dividing the first. And then it happens again. And again. Something cuts into the world over and over and over and it just won''t stop. I can''t help but stare transfixed at the wound in the sky, watching it open deeper and deeper, revealing more and more of whatever lies beyond. It''s so hard to make out. I see planets, I think, or maybe moons. Spheres in brilliant and fantastical colors, hovering in the sky beyond the sky. It''s so colorful and bright, an almost cheerful beauty that feels so sick and wrong given the current circumstances. Something on the other side calls to me, a light tug as if I was buoyant underwater. But then a slithering figure fills the cracks and blocks my view, rendering it impossible to focus on anything else.

    The Leviathans are, generally, the largest beasts that the aliens field in battle. But there is one thing bigger, that they hold in reserve. It does not see battle, not technically, because its arrival means they have already won.

    A Queen.

    It looks like a hundred thousand building-sized cells, constantly bulging and growing and dividing in mitosis-like separations, its slick, slimy flesh in nonstop motion. The giant, perpetually-splitting orbs rise to the surface, split in half, and then get quickly overtaken by their rapidly growing fellows, and all the while the whole of the monster still maintains something almost like a cohesive shape. Masses of the cells group together to form tendril-like limbs, which themselves split at the ends and grow into two new tendrils over and over until they''re too small and short to be called tendrils anymore at all, returning to the main, cohesive mass. It is an abomination against biology, a wound on physics itself, and yet still it moves, slithering ever-defiantly towards our world.

    It is a horror all on its own, but as is always the case with these aliens the horror does not stop at this incursion. Each Queen looks completely different, a totally unique spite against reality. We don''t have any idea why, because even after thirty years we know basically nothing about any of these genocidal monsters. But despite their differences, it''s impossible to mistake a Queen because of the simple fact that they are the size of an entire city. They''re so large that the incursion scar needs over an hour to finally grow large enough to let them squeeze into our world. But once they do, that''s it. That''s the point of no return. Either the Queen is destroyed before it can take root, or the whole region is lost.

    Because just like the paragons of humanity, a Queen and all her Angels have superpowers.

    "Fuck," Andre hisses. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

    "Stay right where you are!" Emily snaps. "Everyone grab onto Julietta!"

    A half-dozen warheads shriek off the fighter jets towards the slowly-emerging Queen, but a single tentacle presses through the cracks in the world. In the very same instant, they all explode prematurely, looking for a split second like they had all been cut.

    "We need to run," Andre insists. "We need to run right now!"

    "No," I shake my head. "We need to get to an open area and brace ourselves for the shockwave of that thing touching down."

    Agnus Dei fires a blinding blast of white light, and this time I know I''m not imagining it. The shot, the blast of light, is cleaved in half. It does nothing, and the Queen continues to emerge.

    "...Jules is right," Lia agrees. "A few seconds of running won''t help, we need to make sure nothing''s going to collapse on us. Or under us, or¡­ fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

    We start to move, Emily dragging us out into the middle of the street as we hope to god that we aren''t over a sinkhole or about to be jumped by a Behemoth. The Queen''s ever-shifting tendril continues to extend into the world, and the more it does the more tendrils it becomes, splitting and splitting and splitting and splitting even as it grows. More of the monster follows, reaching down towards the ground at speeds that my brain struggles to parse at the massive scales involved.

    And then, it drops. Agnus Dei shoots at the Queen a few more times, but her whole squadron turns and flies away before it hits the ground. Not even humanity''s strongest can take on a Queen alone. Lia, Emily, Andre, and I all huddle up together, bracing low to the ground. Then the Queen hits the earth, taking the fall almost gracefully compared to the Leviathans, despite the enormous difference in size. But we can see the shockwave as it comes towards us, so we cover our heads and pray.

    We luck out. Or maybe we just happened to pick a good spot. While the quake collapses buildings all around us, shaking and shattering what feels like the entire planet, the road holds with only a collection of cracks in the pavement. Slowly, with shuddering breaths, we unfold ourselves from the ground to take in the devastation around us. The entire neighborhood is splinters and shattered stone.

    Out in the distance, the Queen looms, having caused all this devastation not even with her incredible power, but simply with her bulk. But she does have power. I can feel it, somehow. In the air around me, there is a pressure. A presence. Her grip envelops me, testing and squeezing and trying to cut. To kill. Always waiting, always furious that I am not in enough pieces.

    "Okay," Andre breathes. "Okay, now we run."

    "Andre, no¡ª" Emily tries to insist, but he cuts her off.

    "Fuck you guys!" he snaps, his breaths coming faster and more panicked. "Did you see that? What more are you waiting for? We need to go. Now!"

    But we can''t. I feel it pressing at me. And not just me, but the others too. I grab Andre by the wrist as he tries to let go of my hand. Emily holds the other, and Lia supports my shoulder. Everyone is touching me, and somehow that lets me feel the invisible cutting pressure trying to pierce into them, too.

    "Andre, she''s right," I press, "I''m pretty sure that we''re in danger."

    "I fucking know that we''re in danger!" he says. "Which is why I''m tired of waiting for your slow a¡ª"

    He doesn''t get to finish his sentence, because in that moment he breaks out of my grip. And the moment he stops touching me, he becomes a flow of red.

    Some gruesome part of me wants to count the cuts, but they all seem to happen at once, turning what was once a boy into an oozing pile of cloth and cubed meat faster than any of us can blink. We don''t scream. We don''t cry or gasp or vomit. It''s too fast for any of those reactions, sudden to the point that it seems impossible that it could have ever happened at all. We simply stare in shock, as someone we''ve lived with for years is killed so brutally that they become unrecognizable as having ever been human.

    Emily, to my surprise, is the one that recovers first.

    "...So. We''re making sure not to let go of Julietta, right Lia?" she says, inflection utterly absent from her voice.

    "Yeah," Lia says quietly. "Agreed."

    We keep our vomit in our throats, and walk away.

 3. Why Do I Know That

    How many people have to die before I finally get my shit together?

    That thought echoes in my mind, over and over, as we leave Andre''s corpse behind. Funny how it takes a second foster brother turning into a mangled pile of meat for the shock of the first to actually start wearing off. Odds are that Peter is dead too, now that I think about it. I''ve never liked my so-called brothers, I''ll admit, but I didn''t hate them either. It was just always my job to herd them like the cats they are, being the only level-headed and mature member of our fake little family who could actually speak up for herself.

    And I failed to do that. I failed to do much of anything, staying quiet and forcing Emily, of all people, to take charge. And I like Emily, but even with her sudden, strange confidence she doesn''t know how to manage people like I do. As usual, she has the plan. She knows what needs to be done. But I''m the one who has to get people to actually be sensible, and I failed at that when I was needed most.

    No more. I refuse. I take a deep breath, and another, and then turn to Lia. She''s holding my right hand, with Emily keeping a deathgrip on my left. The pressure that killed Andre still dances across my skin, looking for a way inside, but it hasn''t found anything yet and there''s nothing I can do but hope that will continue. What I can do is manage people.

    Lia is our next flight risk. Obviously. Emily is the one who proposed this ''use my powers to prevent dying'' strategy in the first place, so she''s not going anywhere. And while Lia saw what happens if she lets go of me, she''s still panicking. It''s obvious from the bob of her Adam''s apple, the twitching of her eyes, and the sheen of sweat on her skin. Her thoughts are going a mile a minute, and in situations like this, that could be really, really bad.

    I''m panicking too, of course. At least, I think I am. My body is shaking, screaming at me to move faster, but more than anything I just feel numb. ¡­Which is ironic, since my right hand is experiencing physical sensation for the first time I can actually remember, and I do not like it.

    I''m not sure if Lia realizes she''s currently holding an exact replica of her own hand, but if she doesn''t I''m definitely not going to point it out to her.

    "Lia, slower breaths," I say instead.

    "Oh, now you''re talkative, huh?" she snaps at me. Because she''s scared, and she reacts to fear by appearing to be angry, like a cat puffing up its body and hissing at a dog. (I really like cats, because they''re absolute dumbasses and therefore perfect metaphors for people.) I want to tell her to shut her ass up and do what I say, because literally everyone knows that hyperventilation is bad and slow breaths help a person calm down and I shouldn''t need to fucking justify reminding her to take care of herself in a crisis. But Lia is self-centered to the point of fragility, and what I want to tell her won''t actually make her do what I need her to do.

    "Emily is keeping calm," I tell her instead, even though that''s probably a lie. Emily appears calm, though, and as long as I make it a competition Lia will compete.

    "Fuck off," Lia snaps at me. "How could anyone be calm right now?"

    But she starts breathing slower and stops twitching her eyeballs around like a frightened rabbit, and that''s all I need. I squeeze her hand a little tighter, trying to ignore the sensation of feeling crawling further up my arm, the flesh visibly twisting and smoothing and turning itself into a copy of her arm, down to the last hair follicle.

    I know this because I can feel them, somehow. Something in the back of my head crawls through Lia''s stupidly perfect body the same way that pressure keeps trying to burrow into me and rip me apart. It teases away at what she is and what she''s made of, showing me every little detail of every little cell in a way that I get, I understand, except I don''t because whenever I try to focus on the details they slip away from my aching head like blood from a wound.

    I feel like I''m looking at a tapestry the size of a castle, hanging from high in the sky. I can gaze at it from a distance and see the artwork of her body, but if I step closer to examine the threads the context is lost. I can feel the way her tendons link bicep to bone, but the deeper I focus the more that bone slips away from my mind, the infinite complexity of the tendon consuming my focus until it''s not even a tendon anymore, just a single thread of the tapestry that I mindlessly follow along the weave, any idea of the greater picture rendered incomprehensible.

    I hate it. I want this feeling to stop. It picks at my mind, making it harder for my already-struggling brain to focus. More and more of my arm turns soft and dark and damnably smooth, confusing sensation after confusing sensation eternally clawing at me, needing to be understood. One of them, I''m sure, has to be warmth. I can''t remember feeling temperature, which has always been a problem for me because I can''t sweat. Cold isn''t too bad; I know I need to put on more clothes when I start to shiver. But heat has always been dangerous for me, as I never know when it''s too hot out until I start to feel nauseous and dizzy.

    But now, as we power walk (or in my case, power limp) through the dead streets of the Chicago suburbs, I can feel my arm telling me something is wrong. The sun beats down from the ever-more-cloudless sky, and it has a presence on my skin. An uncomfortable film of liquid starts secreting itself in response, and that thing in my head¡ªmy power, I suppose¡ªgleefully tells me far more than I ever wanted to know of sweat-vomiting pores and the way my body now produces the salty liquid on command.

    It''s distracting. Too distracting. I need to focus, to be better than this. Lia is starting to look worse again, her thoughts no doubt spiraling in the silence. I need to distract her, too.

    "Where were you two going to go on your date?" I ask.

    "Is now really the fucking time to be indulging your siscon shit, Jules?" Lia hisses.

    "Humor me," I scowl, refusing to rise to the bait.

    "Shouldn''t we be staying quiet?" Lia counters. "Because, y''know, there are giant monsters hunting us?"

    "It should be fine," Emily says quietly. "I don''t think it''ll make a big difference on whether or not they find us. We''re kind of walking out in the open."

    We don''t have much choice but to walk out in the open. Everything other than the street is mostly rubble from the earthquake, so there isn''t a lot of cover. Lia looks around and sighs, silently conceding the point.

    "...We were going to some cheese-tasting place out of town," she says. "Emily gets super weird about cheese. But like, in a really cute way. I was looking forward to it."

    "I don''t get weird," Emily protests. "Cheese is just neat. It''s all so fundamentally similar, yet there are a million different ways to make it and it creates a million different complex flavors. The amount of subtlety in the art is cool. Like, even a master usually only knows how to make a select few styles of cheese, though obviously they make them really well and they are just so good."

    "What''s your favorite cheese?" I ask, leaning on her a bit as I struggle over an uneven part of the road. In the back of my mind, something starts crawling over Lia''s legs.

    "Oh my god, Raclette du Valais," Emily sighs. "It has a whole dish named after it where you heat up a big wheel of it until it starts to melt, scrape off just the liquid bits, and drizzle them all over potatoes and other stuff and it''s so good."

    I nod along. People don''t often talk to me about food since, y''know, I can''t actually taste stuff, but it''s exactly the distraction we need right now. We just need to keep moving, keep walking so we have as long as possible before the monsters overtake us. If we''re lucky, we''ll reach the defensive lines of the military before they catch us. Unfortunately, I''m here, so ''lucky'' is quite a ways beyond us.

    We can see our supposed saviors out there in the distance. Helicopters, mostly, flying around the edge of some invisible line in the sand that the commanders have drawn. We can''t see any of the ground troops, but the presence of those flying protectors should mean that the rest of our forces are gathering underneath them, ready to defend the dwindling territory we have left. We make it to them, and we make it to safety.

    Naturally, they are a lot farther away than I''d like. Hours away, at least. But the less we think about that, the more likely we are to keep a level head long enough to make it there.

    I feel myself getting winded, my ravaged body struggling with more walking than it''s used to doing in a day, let alone an hour. Focusing on Emily helps, and I can feel the muscles in Lia''s face pull her lips into a smile as her girlfriend jabbers on. It''s kind of sweet how it seems to genuinely relax her, making me question my assumptions about their relationship in ways that cause my gut to churn and boil.

    But now is not the time for whatever that emotion is, so I firmly shut it down. I keep my eyes glued to the ground, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other and doing my best to not think about how it''s a little easier not to trip with every step I take.

    I can''t help but chuckle. I''m turning into Lia. God, I hate her. My mirth can''t last, though.

    We hear the Behemoth before we can see it, but it''s not long after that we can see one stepping over the piles of rubble behind us. The Behemoth is like a massively upscaled version of the Wasps: four limbs, each tipped with a long blade rather than a foot, and no head. A long, flat tail like an eel''s¡ªor a Leviathan''s¡ªflicks back and forth behind them, skimming just above the surface of the ground without ever touching it. Whatever sensory organs these beasts have are integrated somewhere into the thick skin of their torso and thighs, and though I see collections of holes that could be ears or breathing vents or acid-launchers or something even worse, I have no true idea how it might be tracking us.

    Most Behemoths tend to be compared to elephants, with thick, blunt limbs and huge bodies that crush everything that opposes them. Yet this hive''s Behemoths seem to be thinner and sharper than the ones I''ve seen pictures of online, more like a headless giraffe with their gangly legs and top-heavy frame. Of course, giraffes don''t look quite so goofy up close. When an animal with legs taller than your body gets near enough to almost touch, the difference in scale isn''t so much seen as it is felt. Every step of the massive monster cleaves into the ground, leaving a thin hole whenever it lifts a leg.

    It is, thankfully, still very far away. Emily pulls us off in what seems like a random direction, but a plan I don''t understand is better than no plan at all, so I follow her lead. She starts to speed up, and I immediately panic about falling, but to my utter surprise my legs catch me when I stumble. I can feel them now, rubbing up against my pants, twitching and tingling and sweating as we move. My lungs feel clearer, the pinches and kinks in my torso gone as more and more wretched, overwhelming feeling spreads through my body.

    "...What the fuck?" Lia hisses, and I see she''s staring at my face. Without even thinking about it, I feel myself mirror her expression exactly, testing the same electrical impulses and ensuring they get the same results. Her breath catches, and she looks away. I swallow nervously, and do the same. What the fuck was that?

    Feeling is spreading through my whole body now, and Emily clearly wants to go faster so on a whim I try to run. I stumble almost immediately, not knowing the right steps, but I catch my balance again. A stumble no longer guarantees a fall. I feel giddy. I feel ill. Hair spills from my scalp and tickles my neck, and I nearly fall again as the sensation makes me spasm.

    The feeling is spreading to more than just my skin. Everything is different and off, my blind eye snapping into functionality and instantly fixing the blurs in my vision. My left arm starts to change, dramatically faster than the glacial pace my right took, the flesh rippling into place in seconds rather than the better part of an hour. My bones are tingling, a sensation of change dancing up my spine towards my skull, towards my brain. Throughout it all, the Behemoth gets closer, but I honestly think my power is scarier.

    Not my brain, I beg. You can''t do that. That''s ME. Even if nobody else cares about that, I do. Yet I know it''s already changing. My balance, my vision, my hearing, the way every step I take is closer to a run than the last¡­ that''s all in the brain. Neural pathways are rewriting themselves, twisting into functionalities and habits that I didn''t have before, so they have to be coming from the same place the rest of me is. Her.

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    I could die before the monster even gets here, my corpse running around thinking someone else''s thoughts.

    Is it crazy to be scared of this? Maybe. I don''t know how powers work. But I''ve always thought the person I am is nothing but a collection of biology and chemicals stitched together, so if my power changes that biology, an alteration of personhood naturally follows, doesn''t it? So I can''t let it do that. I can''t allow myself to be someone else that completely. Whatever my power is doing to make me like her, to give me all the damn effortless beauty I''ve always envied, it needs to stop inside the skull. You''re my goddamn power, so you listen to me, okay?

    Fuck, I really hope that''s how it works. It''s so weird even having a power. I have to accept that, considering that it''s the only thing keeping any of us alive (how the fuck is it doing that, by the way!? Seems kind of important, yet also completely unrelated to the fact that I''m becoming a rich bitch clone.) but conceptualizing myself that way is¡­ it just doesn''t quite fit what feels like me. But I guess none of me fits as ''me'' right now. I''ll have to get used to that. ¡­And running from a scary monster doesn''t seem like the time to philosophize about the nature of the self anyway.

    The crashing noises get louder and louder behind us, indicating that our pursuit approaches. I try to speed up some more and stumble again, Lia yanking me back to my feet so we can keep moving. I nod thanks at her, but she avoids looking at me. I guess I don''t blame her.

    I''m pretty sure my changes are done. I can feel both of us, and we''re identical. ¡­Other than the brain, thankfully. I''m genuinely not sure how much of that has changed, and I don''t actually want to know if answering that question is an option. Fuck, what am I even doing? What is this? Every inch of my skin is screaming at me, every breath of air is filled with sensation, even opening my mouth shoves an excess of way too much into my mind. None of it is bad in a vacuum, it''s not unpleasant in and of itself, but there''s so much of it and it won''t stop because it''s my body, it''s just like this now and I don''t know how to make it go away!

    All I feel is Lia. Lia, Lia, Lia, every fucking inch of Lia has been branded into my brain with a burning iron. It''s so overwhelming that I can barely even focus on the thundering footsteps of the Behemoth until they''re close enough to make us stumble.

    And that''s pretty damn close.

    Emily has been leading us through narrow patches of rubble, weaving between the remains of houses just barely far enough apart to give us a clear path through but still close enough together to force the monster to climb over unstable ground. I have no idea how she''s picking the path so well, but every turn she takes has been buying us precious seconds to make more distance. Of course, the beast has still, inevitably, caught up. It¡­ its legs are pretty long.

    I, uh. Earlier, I thought something about my power being scarier than the monster. This close to the thing, I''d like to revise my opinion. It''s huge, with thick gray skin armoring its bulbous torso. Each leg is over seven feet long, the bottom four feet composed entirely of a giant sapphire-blue blade, glossy and shimmering with cloudy patterns of white throughout. They''d be beautiful if not for the mortal danger or the fact that they''re already stained with extremely worrying quantities of blood.

    The upper part of the leg is a thick pillar of muscle, connecting to the ovular main body by a shoulder bone embedded too deep within layers of skin and what I think is subdermal armor for me to actually make out anything that might be a skeleton. This close, I can see long, whisker-like hairs on the monster''s belly, along with rows of what are definitely breathing vents (the way they flex to let airflow in and out is impossible to confuse for the contractions of liquid-favoring pores wait why do I know that) and a collection of what look like fist-sized black marbles imbedded around the creature''s body are doubtlessly its eyes. Worst of all, however, is the monster''s overwhelming stench, a hundred smells all at once that claw at the inside of my nose in ways that I''m sure I''d have pithy metaphors for if I was capable of recognizing any scents at all, ever.

    "Eyes forward!" Emily shrieks at me. "Focus on keeping your balance!"

    Oh shit, right! The panic and the running and the mortal danger! I stumble a little as my brain reminds itself that it needs to be terrified, but Emily and Lia both catch me by an armpit and keep me on my feet.

    "No falling, Jules!" Lia hisses. "We''re all getting out of here, okay?"

    God, I want to believe her.

    "Do we have a plan?" I ask her, and holy fuck that''s not my voice, that''s not what my voice sounds like, what the fuck was that!?

    "I dunno, I was kinda hoping you''d shoot lasers at it!" Lia shouts.

    "Yeah, me too!" I snap. But no, instead I have freaky clone powers!

    "Left!" Emily shouts, and she yanks Lia and me towards her moments before a leg crashes down into the ground next to us.

    "Emily, where are we going?" I ask. God damn it I sound so weird now. Is this what Lia hears her voice as whenever she speaks?

    "I don''t know!" she shrieks. "I''m just trying to keep us alive in the next five seconds, okay? I don''t have anything long-term!"

    We scamper around like rats, zig-zagging to use the monster''s huge size against it as much as possible, but this is a losing battle and we all know it. We''re going to die here. There''s no real point in running, beyond that fact that it ups the chance of being rescued from less than one percent to still less than one percent, but maybe with an extra digit after the period. The thundering footsteps of the Behemoth hound our every move, snapping through rubble and swatting aside fences like blades of grass. Throughout it all, the monster makes no other noise. Its stomps and slashes might be loud, but it does not roar or bellow or call for its fellows. It remains eerily silent the entire time, its body angled so one of its many pitch-black eyes always points our way.

    It''s only a matter of time, and I''m ultimately the one that fucks it up. The beast cuts us off, leaping in front of us, and I trip trying to change direction. Lia and Emily can only save my clumsy ass so many times before I fall on it, so they topple down with me as I inevitably do. I wince as pain shoots up my tailbone, my body deviating from its template as an involuntary crack forms in the bone. It hurts, but pain is easier to ignore than the constant feeling all over my skin so I don''t really care. I don''t have time to care anyway.

    The Behemoth is on us.

    We try to coordinate ourselves back to our feet, but the best we can manage is a faulty leap backwards, avoiding the first blow but tumbling into an even worse tangle of limbs than when we started.

    "Sorry," Emily mutters.

    "Huh?" I say, and she shoves me directly into the monster''s next attack.

    The four-foot-long crystal blade that acts as this thing''s leg pierces through my stomach in the span of a heartbeat, embedding itself in the ground behind me. It hurts¡ªholy shit it hurts¡ªbut the experience of simply being in contact with it at all is somehow worse. The pain, I can manage, but that new little something in the back of my head, excitedly seeking all it can, it''s just¡­

    ¡­A crystalline structure, not technically organic but formed from organic processes, its lattice grown molecule by molecule within the cells (units? Fragments? Divisions.) at the underside of the knee. (They aren''t cells, they''re nothing like cells, cells are what Lia''s are called.) I can feel myself hyperventilating, blood gushing from my torso as the blade extracts itself back out of the gaping wound but I grab it, I can''t let it escape me, I have to finish. The blade is fundamentally simplistic, and after decoding the way the crystallization divisions ensure and maintain its specific shape over the course of its growth, I can move on above to the rest of the leg. I was right about the thickness of the skin and the subdermal armor, but the muscle is nothing like I expected: sturdy, hollow bone-equivalents filled with dense liquid form a hydraulic movement system, collections of pressure-containers deep inside the ovoid body where a puncture would be less likely to end up risking an entire leg.

    I laugh, blood dribbling down my chin as I continue hugging tight against the weapon that just ran me through. There''s more to this, a lot more. The internal body and digestive system are nothing like Lia''s, just a small hole near the top of the body, devoid of teeth or even much in the way of an esophagus, dropping directly into an intestinal-equivalent without anything like a stomach to break it down. It can''t eat, not on its own. Whatever this is, it needs to be fed.

    "Julietta!" Emily barks. I blink, nearly losing my grip on the blade, as slick as it is with my blood. Oh fuck, I''m bleeding everywhere and I''m clutching a giant monster leg and I need to kill it I know the best place to kill it.

    I collapse, my arm twitching as it doubles in mass in nearly a second. Braced against the ground I extend it upwards, crystalline structures surging into place at obscene speeds, growing and elongating and sharpening and piercing directly into the core of the Behemoth. It rears back in pain, and though it still doesn''t cry out (because it can''t, it has no vocal systems) the monster is obviously wounded. I can feel, after all, exactly how wounded it is, a new configuration of its skin and organs marking themselves in my memory.

    I missed the hydraulic pressure chambers, though. I''d better stab it again.

    I pull my arm back (its arm? Whatever, it''s mine now.) and flex the newly-grown piston in my chest as hard as it will go. My arm fires forward like a rocket, stabbing upwards and piercing through the first layer of the monster''s armor. Still not enough. I take a deep breath (shallow, inefficient, oxygen low, had to remove a lung for space, expanding torso) and strike again, the Behemoth stumbling as I twitch and grow. My stomach protests as the acids inside it dry up, the lining withering away as my belly stitches itself back together bigger, stronger, different, cells and divisions competing for real estate in the free country of my flesh. Taller, bigger, more of my limbs growing into monstrosities, I roar the last roar I''m able to as my second lung finishes reconfiguring into nothing, and tackle the behemoth to the ground.

    It stabs me back, but who cares about pain, deviations from the template can be remade anyway, I just need to pierce through. With my enormous weight behind the blow, I finally, finally cut past all the layers of armor and into the pressure tanks.

    Organic fluid blasts out of the wound like a geyser, launching my arm clear back out of the Behemoth''s chest and ripping into a full complement of other organs. It''s dead in seconds, and as I stumble backwards from the force of the explosion, my transformation finally completes.

    I wish I could still scream.

    It hits me all at once. Omnidirectional vision, a sense of vibrations that both is and is not hearing, a proprioception that is impossible and nonsensical because a person cannot be that tall, but worst of all is the agonizing, devastating, eruption of smell.

    I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it, it''s nothing but cacophonous gobbledygook, it''s just nonsense and chaos and it''s too much but it needs my attention right now, but it''s always right now, it won''t stop and I can''t¡­ I can''t I can''t I can''t!

    "Stop!" something shouts. "Julietta, stop! W-whatever you''re doing right now, it''s bad!"

    The more I try to focus, the more everything becomes smell. It is smell, right? How could I even know, I don''t¡­ that''s not something that''s in my life. It''s one of the hundreds of fucking things that everyone knows everything about but will never be part of my life! And yet here we are. I can''t stop trying to figure it out, it''s everything right now, and though the impossible complexity of it makes me want to scream, some of it is¡­ it''s starting to feel like¡­

    No. Wait. What''s happening to my brain?

    I shrink even faster than I grew, my body shriveling up and collapsing back into humanity. My bladed limbs seem to dissolve into nothing as my skin thins, my pistons depressurize, and my eyes vanish just in time for a head to start growing in with a new pair. I fall from one being to another, hitting the ground and collapsing to my knees, naked and vomiting.

    My skin is dark, and smooth, and no more mine than it was when I was a monster. I know it''s a stupid idea, I know Lia''s body is better for escaping a monstrous apocalypse-scape, but I try to will myself to turn back into my real body anyway.

    Nothing happens. I don''t know how.

    "Julietta?" Emily says, her hand grabbing my shoulder. "Julietta, we need to go. Now."

    "I¡­" a cough steals whatever words I was going to say, if there even were any.

    "Julietta, I know this is a lot, I know this is hard for you, but there are more coming. We have to go."

    "Okay," I agree, staggering to my feet. "Okay. Where''s¡ª"

    I spot what''s left of Lia before I can finish the question, a bloody array of meat scattered out across the ground. She must have died falling away from me, her grip broken by Emily''s shove or my transformation or¡­ any number of other things.

    "What happened?" I ask, breathless.

    "I don''t know," Emily says, trying to pull me into a run. "She let go."

    I stare at her, feeling her hand on my shoulder. Because I have feeling now. And¡­ it wasn''t there before, was it?

    "Didn''t you?" I ask.

    "No, I was holding your leg," she says. "The crystal part. Now let''s go."

    A stomp in the distance punctuates her urgency, so I nod and follow. She''s right, we have to go. We have to get out of here.

    Other mysteries can wait until later.

 4. Hope For The Best, Prepare For The Worst

    "Can you run?" Emily suddenly asks me.

    We''ve been making our way away from the site of my battle at a decent pace, the huffs of our breaths and the distant rumble of other Behemoths being the only breaks to the silence. I guess Emily wants to speed up though, and I can''t really blame her.

    "I don''t know," I admit. "I¡­ I''ve never done it before."

    But I guess I''ve never grown a giant hydraulic blade-limb and impaled a monster before either, yet my body still knew how to do that. Emily stares at me for a moment, as if trying to figure out what to say.

    "...Just don''t think about it," she settles with. "Come on."

    She accelerates, dragging me along, and I do my best to keep up. What else can I do? We haven''t even stopped to get me any clothing, and while that''s certainly mortifying it''s ultimately small potatoes in the shitstorm that is an extradimensional invasion. Besides, there''s no one here but Emily anymore, and I get the impression she''s seen this body naked plenty of times before. ¡­Or maybe she''s just good at focusing on the task at hand. Probably both.

    It''s not like it''s my body anyway, as much as I''m wearing it.

    As we continue to speed up, I do my best to take Emily''s advice and just let my stolen instincts take over, the methodology of running seeming to move my limbs on its own. It''s terrifying, not just in the way that I feel like something other than me is in control, but also just¡­ the process of running is kind of insane? Like, I''ve spent basically my whole life having no fewer than two, ideally three points of contact with the ground at any given time, but all of a sudden I''m completely leaving the ground with every single step? Emily is right, I need to not think about this, or I''ll absolutely panic and fall on my face.

    Although speaking of panic, it isn''t long before I start to hear a buzzing noise behind us. I look back, and I see a Wasp approach. A Wasp. Sharper and spindlier than my memories, but a Wasp all the same, the acid-spewing organ in its body ready to unleash painful, painful death. Don''t think about it, Julietta. Don''t think about it. It''s just your shit luck rearing its ugly head again, that''s all.

    It really is shit luck, though. Did Agnus Dei not get them all? I guess I shouldn''t expect her to be perfect, no matter what her propaganda says, but there can''t be that many Wasps left alive! More monsters are still spilling out of the incursion scar after their Queen, and there might even be some Angels among them, but Emily and I are far enough away that we should make it to the edge of the incursion zone before reinforcements from the scar show up. This has to be part of the original deployment of Wasps, and while the bastards aren''t terribly effective against fighter jets they sure can do a number against us.

    How do we get out of this? Actually, better question: why is it after us in the first place? Is it because I''m covered in alien guts? They can definitely smell that, if Wasps have anything like the absurd, mind-crushingly overwhelming olfactory sensors the Behemoth had. ¡­Yeah, that''s probably it. I can spot similar organs on the Wasp. I''m not really sure I can do anything about that, of course. Maybe try to cover our smell with something else?

    "I''m pretty sure they''re tracking us by scent," I tell Emily. May as well share information.

    "Good to know," she hums. "I don''t think we''re gonna figure out a way around that before that thing catches us, though. Can you stab it?"

    Can I stab it? God, I don''t know. I don''t even know how I stabbed the last guy; I was in a bit of a fugue. But my body writhes in affirmation, the skin of Lia''s arm itching to comply. But how? Why? What is any of this? In the back of my head my power churns, and though I feel it as part of me I can''t say any of it makes any sense.

    "I can try," I say anyway, because what else can we do?

    I think I can do the same thing to my arm that I did against the Behemoth. I remember how I felt. The problem, this time, is more likely to be my target. If I try to stab that thing and I miss, it''s just going to fly out of my range. I can only attack like seven feet into the air, tops, so we need to lure it really close.

    "Do you need an alleyway for something?" Emily asks, frowning as she glances around between the approaching buildings.

    "I¡­ yeah," I nod. How did she¡­? "We need to lure the Wasp in range of my arm or there''s nothing I can do."

    "Right," she nods. "Okay, I''ll find something."

    What the heck does she mean, she''ll find something?

    "Emily, what''s going on?" I ask her. "You''ve been acting weird and dragging me all over like you already know where we''re going."

    "I feel like now isn''t the best time to have that conversation," Emily grunts. "Just trust me?"

    "Already do," I tell her, and she smiles.

    "I pushed you into a giant sword," she reminds me.

    "Well yeah," I agree, "but it worked out?"

    Except for Lia, of course. Lia is dead, her body reduced to a gruesome smear of bloody flesh. Yet I watch my foster sister carefully as she laughs at my joke all the same. I had a feeling she would, based on how she''s been acting, but why? Isn''t that her girlfriend? I''ve been hoping and begging her to stop giving a shit about Lia for close to a year, but now that she suddenly has it''s in the most fucked-up possible way. What happened?

    "Okay, this way," Emily says, yanking me between two mostly-intact houses. "You focus on getting ready, I''ll guide us and tell you when to strike."

    Why do you know how to do those things, Emily?

    "Okay," I say out loud, pushing those thoughts away. She''s at least right about now being a bad time. We duck past a few houses, scampering away from a few globules of acid. The horrible stuff hisses when it hits the ground, toxic fumes visibly rising into the air.

    For the first time, I think I recognize a scent, but I wipe away the panicked tears and just keep running. I''m not a vulnerable little girl this time, and the Wasp is going to learn that.

    Eventually we get a pair of buildings that are tall enough and close enough together to block attacks from most angles. The Wasp could just melt everything around us and get a clear shot, but unless it knows I have powers, it has no reason to. And if it knew I had powers¡­ why would it be pursuing us alone? I guess this assumes a level of intelligence to the thing that it might not have, but¡­ well, its equivalent of a brain was pretty huge and complex. At least as complex as Lia''s.

    ¡­Wait, did I kill a person?

    "Focus, Julietta!" Emily hisses. Right! Right, yeah. The complexity could have nothing to do with personhood; computers are plenty complex. And either way, this thing is trying to kill me, so if it''s going to complain about being killed in retaliation, I''m going to have to tell it to shut up. With my seven-foot-long blade limb. Which is a thing I can choose to have.

    The buzzing is loud now, the roar of the Wasp''s wings kicking up a powerful storm of wind. I suppose it only makes sense; those things are at least twice as heavy as a human, and while their four dragonfly-like wings are enormous, they''ve still got to beat terrifyingly fast in order to keep the Wasp in the air. Other than the wings, the fundamentals of the Wasp''s body are remarkably similar to the Behemoth''s, just shrunk and squished and stretched in a bunch of different ways, like how a lion is still fundamentally similar to a ferret. They''re unmistakable for each other, but they still have the same number of eyes, the same number of limbs, the same fundamental body shape, just deformed for a different purpose.

    This is mostly good because it gives me a solid guess for where to aim.

    "Wait for it," Emily whispers. I nod, thinking once again about those beautiful crystal blades, hydraulic pumps pushing aside my heart. Every twist of flesh is as easy as breathing, mass bubbling into my body from nowhere as my arm thickens and elongates. It''s disturbing. It''s terrifying. But it''s what I need to do.

    The Wasp lands on the roof of the building next to us, the crash of it resting its weight nowhere near the same volume as the beat of its wings had been. It crawls towards our location as I prep my strike.

    "Now," Emily hisses, and I extend my arm as fast as I can, intercepting the Wasp as it leaps down from the roof. My blade pierces through the armor again, chipping but not bursting the organic pressure tanks. Immediately, my mind starts drinking up information about the beast, the complex systems that make its wings work, the weight-saving methods for its body construction, but I don''t have time to indulge my insane power, I need this thing dead.

    It thrashes furiously, attempting to free itself from my blade but I know if I let it we''re screwed. I try to yank it away from the wall and ruin its footing, but I don''t have the leverage or the weight, ending up only shoving myself into the side of the alley as my human muscles can''t keep up with the hydraulic arm. It is, ironically, tripping and falling while I have a weapon impaled two feet into the monster''s body that ultimately yanks it to the ground, but adrenaline rages through my brain and lets me react barely in time to stab the Wasp again before it can get to its feet and fly off.

    I''m running entirely on instinct, half because I don''t have any idea how to fight and half because my conscious brain is busy soaking up impossible levels of biological information, identifying the organs that mix whatever wild chemicals make that goddamn acid that killed everyone I knew and ruined my entire life.

    Which is the point it decides to spit some at me.

    My conscious mind registers a few things in short order, namely the sphincter muscles locking down each acid component opening and injecting their payloads into a central chamber, which immediately disgorges the acid at my face and self-washes with another mixture before the volatile compound can devour the Wasp from the inside. Which is all very neat and interesting.

    My animal brain, however, registers a horribly familiar globule of acid heading towards me and absolutely flips the fuck out.

    I fail to dodge, shrieking in panic as the flesh-eating liquid splashes into my body hard enough to make me stagger back. Pain remains an old friend to me, but the experience of having my skin boiled off into noxious bubbles of gas for the second time is maddening, every nerve bursting and burning away, one by one, as even this stolen beauty gets torn away again by the same damn monster. I scream and rage and cut, tearing into the Wasp harder and harder, refusing to think about anything beyond the next way to hurt it, the next stab of my arm, because any amount of idle thought means an eternal split-second of knowing the intricate agony of my body. The acid is on me again. My parents aren''t here to dilute it for me. I am going to die, but so will it. That is my promise.

    But then my body starts to realize that unlike me, Lia is supposed to have skin. So even as it all burns away, my skin also grows back.

    The acid hisses and devours, but it can''t reduce me to nothing. My power simply pulls more out of nowhere, replacing each evaporating cell with new matter, new material, born from somewhere within me that isn''t quite inside me. And the more the acid reacts, the more it burns away, the less it remains acid. Soon, all that covers me is an unreactive, half-organic sludge, sloughing off my body in toxic globs and leaving behind only more of Lia''s pristine, perfect, and horrible skin.

    I note, idly, that I have successfully killed the Wasp during my rampage. Ironically, the nail in the coffin seems to not have been any of my actual stabbings but more the general ravaging of all of its acid component sacs, causing them to uncontrollably mix their payloads and force the Wasp to meet a similar fate to my own, but without the power to survive it.

    I can''t help but feel a bit vindicated by that brutal irony, but the lingering acid continues to burn my flesh, too. And worse, the more I regenerate, the more the regeneration pulls at something within me, draining a reserve of energy like a marathon runner trying to go one more mile. I stagger as I pull the blade-limb out of the wasp, returning the massive alien structure to a more humanoid shape, but the effort of it aches in me like a deep hunger. I find myself starting to panic for reasons I don''t quite understand, my consciousness flickering.

    "Oh, shit," Emily hisses, and I realize she''s not touching me. How is she not dead!? I turn and try to grab her, but she bolts away from me, sprinting down the alleyway in a panic as I trip and fall on my face, my power screaming at me that I''m about to die. Is she leaving me here? After everything I did to help her? Am I being abandoned again, like every sorry excuse for a family I''ve ever had?

    Of course I am. Of course. I should have known better than to expect otherwise. I feel my body shake with another seizure, and then I pass out.

    ¡­And then I wake up. I''m lying on my back, an aching pain in my stomach and a roof over my head. Emily is sitting next to me, grabbing my wrist, and seconds after my eyes open she shoves what appears to be an energy bar into my mouth.

    "Eat," she orders me. I blink in surprise and start to chew, twitching and having to choke down an urge to spit it all back out as the dry granola attacks my tongue. Do normal people really have to live with all this feeling all the time? This is absolutely non-stop! The softness of the quilt below me, the chill of the air around me, every tingle and twitch and breath¡­ I desperately seek a distraction, focusing on Emily as much as I''m able.

    "What happened?" I croak after swallowing. Emily just answers by pushing me into a sitting position and handing me a glass of water. "...How did you get all this while I was unconscious?"

    "I carried you," she sighs. "Obviously. Now eat and drink before you die."

    Didn''t you leave me to die? But¡­ no. I guess she obviously didn''t. I scowl but do as she says, swallowing the rest of the energy bar as quickly as possible. Ugh, that thing is awful! She immediately hands me another. Cruelty! Betrayal!

    "When you''re done with that you should put some clothes on, too," she says, pointing to an outfit she laid out nearby. "Just let me help and give me time to reposition so I don''t end up losing contact with you."

    "...But you already let go of me," I point out. "When I fought the Wasp. You let go of me, and you''re fine."

    "No, I didn''t," Emily says flatly.

    I blink.

    "Yes¡­ you did?" I point out reasonably.

    "I didn''t," she insists. "You must have dreamed it. You killed the Wasp and fell unconscious. Then, I carried you here. I never let go."

    My scowl grows deeper. Bullshit. But I guess we''re playing that game now.

    "Why do you think my shapeshifting powers protect people from getting cut up in the first place?" I ask. "Isn''t that kind of incongruous? What does changing my body have to do with protecting you from giant psychic alien flesh monsters?"

    "Who knows," Emily shrugs. "Just eat, okay? Passing out from exertion definitely isn''t a sign of health."

    My body is exactly as healthy as Lia''s was, but I still take another bite. It''s wretched. I want to complain, to whine, to lament in confusion about how normal people ever survive with having to feel and taste things all the time. But I don''t. That wouldn''t really be helping the situation, and it''s obvious Emily is on edge. Making that worse for no benefit would just be moronic.

    "I guess I''m just impressed you managed to carry me all this way by yourself," I say. "I wouldn''t have imagined you could do something like that, not to mention grabbing all this stuff without letting go of me."

    "If you don''t trust me, Julietta, you can always just leave me to die," Emily snaps.

    I freeze. What? What the fuck? That escalated quickly. Does she think she can get me to back off by just acting extra emotional when I call out her bullshit? Ugh, maybe she can. I can''t give her a good justification to use that tactic. Plus, on the offhand this is genuine, I should treat it that way, and simply put? Trust isn''t the issue here. Emily is lying, but she''s also my lifeline. If she says jump I''ll say how high, I just want to know why I''m doing it.

    "I''m not saying that because I don''t trust you, Emily," I backpedal. "Even if I didn''t care about your survival¡ªwhich I very much do¡ªI still need your help just as much as you need mine."

    She gives me a considering look for a moment, frowns, and stares a bit longer. Then she snorts in something that sounds like amusement, but is definitely anything but.

    "...Nah," she says, looking away. "At this point you''d be better off without me. Go ahead and leave if you want to."

    Okay, now I''m really worried about her.

    "Emily, seriously, why the fuck would I just leave you to die?" I press. "Are you okay?"

    "No, Julietta!" she snaps. "I''m not okay! Everything is very not okay right now. You were out for a while. The aliens are everywhere and it is a fucking miracle they haven''t cracked this house open like a tin can and eaten the juicy humans inside. So would you just eat and get dressed?"

    Oh. Shit. Shit! Did I really sleep for that long? That''s¡­ bad, that''s really bad. I guess we have more pressing problems than Emily''s weirdness, but I just hate leaving it like this. It''s frustrating feeling like I don''t understand her anymore. Her reactions to everything have completely stopped making sense, and I hate that. I need to understand her. Understanding people is what I do. It''s the only skill I have to prevent disaster.

    ¡­But my experience is telling me that right now isn''t the time to press her about anything. When someone''s distressed enough to talk about me leaving them to die, they''re a bit too distressed for nettling.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    "...Fine," I say, and return my attention to my awful, awful energy bar.

    At least whatever abandoned house Emily dragged us into is pretty well-kept, and the more I sit on this soft bed the more I''m surprised to find I don''t hate the texture of something. It''s still a lot, but there''s something nostalgic about the fancy quilt that doesn''t seem to come from any particular source. Whatever the cause, it''s nice for my overwhelming senses to be partly pleasant for a change, and I can''t help but feel a little bad when I finish eating and need to stand up to get dressed.

    Emily seems to have picked me out an outfit that looks irritatingly like something Lia would have worn. It''s a tight tank top and short shorts, of all things, and it instinctively makes me cringe for showing so much skin. And like, yes, I get that I''m currently naked, but I''ve been trying to pretend that isn''t real and having to actually perceive my future outfit makes that somewhat difficult. I know my skin isn''t nasty to look at anymore, but I still hate the idea of wearing so little. It''s not a bad idea though, given how hot it is outside, so I regretfully slip the bottoms on before scowling a little bit at the bra.

    I¡­ do not actually know anything about bras. No puberty meant no boobs, and while my chest was pretty lumpy it was all in the wrong places. Lia, conversely, has a quite sizable chest, enough to surprise me literally every time I look down. While I''m struggling to deal with any sensations, the irritating and often painful flopping of my chest ranks fairly high on the list of distractions. Still, I don''t want to finagle with a new kind of underwear while we''re in a rush. I leave the bra and grab for the shirt.

    "...Don''t," Emily interjects. "Do you need help with the bra? I can probably do it one-handed."

    "Do I really need it?" I whine.

    "Yes, absolutely," Emily nods. "This isn''t exactly the right size, but it''ll be better than nothing. I can''t believe I couldn''t find any sports bras, I don''t know how the women here even survived."

    "Why do I even need one?" I ask. "Aren''t bras some kind of patriarchal oppression or something?"

    "Not when your chest is that big," Emily laughs. "Trust me, I know a lot about Lia''s boobs that you don''t. If you were distracted before, it''s going to be way worse if those things are rubbing the inside of your shirt."

    What? Does it work like that? Is this a sex thing? Ugh, I hope I don''t have to deal with any of that. No, wait, there are more important questions here. As much as I don''t want to press her, this conversation is suddenly setting off my red flag alarm in a completely different way. Why is she laughing when she was straight-up suicidal barely a minute ago?

    Fuck it, if her emotions are going to zip around so fast I can''t keep track of them, I may as well take a blind swing.

    "How can you just talk about her like that?" I ask. "Do you even care that she''s dead?"

    The question takes her by surprise at first, something like fear passing over her face before she just sighs, using one hand to direct me to put my arms up while her other hand maintains contact with my skin.

    "...I care a little," she mutters. "I didn''t hate her or anything. We spent¡­ a lot of time together, you know? I have good memories."

    "So then what''s the deal?" I press. "You''re acting way different from usual, Emily."

    "Yeah," she agrees. "I guess that''s the thing: I''m not acting anymore. Lia tried to be a good girlfriend, she honestly did, but you and I both know she had serious issues."

    "Then why were you dating her?"

    Emily doesn''t answer at first, just focusing on getting my bra on one-handed. Which would be fine, but I''m sort of trying to explicitly not focus on that feeling, because it''s weird and overwhelming and intimate in a way that makes me even more painfully aware that I am wearing someone else''s corpse.

    "...Because she''s stupid rich and her whole family has a combat exemption," Emily finally answers. "Marrying her was my ticket out of the draft. That''s pretty much it."

    I gape at her, stunned. I don''t even entirely disapprove; I just never thought Emily, of all people, would do that kind of thing. She''s always been so sad and kind, but now she just seems sad and cold. It''s a brutal shock, but honestly? I get the necessity of it. The fact that she hid this from me hurts a lot more than the fact that she was doing it at all.

    I mean, seriously. I put so much effort into trying to help her with that damn relationship, and she was just pretending with it the whole time? What a waste.

    "You could have just told me," I frown at her. "I would have helped you."

    She smirks, though there isn''t an ounce of humor to it.

    "Well if you want to you still can," she says, affixing the bra in place and giving it a tug. "''Lia.''"

    I freeze, the implications of her statement both obvious and terrifying. I look exactly like Lia. Emily could corroborate the story that I am Lia. This would let Emily continue with her plan, and it would protect me from having to fight in the war by pretending to be the powerless, exempt rich girl. After all, if it gets out that I have powers I will be drafted, regardless of any other factors. Powered people don''t even get to retire, some of the oldest ones having been forced to stay in the military for decades now.

    But the idea of pretending to be Lia for the rest of my life? Of never being Julietta again? I hate that. Even the thought of it burns.

    "...Don''t worry about it right now," Emily sighs, shifting her point of skin contact to my hip. "We can deal with the problems of what comes after when we''re safe, okay? Put a shirt on and we''ll get out of here."

    "Alright," I agree, and I quickly finish getting dressed.

    "Are you still hungry?" Emily asks.

    "I¡­"

    Am I still hungry? Hunger has always been a bit weird for me, but I can usually feel it. Right now though, I don''t feel hungry or full, I feel¡­ something else. I guess it''s like hunger, in that it''s a hard-to-define urgency that makes me want to eat more. Maybe it''s just what hunger feels like for people who have a working nervous system. ¡­It''s still super weird that the category now includes me.

    "I guess so?" I conclude. "Yeah. More food, please."

    "Okay. We''ll carry as much of the kitchen as we can. You good with eating and walking?"

    "Yeah," I nod. "Thanks, Emily."

    "Hey, don''t thank me," she shrugs. "You''re the one keeping me alive."

    I could hold that over her, I think. Maybe I should. She has obviously been lying to me about quite a lot.

    "It''s a team effort," I insist anyway, mostly out of habit. Causing a conflict would be bad. It''s always bad. It''s better to resolve things and cooperate as much as I can.

    "Thanks, Julietta," Emily says, looking relieved. "You''re the best."

    "So what''s the plan?" I ask her. "Do we just¡­ head east, and hope we don''t run into any more deadly aliens? I''m not sure I have it in me to win another fight with a Wasp."

    I can feel that I don''t, that I wouldn''t be able to handle the acid well right now. I''m not even sure I could grow out that blade limb right now. Something is¡­ emptier than it was before.

    "No," Emily says. "We''re going northwest."

    I stare at her. She doesn''t elaborate. Which¡­ no, I''m definitely not letting pass without comment.

    "West is the direction where the giant eldritch hole in the sky is currently barfing out aggressive monsters," I point out reasonably. "Why in Nietzsche''s name would we ever go towards it?"

    "Because a huge group of aliens walked past us earlier, heading away from the scar," Emily says. "I told you we were lucky to not already be dead, right? You missed some terrifying shit while you were unconscious. We can''t go east. That''s where the aliens are gearing up for an offensive, or maybe a defensive, or something else. We''ll never get past them. Well, you might, but I won''t. We have to survive until the military musters a response and makes us an opening."

    "Okay," I say slowly, "so why move at all? If we''re stuck in a holding pattern, why not be stuck in the spot the aliens have already overlooked that has cover, food, clothes, and water? Why go towards the aliens, in the direction of the lake they''re probably sending forces to capture?"

    "Look, would you just trust me?" Emily snaps.

    That is not a response. I''m trying to trust you, Emily, but you''re not giving me a lot of reasons to right now! Why are you acting so strange? Why are you so confident in these weird fucking snap decisions?

    ¡­Why have they been right so far?

    "You have a power that''s feeding you information," I conclude.

    "I don''t have a power," Emily says immediately.

    "Okay, then can you give me a single compelling reason why we need to go northwest, specifically, at this moment, despite the fact that we can''t see more than a block away and have no way to know where any of the aliens currently are?"

    She stares at me, her eyes distant like she''s rapidly trying to find an answer to a question she''s never thought to ask. Which, y''know, is not the reaction someone has when they''ve thought something through.

    "You know something I don''t, and you don''t want to tell me what it is," I say, pressing the attack. "You''ve been asking me to trust you a lot, Emily, and I do. But it seems like you don''t trust me, and I don''t like that. Do you have powers?"

    "No," she insists, but I am ninety percent sure she''s lying. There''s just something in how she''s holding herself, how she''s hesitating for just a second before she answers. Because that''s how the Emily I knew always acted, and it seems pretty clear to me that the Emily I knew was a mask.

    "Emily," I say, "you have saved my life. I trust you, and I want to trust you. But you''re making it really difficult for me to do that. You''ve been acting suspicious this whole time, and I''ve mostly been ignoring it because we don''t really have time to investigate stuff like that right now, but if we''re going to be heading deeper into enemy territory, I don''t want to have so many reasons to doubt your judgment hanging over my head. You get that, right?"

    She stands stock-still for a moment, her eyes flicking around and looking at nothing. I''m not sure what''s going through her head, and I don''t like that. I just¡­ don''t know her as well as I thought I did.

    "...N-northeast, then," she eventually stammers. "We''ll go northeast. It''ll be dangerous, but if you see for yourself that we''re trapped, will you let me lead us deeper in? We just¡­ we have to. It''s our best shot. Please."

    She squeezes my hand, holding me with a shaking iron grip. She seems¡­ desperate. Terrified. And I can''t help but recall again that she told me to leave her to die. She thinks that she needs me, but that I don''t need her. She thinks I could get out of here alone. Or is that just part of the mask, part of the manipulation?

    "When everyone else let go of me, they died," I say. "The Queen killed them somehow. I can feel it trying to do the same to us. How did you know I''d be safe? How did you know I''d be able to protect you?"

    "Because Angels don''t pop superheroes like grapes, even if the superhero doesn''t have a durability power," Emily answers without delay. She was prepared for that one. "The natural conclusion is that superheroes resist alien powers somehow."

    A practiced answer, clearly, but certainly not a bad one.

    "Yeah, okay," I nod. "That makes sense. I felt like I was somehow protecting Li¡ªum, the others while they were touching me. It must be possible to give the resistance out somehow. Maybe Agnus Dei was doing that for the fighter jets, and there were only four of them because she couldn''t protect more than that at once?"

    "I think you''re probably right," Emily agrees easily.

    "But I don''t know how to do that," I say, unable to stop myself from flashing back to the minced piles of gore that were once Lia and Andre.  "The others died the moment I stopped touching them. But I think that if I let go of your hand, you will be completely fine."

    Emily freezes.

    "...Or maybe," she says slowly, "I will be instantly cut into thousands of pieces and die. So let''s not test it, okay? Why are you so caught up on this, anyway? I told you, I never actually let go of you."

    "You did say that," I agree, allowing a smug smile to touch my lips. "But that''s not all you said. You also said that powers resist powers. And the whole time I''ve been touching you, I''ve never once¡ª"

    I twitch, the thought cutting itself off as my power suddenly activates. Shit! I was so sure I had her in checkmate, there, trapped by her own words. Superheroes resist alien powers. Lacking any reason to assume that ''alien powers'' are qualitatively different from superhero powers, it''s natural to assume that superheroes also resist other superhero powers, and my stupid power has never once asked me before downloading all the biological data of whoever I happen to be touching at the time. Andre is an exception, I suppose, but if I''m right then I think my powers were still sort of ''booting up'' at the time, overwhelmed by analyzing Lia''s biology, changing mine into it, and dealing with the effects of my recent seizure-slash-brain-hemorrhage-slash-rollover-accident all at once. I analyzed and copied the biology of the Behemoth a lot faster, and I analyzed the Wasp''s even faster still, though I don''t think I succeeded in doing so until after I had already stabbed the thing a few times, so I think any Wasp transformations that I attempt would be relatively short-lived.

    Still. My point is that, despite all of this, I''ve never once analyzed Emily''s biology, despite plenty of time, opportunity, and physical contact with which to do so. I''ll admit I haven''t really tried to analyze it, because I don''t even know how I would try to do such a thing in the first place, but it''s been passive and uncontrollable thus far and I see no reason why Emily would be an exception. But of course, the moment I try to announce how very incredibly smart I am for Sherlock Holmesing her ass, I feel her physical form blast itself into the front of my consciousness all at once, like a flood from a broken dam, completely obliterating my little theory before I can even finish saying it out loud.

    I don''t even have the mental capacity left to try to think about it any further, because just¡­ wow. Wow, I never thought the difference between two humans would be this striking. My senses spark up her arm, soaking in information at speeds far beyond my first two templates. Emily has completely different phenotypes and completely different practical expressions than Lia, differing not just in genetics but in fitness, strain, stress, damage, repair, and microbiome. It''s such a new and exciting collection of soft skin, silky hair, well-used muscle, and carefully stored fat. All these things are things Lia has, but there''s just something about Emily''s body that I really like, a beauty to it that sparks mere jealousy instead of the hateful envy I feel for Lia. Every detail captivates me, like it all tells a story about who Emily was. Like how her body is primed for endurance in a similar way to Lia''s, muscles having grown in similar ways as they took morning runs together, but it''s far from identical; Emily''s natural fat distribution focuses more on her hips and legs than Lia''s does, leaving her with slightly more leg muscle as her body compensates for the increased weight of moving them. Emily is shorter and heavier in general; not chubby, but very much not toned in the way that Lia is, her strength present but hidden behind a persistent layer of softness in much the same way I''ve learned her true competence hides behind a more innocent-looking shell.

    My body is shifting before I can even think about whether or not it should, the ache inside me that warns I don''t have power in my power right now ignored as my bones shift, my spine shrinking a couple inches, my muscles and tendons reweaving themselves to match every little minute alteration that defines the difference between a girl I hate and one of the only people I''ve ever truly cared about. It''s an odd experience, far more mundane and somehow far more exceptional than the process of turning into a giant alien monster.

    Emily''s eyes bulge as she watches the process, her jaw starting to hang open the slightest amount as my face softens and shifts. I have no way to know what my transformation looks like while it''s happening, not until I do it in front of a mirror, but I am certain, with a downright concerning degree of confidence, that the end result is an exact, identical copy of Emily''s body, down to the length of each fingernail and the width of each pore. The only difference between us is the fact that I''m wearing a different outfit, and that my hair¡ªthough it is technically the same length, the same color, the same number¡ªgrew out naturally in a messy bundle rather than somehow forming itself into Emily''s complicated braids.

    She and I blink at exactly the same time. Then she flinches backwards, and I do the same, mirroring her almost perfectly¡ªthough since we''re facing each other, I do the opposite of what a mirror would do, matching her right with my right and her left with my left. It''s the most natural thing in the world to me, because we''re still touching, still holding hands, so my power is still giving me a constant feed on every last detail of her body.

    "What the fuck," Emily whispers, and I almost match her words, too.

    "...Sorry," I say instead. "I, uh¡­ sorry."

    Holy shit I even sound like her. Like, I actually sound like her, rather than sounding like someone with her voicebox trying to talk how I usually talk. The tone, the pitch, the cadence, the way she says the words¡­ it all came out of me perfectly without me even trying. I knew my voice changed while I was in Lia''s body, but did my speaking habits change too? Wouldn''t I have noticed that?

    "Okay, that''s¡­ that''s really f-freaky," Emily stammers, trying to look at me and look at anything other than me at the same time. And I can tell she means it, because her breathing is accelerating, her pupils are dilating, her heart is beating faster¡­ "Can you, um, not¡­ do that? I''m sorry, I get you probably aren''t doing this on purpose, I just¡­ yeah."

    "Yeah, um, sorry, I''ll¡­ try," I manage. God, I feel kind of¡­ hungry? But in like a freaky eldritch superpower way, not a physical way. I''m pretty sure I can shift back into Lia''s body anyway, but¡­ I don''t want to. I fucking hate that girl.

    ¡­Still, she''s dead, and my only other option is quite alive and actively objecting, so the choice isn''t really a choice at all. I reverse my change, each shift feeling quicker and easier than the last, and I find myself in Lia''s body once again.

    Ugh. It''s¡­ objectively the best body option for moving stealthily through a suburban environment, I guess. And it''s not like I could reasonably use my body to walk around enemy territory in the postapocalypse even if it was an option.

    But still¡­ I really wish my body was an option.

    "Alright, I guess we should get going, then," I say, and fuck, I do talk like Lia. How did I not notice that? But Emily gives me a startled look, and suddenly I''m worried I didn''t notice because I didn''t sound like this before at all.

    "Um¡­ quick thing first," Emily insists, and then she pulls me through the house, making me help her fill up a pair of backpacks full of compact food and a few bottles of water.

    "This is enough food for days," I point out, making a conscious effort to talk like myself and feeling like I''m trying out for a bad bit part as some long-gone girl once named Julietta.  Fuck, fuck, fuck, I''m kind of freaking out over this, but I clamp down on the emotion and refuse to let it show.

    "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst," Emily grunts, unwrapping another energy bar and shoving it into my hand. "Eat more."

    I quickly obey, the unpleasantly overwhelming texture and flavor doing its part to distract me from my superpower-induced existential crisis. For some reason, assuaging my nonexistent physical hunger seems to make my weird, extra, new hunger feel better. Is this just how normal people feel hunger, maybe? All my senses are pretty screwy right now. I have to hold back a flinch every time I touch¡­ well, basically anything. I think I''d be having a complete mental breakdown over it if not for the fact that there are so many other impending breakdowns currently forcing this one to wait in line.

    Case in point, when we finally get ready to slink out of the house, the gravity of what Emily told me earlier slowly starts to catch up with me. The aliens are already here. With everything else that was going on, I almost managed to forget that my useless ass slept for so long that the alien forces caught up with us.

    We creep up to the windows, carefully peeking out from behind the drawn curtains at the street we''re about to wander into. At first, everything seems clear¡ªnothing but desolately empty Chicago suburb, aka home sweet home. But then a bit of movement catches my eye, and I realize how badly I screwed us over.

    Down the street, I spot an alien variant we haven''t seen yet pop its head out of one of those big square garbage bins like it''s an oversized raccoon. Way oversized; this thing is nearly as tall as an adult human, though when it hops and flops the rest of the way out onto the street it almost¡ªalmost¡ªlooks kind of cute. It has two digitigrade legs, two stubby forelimbs that end in smaller variants of the Behemoth''s blades, and indeed, unlike the other two kinds of aliens we''ve seen so far, it has a¡­ head?

    No, wait. That''s not a head at all. That''s a tail, an obvious fact when the alien finally manages to scrabble back to its feet. The bladed forelimbs curl in front of its body like a praying mantis'' claws, the tail resting on the backside of the creature and dragging along the ground. I mistook it for a head at first, because the main feature of the tail is unmistakably the enormous mouth.

    Which means this alien has to be a Raptor.

    While the Wasp and Behemoth had very underdeveloped digestive systems and no capacity to chew, the Raptor looks like it''s all a capacity to chew. Its tail is tipped with a giant, hook-toothed mouth designed to bite down and never let go. The tail doesn''t have eyes or a nose the way an animal''s head would, just a mouth, but I can see slight variations of the sensory organs the other aliens had on the creature''s main body. Unlike the Wasp and Behemoth, only the Raptor''s forelimbs end in large, crystalline blades¡ªthe hindlimbs end in much more recognizable feet, with large claws and webs between the toes. It''s the combination of thick tail, digitigrade legs, and the way the little monsters hold their forelimbs kind of like a T-Rex that got them the name of Raptors.

    Well, that and the fact that they''re terrifyingly fast, hunt in packs, and can execute coordinated takedowns and ambushes without any apparent method of communication between them. Which is, y''know, a little bit terrifying.

    ¡­Or at least it is to me. Emily, for whatever incomprehensible reason, lets out a sigh of what sounds like relief when we spot the incredibly deadly monster.

    "Alright, this isn''t too bad," she claims. "Just follow my lead and keep pace with me, okay?"

    Whatever secret this girl is keeping, it is terrifying. But fuck it, if she gets us through this, I''ll hold my complaints.

    "I won''t let go," I promise. "Just don''t do anything reckless, okay?"

    "I never do," she insists, and despite all evidence it somehow doesn''t sound like a lie. "Trust me."

    I swallow my fear, she opens the door, and we make our way into the street.

 5. Id Fight An Angel For You

    Personally, this seems like the absolute stupidest possible time to exit the house, but hey, what do I know? The alien known to hunt in packs wandered out of view two entire seconds ago, so we''re probably fine and dandy.

    I certainly don''t have a better plan, so when Emily drags me out of the front door, I hang onto her hand just like I said I would and keep pace. Miraculously, we aren''t attacked as we dash across the street and into the yard of a different house, and we aren''t attacked any of the ten other times we carefully rush over open ground in the middle of enemy territory either. Emily just stops and waits for some invisible cue I can''t divine before every move, leaving me in terrified suspense of the point where this strategy will inevitably fail.

    But it doesn''t. Slowly, carefully, she guides us through the suburban streets, somehow safely leading us between the Raptor patrols that stalk all around us. We hardly ever see them¡ªhaving line of sight to one wouldn''t end well for us, after all¡ªbut we can hear them, scrabbling around between houses and gobbling up the minced piles of human flesh that they manage to sniff out. Do they know we''re here? I can''t imagine the Queen doesn''t know I''m here; the constant threat of being cut to pieces never stops weighing against me, squeezing furiously and whispering its hatred of my wholeness. It presses into Emily, too, my power covering her like a second skin and making me all too aware of every last minute movement of her body. It makes keeping pace with her easier than I ever thought it could be, a preternatural sixth sense constantly telling me when and how to move without ever needing to look at where we''re going.

    And yes, I''m much more focused on her than I am on where we''re going. She told me to let her lead, and it''s working out somehow so I''m content with it. But I''m not the sort of person who can just turn my brain off and follow. If I don''t have anything to keep my attention on, I find something, whether I want to or not. And Emily is a puzzle worth my attention.

    She''s lying to me. Withholding secrets from me. But she saved my life and she''s saving it again with every movement we make together. I can rule out the fear that she''s going to betray me; I''m her only ally in one of the deadliest places on the planet, and I can turn into a giant monster. My utility is obvious, even if she doesn''t actually care about me. But I think she does, and that makes me all the more curious about what she''s hiding. Still, she spent so long fooling me about what she really thought, I''m inclined to break down what I thought I knew about her and look at her again, like I''m meeting her for the first time.

    She''s focused. Very focused. Enough that her mouth hangs open the slightest bit, her lips twitching with the hints of the words she''s thinking but not actually speaking. I doubt she even realizes she''s doing it. There are a dozen little tells like that, and given the situation there''s no reason to believe she''s faking it. Duh she''s incredibly focused, we''re fleeing for our lives here and any mistake she makes could kill us both.

    So what the fuck is she focusing on?

    Sounds, maybe? Her eyes aren''t moving around enough for her to be picking up on much visual info; she glances around a lot, but never really looks for anything. It''s more like she''s just¡­ terrified. Yet despite that terror, she''s decisive. She doesn''t hesitate at all when she finds whatever it is she''s using to determine where the best place to move is, but she''s still terrified when she does it. She knows she has no better option, but she doesn''t know if what she''s doing will actually work.

    It''s as if she''s being told what to do by someone else. Someone she has to trust just as blindly as I have to trust her.

    "In here," Emily whispers, rushing us up the front porch of a nearby home and trying the front door¡­ which happens to be unlocked.

    Yeah, I''m getting more confident about my current theory. It''s the first home we''ve tried to enter this way. Very much not a coincidence. Yet when she shuts the door behind us, she lets out a relieved exhale. I suppose it could just be the fact that her ability to create these improbable coincidences doesn''t stop her from being stressed, but I think she doesn''t actually know what''s about to happen.

    She''s gotta have powers, or at the very least be in contact with someone who does. Cell phones don''t have coverage in incursion zones¡ªI''m not sure why, because the aliens don''t seem to be able to mess with our satellites at all¡ªbut since powers are almost certainly involved with the puzzle the lack of normal communication doesn''t really rule anything out.

    "Are we safe to talk?" I whisper.

    "For a bit," Emily answers. "Eat more food."

    "What? I''ve had like, five or six energy bars already," I frown. Food sucks now, I really don''t want to eat any more than I need to.

    "Do you feel full?" Emily asks. "Because unless you think it''ll cause you to vomit, I really need you to eat more food."

    I frown, but she pulls me into the nearby kitchen and we end up raiding the fridge. The power is out, but it hasn''t been for long, so the food inside is still good. It''s a nice little house, and so far it seems empty of corpses, thankfully. It''s the sort of cute little domicile people buy with their sweetheart when they somehow survive until thirty and finally get to leave military service. I''ve lived in a couple houses like this before, with white walls, tile floors, and wicker furniture that you''re supposed to enjoy looking at more than sitting on. A home that is a prize to be flaunted even more than it is a place to actually live in. It''s a very beautiful place, and I hate it.

    With luck, the people living here were working out of town when this disaster hit. Without luck, they''re a pile of meat cubes upstairs. I don''t intend to look, and either way they''ll never get this food back, so there''s no reason not to take it for ourselves. Emily plucks a few things out and shoves them into my hands seemingly at random. I start with the apple. The texture is better than the energy bars, but it''s just so sweet. I feel like my tongue is going to explode.

    It is, overall, very distracting¡­ and I can''t rule out the possibility that it''s on purpose. I don''t want to let her get away with that.

    "There''s obviously something going on," I press Emily, talking as I chew. It''s gross, but I do start to feel a little better as I swallow more food, so Emily is probably right about me needing it. "If you can''t tell me what that something is, can you maybe tell me why you can''t tell me what that something is?"

    She thinks for a bit. I watch her carefully, and she seems to get more uncomfortable with each second that passes.

    "...Maybe I just don''t want to talk about it," she blurts suddenly. "Would you quit scrutinizing me like that? It''s¡­ distracting."

    "I would accept ''I don''t want to talk about it'' if we were at home gossiping," I say, "but we''re in the middle of a warzone, behind enemy lines, and only managing to sneak around because of something that''s obviously a superpower that you won''t tell me about."

    "I don''t have superpowers," Emily insists, the response so automatic that it couldn''t be less believable.

    "If you don''t, then someone else definitely does, and they''re helping you," I assert. "Everything we''ve done is way too improbable to be a coincidence."

    "...I''m not saying it''s a coincidence," Emily grumbles. "Look, I really don''t want to talk about this right now, it''s not helpful."

    "Why the fuck is it not helpful?" I press. "Knowing what you or your benefactor or whatever''s going on here can do could be the difference between life and death, Emily. Knowledge is power, two heads are better than one, etcetera. What are you so afraid of?"

    "I don''t have powers," Emily insists again, "but if I did, I promise you: there is a lot to be afraid of. Do you know the forbidden name?"

    My eyebrows raise. How is that¡­ is that relevant here!?

    "...I don''t," I admit. "But I know what you''re talking about."

    About eight years back, there was a big fuss where governments across the globe suddenly cracked down hard on a bunch of random people and forced them to not only legally change their names, but also never speak their old names out loud again. Presumably, all the people forced to do this originally had the same name, or at least a name that sounded close, but all information about the event is heavily restricted. You only ever hear about it by word of mouth, but it''s not the kind of thing that you can just brush off as a myth; after all, the affected people¡ªand their friends and family¡ªhaven''t had their memories erased. They know the forbidden name, and they will assure you: it is very, very real.

    "I know the name," she tells me, "and the reason not to speak it. Someone¡ªor something¡ªgained the ability to be present wherever someone speaks their name. Not physically, but¡­ in power. They can see, hear, and affect the world however they like, but they are untouchable. It doesn''t matter who says the name or why. It can even be a recording. But when the name is spoken, they are there, and they can do whatever they want without consequences. And¡­ they are not a good person."

    Well¡­ okay. Spooky, but it makes sense. I''m pretty sure there''s an Angel somewhere that can do something similar with photographs, recordings, and the like. Anywhere there''s a picture of them, it can make the picture become real and step into the world to kill people. This is exactly my point, though. Even if they''re horrible, our situation is pretty dire, and the capacity to summon a wild card could be handy¡­ if we can get away from them.

    Or maybe this is her answer, in a roundabout way. Maybe she has an alliance with this person, and there''s some price she has to pay for their help that she doesn''t want me to be involved in. It''s possible that the mouth movements I noticed earlier were actually her whispering the name under her breath this whole time, giving this unknown person vision and power in an area around us wherever we travel. But if that''s true, what does the forbidden name get out of helping us? They''re not in it for altruism, if they''re as bad as she says.

    Maybe the act of speaking the name itself is enough to help them. If their presence lingers long enough every single time the name is spoken, and Emily has been whispering it this whole time, well, that''s a lot of influence over a soon-to-be-hotly-contested front line. Yeah. That would make sense. It''s all just wild conjecture, but it''s worth asking if I''m right. Hmm¡­ how best to do so indirectly?

    "How long does the presence remain after the name is spoken?" I settle on.

    Emily seems surprised for a second, but then she puts her hand over her mouth to suppress an involuntary chuckle.

    "That''s your first question?" she says, her twitching grin poorly hidden. "God, the way you think sometimes. I have no idea how long it lasts, Julietta. The forbidden name isn''t the nonexistent benefactor you''re convinced I have, and it''s not the power I don''t have either. My point is just that there are powers¡ªlots of powers¡ªthat you''re better off just not knowing the details on. Sure, if things get so bad that we literally could not make our situation worse, I could invoke the forbidden name and maybe they''ll deign to kill a few nearby aliens before torturing us to death themselves. But ultimately, knowing their name isn''t some secret lifeline I can tug on, it just means that every time I go to bed I might have a bad dream, say the name in my sleep, and die horribly. It has happened to people before. Understanding the power is a liability, an anxiety that I''m constantly afraid of slipping up over. Speaking of: I brought us here to find something to tie our hands together with. I am absolutely terrified of losing my grip."

    "Sure," I agree, squishing two slices of bread down into a ball with my fist and swallowing them both at once. Emily gives me an odd look, but I keep talking. "You''re not convincing me with the whole ''this is for your own good'' routine, though."

    "Come on, Lia. Would you just drop it? Please?"

    I flinch. I can''t help it. The smooth, dark skin of that girl''s arm is what''s holding Emily''s hand right now, not mine. I see it in my peripheral vision, never at the focus because I never want it there. But the reminders are constant. Every flash of movement from my limbs, every nostalgic glance from her girlfriend, every word out of my mouth, every terrified denial of what my power tells me about my brain, every fucking step I take on these awful, perfect, effortlessly steady legs reminds me that this isn''t my body, this isn''t me, and I might very well be stuck this way forever.

    And yet.

    "I''m not Lia," I tell her firmly. "That''s not my name."

    "Huh? Oh! Oh, sorry Julietta, I misspoke," Emily reassures me. "You were just really reminding me of her, I guess."

    Oh, fuck you. Fuck. You. I bite back the words, but the desire to say them burns on my tongue. She knows I''m struggling with this, she knows how much I fucking hated the girl I look like right now, but I won''t snap at her like that. I''ll think it, but saying it would be weakness. Foolishness. Impulsiveness. All it would do is escalate the situation, and our situation is already pretty fucking escalated so there''s absolutely zero justification to take it further.

    I have to be the better woman here, and swallow my anger. It''s fine. I''m used to it.

    "Just try not to let it happen again," I tell her. "I''m kind of low-key freaking out over it, y''know?"

    You do know. You bitch. But to my surprise, Emily glances away from me with an expression that looks like genuine shame.

    "...Yeah," she nods. "Sorry. I shouldn''t have said that."

    Oh. Huh. Well¡­ good, I guess. I''m still mad, but that does help me feel better. Still, I''m not above being at least a little vindictive in my counterattack, as long as it''s productive.

    "Apology accepted," I nod. "But Emily, you know me. We''ve lived in the same house for three years. Even if you''ve been lying to me all that time, even if I don''t really know you¡­ you know me. Right?"

    She looks away, shame flashing over her face once again. Yeah, I think that reaction is real. Obviously, I have to second-guess my ability to determine that, but while I say that Emily has been lying to me, I think the actual situation is a lot less sinister. Emily has been hiding a lot of her true feelings from not just me, but from everyone. She has been adopting a persona and simply not correcting anyone who assumes it''s an accurate representation of who she is on the inside. Almost everybody does that, to some extent. I was just fooled into never looking deeper because Emily was always the nice housemate, the easy one, the one who never made trouble for anyone but herself and who even managed not to be particularly disruptive.

    And I know exactly what that''s fucking like, so I know calling her a liar will hurt regardless of how true it is. Turnabout is fair play, ''sister.'' If you want to take a swing at my insecurities to win an argument, you''d best be prepared for me to catch and return the ball.

    "...Yeah, I know you," she sighs, unable to meet my stare as she binds our wrists together with twine, tight enough to not allow even the slightest of gaps. "Of course I know you. You''ve done nothing but try to help me since we''ve met, you stupid, selfless altruist. You have things worse than anyone and you still spend all your time keeping us together. I''m¡­ I''m sorry I wasted so much of your time."

    Altruist? She doesn''t actually know me at all. But that''s okay; I don''t need her to know the things I hide.

    "I wish I had seen what was really going on with you," I admit. "Of course I never managed to help you. You didn''t need the help I was offering. You were suffering from a completely different problem the whole time, and I never saw it."

    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    "Julietta, I don''t¡ª"

    "You''re still suffering," I cut her off. "It''s obvious. I cannot unsee that truth, no matter how much you might want me to. And you know me. So Emily¡­ can you look me in the eyes and say any words, anything at all, that could get me to stop trying to help you? Can you do that?"

    She stops for a moment, then finishes her knot a little more slowly. It''s a strong, complicated knot. Fancier than anything I know how to do. She looks up at me, stares at me for a bit, and ultimately sighs.

    "...No," she admits. "I failed at that for three years, and I''m not gonna succeed now."

    I nod firmly.

    "Damn right you aren''t."

    She sighs again as she carefully tests the twine tying our wrists together, motioning at the big pile of food she gave me with her other hand.

    "Eat, Julietta," she insists. "And¡­ give me a bit. To form an answer. Okay?"

    I nod, glowering regretfully at the pile of food and fearing what the experience of eating them will be like. None of it is weird, none of it is stuff I haven''t eaten before, but¡­ y''know, at the same time, all of it is weird stuff I''ve never eaten before. Peanut butter isn''t supposed to have a flavor, it''s just supposed to stick my teeth together a little until it dissolves. That''s as exciting as food normally gets! Everything''s crazy now!

    I could make myself a sandwich with it, but I tried the bread by itself and that was already a little overwhelming so I wanna start by just eating all the ingredients individually. I find myself a spoon in the kitchen drawers, unscrew the lid, and scoop up a huge bite because I figure even if I don''t like it I''ll still need to eat a bunch of it to make Emily happy. I shove it all into my mouth at once, rolling the big nutty blob around on my tongue.

    Huh. I¡­ kinda like it.

    It''s weird and intense, yeah, but I''ve been slowly adjusting to the constant overstimulation my new body is tossing at me so I do my best to look past that surface-level reaction and really experience the peanut butter. And¡­ yeah. Yeah, I like it. The taste is pretty good, though I have absolutely no reference points with which to describe it. I had no sense of smell, no sense of taste, and my mouth was so fucked up I couldn''t even feel texture outside of what kind of feedback I got from chewing. But this texture is smooth and unobtrusive without being totally watery, a good mix of feedback while still being homogenous enough to not overwhelm me. Is this what the ''creamy'' on the jar means? Or maybe the ''butter?'' I know peanut butter doesn''t actually have any dairy in it, despite those labels.

    Eh, not important right now. I shovel down a few more bites, chugging a bit of water whenever the sticky, tasty stuff clogs up my throat a little. I finish the first jar and ask Emily if she spotted another one, but she just gives me a really concerned look and tells me to eat the other stuff she grabbed for me.

    Well¡­ fine then. I eat a couple bananas. They''re alright. Maybe with peanut butter¡­ no, I should try the other stuff. The jam Emily grabbed is way too much for me, staggeringly sweet and uncomfortably lumpy. I''m definitely applauding myself for deciding to eat the peanut butter by itself instead of making a sandwich. I don''t think I would have liked that at all.

    "Hey," Emily says, and I glance her way to see her pulling something out of her pocket to give to me. "Take this."

    "...What is it?" I ask.

    "It''s Lia''s wallet," she says.

    I stare at her. She stares back. Without breaking eye contact, I take the wallet and open it, pulling out Lia''s credit cards and identification. Then, I put it all back and stuff it in my back pocket.

    "Why do you have Lia''s wallet?" I ask her slowly. She couldn''t have picked this up after Lia died, or the wallet would have been cut to ribbons. She had to have picked Lia''s pocket beforehand.

    "Because I intend to survive," she says. "And that doesn''t just mean surviving today, or surviving until we get out of here. It means surviving the whole war afterwards. And to do that, I need a combat exemption."

    I frown. A combat exemption? How am I supposed to get her a¡­ oh. I''m not. Lia is. You can buy combat exemptions, after all, if you''re rich enough. A big enough donation to the war effort counts as sufficient contribution, and Lia''s family is capable of very big contributions. The only explanation is that she''s asking me to impersonate Lia for her. To use Lia''s family''s resources to get her off the front lines. That''s what she took the wallet for: the moment she realized her golden goose was in danger, she saw the opportunity for a backup and took it. She knows I would hate that, though. She knows I''m suspicious of her. And I asked for an explanation, so I get the impression this is only the start of that.

    "It''s¡­ very difficult to figure out what I''m supposed to tell you," she says quietly. "Things could go really badly for me if I fuck up and say too much. You''ll be fine either way but I¡­ I might not be. But if I don''t tell you enough, you''ll just keep snooping, won''t you? You''ll poke and prod and press and find out on your own and it''ll be just as bad. So here''s my offer: if we make it through this alive, and we manage to get somewhere safe, and you help me stay out of the hands of the military¡­ I''ll tell you anything. Everything. All of it. But until that point, I need you to be able to look someone in the eyes and tell them ''Emily never claimed to have powers, and I never saw Emily use powers,'' and you need to not be lying."

    Okay. Okay, hmm. I think I see the angle here. She has powers, but she intends to dodge the draft¡­ and the military will know that if we survived being in the incursion zone for this long, at least one of us has powers, more likely both of us. So somehow, they''ll find a way to make sure.

    "You want me to pretend to be a woman I hate," I say. "You want me to lie for you, get myself caught up in the military bullshit you know I have no respect for, and basically devote my life to protecting you from the fate you''re saddling me with."

    "Yeah," she admits. "But you''ll survive that fate, and I won''t."

    "You know that, do you?"

    "Of course not," she answers. "I don''t have any sort of superpower that could tell me. Will you help me anyway?"

    I sigh, biting into a new kind of energy bar. It''s softer, which I like a lot better. Crunchy foods just don''t seem to sit well with me.

    The question itself is a trap. Will you help me anyway? More like will you risk my death to call me a liar? Even if I thought she was lying¡ªwhich I don''t¡ªI think my answer would be the same.

    "Of course I will," I tell her. "I''m mad at you, Emily. But you''re the only person I care about left in the world. I''d fight an Angel for you, if it comes to that."

    She blushes deep, looking away from me. The reaction confuses me at first, but I guess I did say something a bit intense while in the body of a woman she''s almost certainly had sex with. Which¡­ is a thing I''m going to do my utmost to never think about again.

    "Well¡­ good," she mumbles. "Before this is over, you might have to."

    I can''t help it. I know it''s an entirely serious and abjectly terrifying statement, but I still laugh. It''s the only thing I have to break the tension.

    "Well hey, all the better," I joke. "The military will happily misplace your draft documents if a wing ripper asks them to. We''ll get you on the fast track to a life of luxury."

    "Ha. Really? Just like that?" Emily asks.

    "Sure. What''s more important to the war effort than being able to kill Angels?" I shrug, biting into an entire block of cheese to Emily''s obvious discomfort. Huh, this stuff is pretty good.

    "Not that," she says. "You''re really just¡­ okay with all this?"

    The question stuns me for a moment. Nobody ever really asks me that. I try my best not to ask myself that, honestly. Am I okay with devoting my life to helping my liar sister achieve a level of peace and happiness that I''ll never possess? No, not really. But what''s the alternative? Bringing her down with me?

    I don''t think I''ll be able to hide a superpower that activates automatically whenever I touch a living thing. The only thing I have to look forward to out of this war zone is being trained before they put me back into another. It''s such a fucked-up thought that I start to feel something bubbling up inside me, some hint of indignance or anger that might make me want to shout the unfairness out at the top of my lungs. I crush it mercilessly.

    Life isn''t fair. Pointing that out never did anyone any good. If Emily can find a better future and I can''t, well¡­ so be it. All the more reason I should help her rather than focus on myself. Hell, normally I''m spending all my time helping people I don''t even like, so helping Emily isn''t that bad. Even if I''m not ''okay'' with it, that''s the way it is.

    "What else am I going to do, Emily?" I ask her. "I''m not the type to screw somebody over for no reason. If I can help, why shouldn''t I?"

    It''s the right thing to do. No matter how I feel, it''s the right thing to do.

    "...I really should have come to you sooner, huh?" Emily says sadly. "Sorry. It''s just¡­ it''s hard to trust people, you know?"

    Not really. Just learn how people work. It''s easy to trust someone to be themselves.

    "You''ve gotten us this far," I tell her. "You''ll get us out of here, too. Just tell me what I need to do."

    "I mean, I''ll try, Julietta. It''s honestly kind of terrifying how you aren''t scared."

    "Well," I smile, "the worst that could happen is we both die. What''s there to be afraid of?"

    "The death, Julietta!" she exclaims, exasperated. "That''s terrifying! You''re terrifying!"

    I shrug.

    "Then get us out of here alive. If you''re confident we can, you''re projecting our odds a lot better than I am. So what are we doing next, boss?"

    She manages a slight smile.

    "You''re continuing to stuff your face for another¡­" she trails off for a moment, thinking. "...Six or seven minutes. Then, if you''re all-in on trusting me, we go west."

    "Away from safety," I say flatly.

    "Yes," she says.

    "Any hint why?"

    "No," she says. "We just have to hope we''ll know it when we see it."

    "How reassuring," I say flatly, and bite into more food. I''ve definitely eaten more in one sitting than I think a normal human is supposed to physically be able to, and I feel no urge to stop. At first I assumed it was just Lia''s body being able to eat a much healthier amount of food than my fucked-up mess of a meatsack, but after all this I''m betting everything on my appetite being power-based.

    Which is¡­ interesting. Biologically, I''m pretty sure I just have Lia''s stomach. So why am I so damn hungry? Where is all this food going? I flex my fingers, thinking about the alien biology my mind is suddenly full of. Do I need to eat that much weight to grow that big? I didn''t have to initially, but maybe I can chalk that up to having just gained my powers. I could have started with some free food stored away, or something. I don''t know. I don''t have any idea how superpowers work.

    It''s all still so overwhelming in my mind, so¡­ alien. Like a throbbing, otherworldly presence at the back of my head, constantly obsessing over cell structure, muscular distribution, bone anatomy¡­ my perpetual contact with Emily makes my powers hum with interest, soaking up every detail of every last movement she makes. The more I think about it, the more I try to emulate it, too, having to constantly catch myself shifting my face, lightening my skin, or redistributing my fat to better match Emily''s. Just sticking in Lia''s body at all is an act of will for me, an irritation to that weird, curious part of me that just wants to change.

    It doesn''t help that I hate this body in general, either.

    "Alright, it''s about time," Emily announces, breaking me out of my thoughts. "Um¡­ here."

    She hands me an unopened jar of peanut butter.

    "For, um, our next stop," she mutters awkwardly. "Since you seemed to like it so much."

    Uh. Huh. Well, she''s trying.

    "Thanks," I say, taking it and putting it in my backpack. "The cheese was pretty good, too. I can see why you rave about it so much."

    "Haha! Yeah, I mean, uh, you sure ate an entire block of cold Havarti, so if you like that I''m sure you''ll like a lot of cheeses!"

    "Cool," I say. "You''ll have to show me the best ones."

    Hmm¡­ I wonder.

    "Do you think cheese would taste better if I used your taste buds to eat it?" I ask.

    "Um?" she blinks. "Maybe? I don''t¡­ actually know how that works. Uh. Look, we need to get going."

    "Right," I nod. "Sorry, I''ll try not to distract you."

    "Your ability to focus on random stuff like this while we''re surrounded by murderous monster aliens continues to concern me, but let''s just table that while I figure out our route."

    "Sure," I shrug.

    "Yeah, okay. ''Sure,''" Emily says, shaking her head. I let that pass without comment, and soon enough we''re by the back door, planning to rush out and jump the fence. I guess she''s right, now that she points it out. I''m calm. Weirdly calm. It could just be shock, but if it''s shock I''ve been in shock for over an hour now, and that doesn''t sound healthy at all. I guess getting stabbed by aliens isn''t healthy either.

    ¡­Oh god, I got stabbed by aliens today.

    "Okay, now!" Emily announces, and I suppress a yelp and follow along, coordinating with her on the few difficult parts of our route as she leads us further and further away from the helicopters buzzing in the distance, promising humanity, safety, and missile-based anti-alien defenses. But fuck it, whatever. We''re going this way instead, and we don''t even know why.

    A distant shriek rings out in front of us. I thought too soon, I guess; that sounded too human to be anything other than the reason why. Emily and I glance at each other, share a nod, and start sprinting straight towards the sound, stealth be damned. We know the score: any human alive right now either has powers, or is with someone who does. And anybody who happens to have powers might just have the right sort of power to get us out of here.

    As we sprint closer, though, an insane sight lights up in the direction of our objective like a beacon. Wood, brick, metal, and stone all fly into the air and suddenly hang there, all sorts of materials spread out in a giant, levitating sphere. That''s¡­ probably where we''re going. But what the hell is it?

    The materials don''t seem random. Each one floats equidistant from all of its neighbors, grouped in a pattern that seems like it should be obvious but just doesn''t quite make sense to me yet. It''s not just raw material, after all: the metal is metal objects, like pipes and wires. The wood is wooden building planks, carefully cut and positioned in obvious groups. The bricks all have levitating chunks of mortar floating between them, and they''re all grouped close to the ground except for a single column that shoots up into the sky like a disassembled¡­ chimney.

    Huh. That''s a house.

    That''s an entire house, floating with its parts separated outwards like the first page of an IKEA manual telling you how to put it all together. It''s quite literally an exploded view of the home, brought into reality. None of the individual pieces are damaged, but they are separated from each other nonetheless: as we get closer, we can see that each nail, each screw, each wire, and each pipe segment has been pulled apart from their counterparts, presented alone to the open air. It hangs there in the sky like a still image, frozen and impossible.

    And frighteningly¡ªor perhaps fortunately¡ªthe occupants of the home aren''t immune to this power at all.

    A half-dozen Raptors are frozen in the air with the other objects, alive but unable to perform more than the slightest twitching movements. That''s definitely our target, then. Someone here can immobilize huge swathes of enemies, but they might need help actually killing the damn things. If we can do that, that''s a match made in heaven. But can we do that? How would we kill them if they''re high up in the air? I hate to admit it, but my best option is probably to turn into a Wasp¡­ but the Wasp template my power picked up is from after I stabbed the damn thing. I''d be turning into an already-dying wasp, which is worthless.

    Unless¡­ hmm. I''ve done partial transformations before, by instinct or by accident. I''m still doing them sometimes, my body turning slightly more like Emily''s before I push it back to being Lia''s. Is there some way to¡­ I don''t know, turn into only the parts of the Wasp that work? Or maybe I can use the parts that work to figure out how to fix the parts that don''t. Or maybe¡ª

    "Hey!" Emily shouts, startling me out of my thoughts as we turn a corner. "Hey, are you human!?"

    We''re almost at the exploded-view house now, and up close it''s an even wilder sight. More importantly, though, is the figure at the epicenter of it all. Standing in the basement of the now-exploded foundation is a girl that is very obviously human, but I''m not going to quibble with Emily''s choice of introduction; it''s not a bad way to get across the idea of ''holy shit a survivor! We are also survivors!'' and that''s the most important thing to say right now, I think.

    The girl¡ªor at least I''m pretty sure it''s a girl, she''s fairly androgynous¡ªis remarkably tall, with long, frizzy brown hair that looks like it had been a horrific mess long before the apocalypse came by to make everyone look even worse. Her thick floor-length skirt and baggy long-sleeved shirt don''t really look appropriate for the warm weather, and upon closer inspection they seem to be stained with blood. She''s also clearly hyperventilating, and when she looks our way it is with a look of absolute terror.

    So. Y''know. Not sure how I feel about first impressions here.

    "Get away!" the girl shrieks. "Get away, get away, get away!"

    "We''re here to he¡ª" Emily starts, but I yank her back.

    "Nope, we''re getting away," I insist. "That''s a superpowered woman having a panic attack, we are doing exactly what she says."

    That seems to confuse the hell out of Ms. Exploded View, like she never actually expected to be listened to. Mood, random crazy girl. Mood. Emily opens her mouth to protest, but after a short pause she closes it without saying anything. Which¡­ okay, great! I was worried I would be getting in the way of whatever Emily does, but continuing to approach under the circumstances just seemed too impossibly stupid to let happen.

    Of course, talking for too long would also be stupid. We saw this power show and it led us directly here. I doubt the aliens are far behind.

    "I can s-still feel you!" the girl accuses. "Get away! Please, get away! I''ll hurt you, I''ll¡ª"

    "You can''t hurt us!" I call out. "I''ve got powers! I''m very sturdy! But we need to clear out these Raptors and get out of here! Unless you can hold them in place long enough for us to escape?"

    She''s freaking out, and I''m risking a bit by throwing all that on her at once. She''s going to be easily overwhelmed. But she''s still talking and paying attention to us, so I''m gambling on her being able to focus as long as I direct her attention with easy questions like ''can you do this?''

    "N-no, I can''t! I can''t!"

    Well damn. I guess it was a longshot anyway.

    "Then I''m going to kill them while you hold them still," I tell her. "May we approach?"

    "I¡­"

    "Please," I insist, not giving her the time to spiral into a bad decision. "May we approach?"

    "O-okay."

    "Alright. Don''t be scared if I suddenly shapeshift into a monster, okay?"

    "Um!?"

    I still haven''t thought of a good way to grow myself an acid cannon, so I need to get close and start with the raptors floating near the ground. As I approach, however, the omnipresent feeling of the Queen trying to slice me to bits suddenly shifts. There''s a different feeling this close to the girl, one that still seems obsessed with taking things apart but in a¡­ different way, somehow. A much more particular and orderly way. It''s a surreal feeling, like someone took a picture of a work of art and put a filter on it that completely changed the context of the piece. It distracts me so much that I forget to prepare myself for the inevitable rush of information that comes with touching a Raptor.

    But I do touch one. Before even forming my weapon, something in me hungers for that contact, and I''m completely caught off-guard when the overwhelming information from my power sweeps me away.

 6. I Should Definitely Be Scared By Now

    It''s all so¡­ organized. I think that''s what strikes me most.

    The human body is a terrifyingly tangled mess of wires at its best. This is not to say those wires don''t work, or aren''t hooked up right; anyone with bad cable management will assure you that their home entertainment center and computer rig still work, no matter how concerning a sight it is to peek behind their bookshelf and behold the monstrous medusa that is their power brick. When the human body is working, it''s like that. When the human body isn''t working¡ªdue to injury, genetic deformity, or what have you¡ªit is far worse.

    But overall, the human body works pretty well. It makes up for the chaos with extreme redundancy: the process of evolution involves making a lot of small changes between generations, and so evolutionary pressure selects bodies that are more likely to continue running just fine if those changes end up breaking something small. So blood vessels, for example, are interconnected spiderwebs of alternate pathing, with plenty of ways for blood to continue going where it needs to go in the event of a blockage, cut, or other issue. This is obviously far from a foolproof system, with how dangerous those issues still are, but they are still protected for as much as possible not just to assist with dramatic injury or mistreatment, but to maximize survival chance in the event that the body develops wrong in the first place.

    Because that happens to humans, doesn''t it? I know this as an intellectual fact, but the biological data screaming in my mind from Lia and Emily''s bodies backs this up: the human body does its level best to grow into an ideal shape, but the structures dictating that growth are not intelligent and cannot consciously course-correct. So everyone has dozens of little imperfections: a bad knee, poor circulation, a minor spinal deformity, all sorts of little problems caused by one tiny part of the body being too big, too small, or slightly the wrong shape. Because we are, at the end of the day, the unguided chaos of the universe manifesting itself into sapience through sheer, unchecked accident, and the universe fundamentally does not care how much we hurt, only how much we breed.

    The aliens aren''t like that.

    I wasn''t really in a position to appreciate it before, given the life-and-death situation, but there''s a level of artistry to the design of the aliens that simply isn''t present in the human body. (Some part of me screams I''m still in a life-or-death situation, but this is all way too interesting so I ignore it.) The placement of every nerve, every blood vessel, and every organ is purposeful, symmetrical, and efficient. The underlying biology is completely different from humankind, down beyond the cellular level to a degree not even my power can parse, but the analogous systems are so straightforward and comprehensible that I can intuit their functions even before doing a detailed analysis.

    Between the obviously intelligent construction, purpose-driven design, and hydraulic musculature, it almost feels like I''m looking at some kind of organic robot rather than a living being. Yet it breathes, it moves, it feels. It may be an artificial life form, but it is a lifeform nonetheless.

    And what a beautiful life form it is. I can feel it as my body changes, my structure shortening, thickening, reshaping itself on the inside and out. Every part of me, from the skin to the bones to the organs, reconfigures itself at the chemical level, new alien flesh seamlessly twisting into existence to replace my vanishing humanity. My arms shrink, the fingers shriveling away only to be replaced with crystalline blades. My muscles and bones disintegrate into nothing, their purpose replaced with powerful hydraulics full of specialized fluid and a lattice of supporting structures to give the body its rigid form. My head is inhaled into my torso, vanishing entirely as new organs grow on my skin to replace the function of the eyes, nose, and ears I''ve grown so used to. My mouth, and its entire supporting digestive system, blooms out of my backside, a long tail tipped with a vicious, dexterous mouth for complex grabbing and, when necessary, violent combat. And my brain is¡­

    My brain is¡­

    My brain is my brain is my brain is my brain is¡ª

    A sound makes me flinch. A name. Not my name. A name that I hate.

    "Lia!" something says, and I tense, trying to protest or even hiss but I hear nothing, expelling only a noiseless, indignant rush of air out from my body. It feels completely normal and horribly, unspeakably wrong.

    "Oh god, sorry, I''m sorry, it''s me, it''s Emily. Are you¡­ holy shit, are you okay?"

    No. No, I''m not. Yes. Yes, I''m functioning perfectly. I try to explain, but all my body can do is take another soundless breath. I suppose I wouldn''t know what to explain anyway. What the fuck is happening, why am I¡­

    I try to blink, fail, and realize I don''t actually need to; my eyes are designed to function without lids. My vision assaults my mind, blurry and indistinct and still showing far too much at once. The Behemoth was like this too, wasn''t it? Omnidirectional vision. I remember that. I can make out various things near me, still¡ªEmily, the unknown superpowered girl, some of my discarded clothes on the ground, and the Raptor I just touched that forced me into this form.

    Oh shit right, we have Raptors to kill! I don''t have time to marvel at the insanity of whatever the fuck I just did. I quickly determine a weak point in the creature''s biology, and the moment I decide where to attack I instinctively do so, my tail lashing upwards, the circular mouth hooking its teeth deep into the inner part of the hip joint. The flesh tears away easily under my grip, eviscerating multiple key lines of blood flow and completely disabling the leg. Even if the Raptor manages not to bleed out, it won''t be able to pose a threat.

    Without even thinking about it, I swallow the bite, pulling it up the throat in my tail and enjoying the feeling of it dropping into my surprisingly huge stomach. In fact, most of this creature''s torso is part of the stomach, far more than could ever be necessary for supporting the Raptor''s personal food needs. And indeed, while I can digest nutrients from my stomach, the primary purpose of the structure seems to be storage: my stomach acid is relatively slow and weak, focusing on softening up whatever I eat so that it can be stored more compactly rather than quickly liquefying it for rapid digestion. Are Raptors designed for creating and carrying the nutrient slurry that Behemoths and Wasps have to be to be force-fed? Are they workers more than combatants? They certainly aren''t weak combatants, but the theory makes sense. They''re even the only alien I''ve encountered so far with some degree of manual dexterity.

    My tail, after all, isn''t just a mouth. The ''lips'' of my circular maw contain a beautifully complex lattice of hydraulic micro-capillaries that can independently inflate or contract in any combination, enabling me to shape and grab with the end of the tail with even more precision than human lips can accomplish¡ªand human lips can do a lot. It''s all so sturdy, too! Human bodily structures would get torn apart from the inside trying to use hydraulics at these pressures, but my tail still has grip strength in excess of the human hand.

    "Okay, um, can I interpret your sudden and slightly terrifying murder of that other Raptor as an affirmation that you''re still in there?" Emily squeaks.

    Right, fuck, the other Raptors. I have to kill those guys. They need to die. Still frozen by mystery girl''s power, they''re easy pickings. I break away from Emily without really thinking about it¡ªthe twine doesn''t exactly work on my stubby little Raptor arms¡ªbut surprise surprise, she doesn''t instantly explode into meat chunks. I still feel a bit bad about it, but there''s no time for that now. My tail bites through two more Raptors, and then I leap up onto some junk suspended in the air, run across a levitating sofa, and eventually reach the other Raptors suspended higher up off the ground, disabling them all in turn.

    I can''t bring myself to avoid swallowing my bites, either. It just feels right. I should be terrified by that, I think. I should be terrified by all of this. For some reason, that seems difficult to accomplish. Are the other Raptors afraid, when I pounce towards them bringing death? For some reason, I don''t think they are. I hop back down to the ground and walk towards Emily and the other girl. We need to figure out what we''re doing next.

    "Lia!" Emily yelps. "Come on Lia, please, you''re freaking me out here!"

    I let out another indignant puff of breath. That''s not my name. But my head feels a good bit less foggy, and I get that we talked about this. She wants me to be Lia for her. That means we can''t trust anyone with my real name, especially not strangers. So I tilt my body forward, stick my tail up into the air, and approximate a thumbs-up as best I can, scrunching up the lower parts of my lips and extending the upper parts upwards. I think it works out pretty well, because she seems to relax a little. She relaxes even more when I reach down with the tail and pick up all of my discarded clothes, making sure Lia''s wallet is still in the pants pocket.

    "Oh thank fuck," Emily breathes. "Alright, good. We''re safe for now, but we should definitely get out of here. What''s your name?"

    The wild-eyed mystery girl flinches as she''s addressed, but Emily gives her a reassuring smile, carefully reaching forward and putting both of her hands around one of the girl''s own.

    "U-um, Christine," the girl stammers. "I''m¡­ I''m Christine."

    "Hi, Christine!" Emily says, dousing her words in saccharine condescension. Is that her best attempt at calming someone down? Wow. "We need to run. Right now. Can you run with me?"

    "O-okay," Christine manages, only hyperventilating a little bit as her eyes lock on my approach. They seem bloodshot, probably from all the panic and crying. It''s a bit hard to tell with how bad my eyes are in this body, but my original body''s one working eye was comparably bad at most distances so I''ve gotten good at reading blurry facial expressions. I reach up and hand Emily my clothes, which she grabs under one arm, leaving her other hand still grasping Christine''s.

    "I don''t have powers like you and Lia," Emily tells the girl. "I''m safe in the middle of your power''s radius, but if I step outside it while I''m not touching Lia, I''ll die, okay? Please hold onto me tightly."

    Christine blushes. Oh god, I see what Emily is doing now. Of course this random stranger just happens to have a thing for obviously suspicious blonde girls. Y''know what, I''m not going to make a fuss over it in the middle of the superpowered monster warzone. If it works then it works. Seduce away, you insane, manipulative lesbian.

    "Ready?" Emily asks, staring into Christine''s eyes in a way that makes me want to gag. Christine nods, and I bob my body up and down in a nod approximation, and the pair of them start to run. I follow closely behind, barely needing to exert myself to keep pace. Raptors are built for speed and leg strength. I could almost certainly carry one of them on my back without too much trouble, though I don''t think I could carry both so I don''t bother to offer. Behind us, the house collapses out of the sky like dominos, the bits farthest from Christine falling first, and the rest following in sequence as we get farther and farther away.

    Running felt weird in Lia''s body, but it''s even weirder now. My body is hunched forward, with my foreclaws ready to attack and my tail extended out behind me for balance. My claws dig comfortably into dirt and warm asphalt, but they scrabble against the concrete, forcing me to rely more on the other parts of my ''foot'' for traction. I can tell I''m not quite built for that, though, the feeling uncomfortable on my skin and especially on the webs between my toes. Are Raptors made to be aquatic? The thought is weirdly comforting, even though I''ve never been much of a swimmer. Yet despite that, I can''t seem to determine any structure of their body that would let me breathe underwater. Maybe I''m like a¡­ weird space dolphin?

    Something behind us tickles my senses enough to cut through the constant sensory overload, and I immediately twist my body back to look before remembering I don''t actually need to twist my body to look in any particular direction in the first place. Either way, I don''t see anything, and I don''t have any idea why I felt the need to check.

    Cool. Very cool. I should definitely be scared by now, right? Up until turning into an alien monster I was definitely feeling some ice-up-the-ass terror, it was just kind of muted because that''s just sort of who I am as a person. I''ve had extremely low-key emotional reactions for as long as I can remember. A big part of the reason I''ve put so much effort into mastering social situations and interpersonal interaction as a skill is because I would constantly make people uncomfortable when I was little, upsetting them with my apparent apathy, callousness, and general blank-faced indifference to the plights or triumphs of everyone around me.

    Except¡­ I wasn''t indifferent. I didn''t mean to be creepy, off-putting, and unapproachable. I just didn''t understand how to not be. I understand social interaction now¡ªand I''m really fucking good at it¡ªbut it''s very much an active skill. Something I have to constantly be thinking about. Which normally, I do, so slowly but surely (and with the help of being relocated to new homes half a dozen times) I managed to shed my status as ''the creepy, emotionless kid'' and shift it into ''the pleasant, reliable one who doesn''t panic under pressure.'' Even though, internally, I do panic sometimes. I do freak out. I do get terrified. Just¡­ not as much as everyone else seems to.

    That''s not what''s happening right now. Right now, I''m not feeling anything identifiable as fear, and that fact alone should be terrifying. Fear is an important element of the human psyche and therefore there is something fundamentally wrong with my brain right now. ¡­Except no, there isn''t, because I know exactly what my brain structure is like right now and it''s working fine.

    It just¡­ isn''t my brain.

    I fucked up. I didn''t think about it in time, and my shapeshifting power took over to do what it always seems to want to do. The brain running my body right now is no longer my brain, it''s a Raptor brain. My real brain, my original body''s brain, is very likely gone forever. And yet that doesn''t terrify me, even though by all rights it should.

    Like yes, logically, the very fact that I''m having these thoughts proves my consciousness has directly continued in some capacity; I think, therefore I am, and these thoughts would not and could not be thought by anyone other than Julietta Monroe. But there was a gap between realizing that my brain is gone forever and realizing that I''m still me, yet I didn''t freak out during it. Since I was still capable of my normal emotional range while in Lia''s body, I have to assume it''s a Raptor thing. I can test that theory fairly easily, too. At any time, I can shapeshift into something else, change my brain again, and perform another self-assessment.

    ¡­So I''ll do that later, but it isn''t an urgent task right now. My primary task, quite clearly, is to follow and protect Emily and Christine. Until my primary task changes, or the circumstances improve such that I have the leeway to perform a secondary task without endangering them, that is the only thing I should be doing.

    The more I think about it, the less it bothers me. I''ve always been proud of how I managed to turn my low emotional range into a strength rather than a weakness, so having that strength improved further in a dire situation like this is honestly quite welcome. I should be careful with it, obviously; emotions have their place, fear included. But right now? At this moment, when we''re running for our lives? I''ll take the clarity of thought and save the existential panic for later.

    It is obviously more important to ensure there will be a later.

    "Shit," I hear Emily whisper under her breath. "Shit, shit, shit."

    Hey! You can''t say that, you''ll freak Christine out. I speed up a little and bump lightly into Emily''s arm. She flinches very slightly, but then sends me a sad smile.

    "Sorry," she says. "I''m just¡­ worried we''re going too slow."

    The way she said that makes me think that''s not really what she''s worried about, or at the very least is only tangential to her real problem, but I can''t ask right now and I agreed not to ask until I make sure she''s safe anyway. I thrust my tail back a couple times, pointing with it in a similar way to how I gave my thumbs-up, curling in all but one protruded section of the grasping lip.

    "Yeah, there''s definitely something behind us," she agrees. "I think it''s gaining. Christine, how often can you repeat your levitation trick?"

    "Um, I d-don''t know," she stammers. "I''m not¡­ that was the first time I¡­"

    "That''s okay," Emily assures her, cutting her off. "Lia just got her powers today, too. The incursion scar causes them somehow. Can I get you to try, at least?"

    "I''ll¡­ try," Christine huffs. Which is good, because she won''t have a choice; the girl is nowhere near as fit as Emily or Lia, and this little bit of running is already starting to exhaust her. We''ll never manage to escape. ¡­Though in her defense, we were unlikely to be outrunning a whole pack of Raptors without her, either, even accounting for my newfound ability to be one.

    "Okay," Emily nods. "Okay, good. I''ll¡­ I''ll try to find us a way forward."

    I don''t like the look on her face when she says that. It seems even less confident than before. There must be a lot of stuff coming after us, given how visible Christine''s powers were. Yet still, I don''t feel afraid. My task is unlikely to succeed given my current resources, but that fact seems worth little more than another perturbed huff.

    Emily''s eyebrows scrunch in concern as she leads us into an abandoned apartment complex (not that there are all that many non-abandoned apartment complexes; housing is very cheap nowadays), seemingly trying to confuse our pursuers in a maze of twisting roads and brick buildings. It certainly starts to confuse me. My eyes aren''t good enough to make out street signs or door numbers, so deep into the complex I start to lose my sense of direction, genuinely unsure if Emily has started to backtrack after all the turns she''s taken here.

    Maybe Emily confused herself, too, because before I know it we''re suddenly facing a dead end. And when Emily walks down it, panic forming on her face, I''m not the only one that starts rapidly losing faith in her.

    "W-wait, why are we going this way?" Christine stammers.

    "There''s¡­ there''s something here," Emily insists.

    "What is it?" Christine asks.

    "I don''t know!" Emily snaps. "But there''s something. There has to be. An unlocked door, a cellar, a-a-a pile of garbage we can hide in, something!"

    Well. My vision isn''t great, but it is wide, and I don''t see anything like that. Which is unfortunate, because our company is here.

    I''m not sure how I know that a few seconds before the Raptors start pouring into the dead-end alley after us, but my feeling turns out to be entirely correct. I whip around and bring my bladed forelimbs to bear, posturing as threateningly as I can while my tail whips behind me. There are eight of them in total: six in the alley with us and two more on either side of the exit, behind the corners and out of sight. Or¡­ I think there is. I''ll just assume that hunch is true, since they''ve all been true so far.

    I wait for the moment when Christine just pops them all up into the air helplessly, but of course it never comes. She''s collapsed on the ground and hyperventilating, unable to think clearly. A liability. Wonderful. Suffice to say, I''m not confident in my ability to fight eight Raptors by myself. I could maybe kill them all if my regeneration holds up, but I have no real way of knowing when or why it might knock me unconscious like it did when we killed the Wasp. And even if I do win, there''s no way I can stop them all from just running past me and killing the others. The same goes if I turn into a Behemoth; my odds of winning the fight skyrocket, but my ability to stop the Raptors from running between gangly bladed giraffe legs is¡­ poor.

    And yet, by some miracle, the Raptors don''t attack. They seem¡­ hesitant. Confused, maybe? They probably recognize me as one of their own. I didn''t really register it at the time, but the other Raptors I killed were almost entirely identical to my current body, differing only in wear-and-tear, past injuries, fine muscle distribution detail, scars, and other post-development things. They''re clones of each other.

    Perhaps they''re family to each other, too. Maybe in a complex, humanlike way. Maybe in a more animal-like way. I still don''t really know how intelligent these things are. But you don''t have to be a person to hesitate before attacking someone or something you care about. Even deadly predators can have friends.

    I can use that. If Emily is to be believed, there''s a reason we''re in this damn alleyway, she just doesn''t know what it is. If I buy us enough time, maybe she''ll figure it out.

    The Raptors nervously pace in front of me, at least one of each of their eyes always on me. I relax a little, tensing up and bearing my foreclaws again whenever one of them tries to approach. They''re definitely confused. I''m sure of it. But why am I so sure of it? Is it something in their posture? Is it one of the countless indecipherable scents I''m constantly being assaulted with? Is it those tiny flicks of their otherwise-straight tails? Is it just the logical assumption to make about a bunch of animals that can''t seem to decide what they should be doing? I focus on everything about them, trying to figure out as much as I can in as little time as possible. Every last detail could potentially be lifesaving.

    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    They obviously have some degree of social instincts. They''re known for their ability to coordinate and fight in packs, like wolves or dolphins, so at the very minimum I should assume they''re at least as smart as dogs. They''re analyzing me as I analyze them, and it''s easy to imagine what they''re feeling. Here''s a member of their pack, acting strangely and trying to keep them away from prey. Except the prey is alive, so I can''t be protecting a kill for some selfish reason. It isn''t prey. So what is it, and why is it causing me to act this way?

    Because I''m not communicating right. I can''t be, because I don''t know how. God, it''s like being a kid again. I''m trying to interpret all the strange, incomprehensible things in the posture and movements of everyone around me, but no one is on the same mental wavelength so it''s up to me to be the one to change. I''m trying, damnit. I''m trying. They want to know what I''m doing, and I''m making it as clear as I can: my task is to protect these two.

    "Oh no," Emily whispers. "Oh no, oh no, oh no. Lia, whatever you''re doing, you need to stop."

    I let out another furious huff of air. I don''t know what else to do, Emily! They''re even more confused now. Why wouldn''t they be? I''ve never heard of aliens doing anything to humans other than killing them on sight. They clearly think we''re supposed to be attacking the humans together. That''s their task, and I should not be obstructing it.

    Something is clearly wrong. This kind of contradiction isn''t supposed to happen.

    "Seriously, Lia!" Emily yelps. "This is bad!"

    I thrash my tail against the ground in frustration. I fucking know it''s bad, Emily! What else do you expect from me, to help the aliens eat you!? I mean¡­ I could try to attack them, but that would devolve into a deadly clusterfuck almost immediately. This is the best I can do. This is all I can do. I need to cling to every last second of life for the people I have to protect. So if this does come to a fight, I will claw and bite and kill every last one of them. But I don''t want it to come to that.

    And by some miracle, it looks like the other Raptors don''t want to either. They back off a bit from me, still cutting off our escape but no longer actively threatening to pounce. Just¡­ content to trap us here. Content to wait.

    "Fuck, fuck, fuck," Emily hisses. "Christine! Christine, I need you to get us out of here!"

    "I-I-I-I¡­" the girl stammers, unable to respond. She''s not even able to stand right now, staring at the swarm of Raptors in abject terror.

    That''s when I figure it out. Of course there''s no door. Christine is supposed to be our door, a door only she can take us through. She can, presumably, blow up the building behind us and then collapse it as we run through. She''s our escape method, but she''s too scared of the monsters here to do anything.

    Ugh. Shit like this is exactly why it''s hard to hate the way my mind is right now. We had the key out the whole time, the girl holding it just can''t stop fumbling the lock. She''s not paying any attention as Emily tries to coax her into awareness, too deep in the throes of a panic attack for any rational thoughts to reach her. I could help her with that, but not while wearing the skin of one of the very monsters she''s afraid of. But if I shapeshift into something else, those monsters are probably going to attack us! Oh, well. At least something will show up soon to solve the problem.

    ¡­Wait, what?

    I don''t have more than a second to process that thought before a chill runs down my back like ice. Yet another presence pushes against my power, espousing the endless virtues of being two rather than one, four rather than two. Any whole can be broken into yet more parts, that is a rule of the world. There is always a smaller size. There is always a greater separation. More, more, more, and yet more! I, too, can be innumerable, if I would only be cut into pieces!

    The feeling adds itself to the ever-present threat of the Queen, new and horrible and overlapping in strength. It''s thicker, closer, denser. Whereas the Queen''s power has been watered down, spread through a whole city and beyond, this is concentrated. It is here. And it trickles into me, seeping through my inferior strength with invisible, bladed claws.

    The Raptors were confused, so they prayed to an Angel for guidance. And now, thanks to me, one has arrived.

    It seems to emerge from the walls, tips of tendrils snaking into reality from god knows where. But soon I realize it''s not emerging from the walls at all, it''s simply emerging from wherever, an impossible mass of disconnected body parts squirming into reality and fusing together to eventually form the completed Angel in front of us.

    The aliens aren''t all uniform in design. Though all the Raptors here seem to be clones of each other, I know that the Raptors people encounter at a different incursion will have somewhat different designs. Angels, however, are even less alike. No two Angels appear anything like one another, even within a single alien colony. Yet I''m still surprised to see the final form of the monster before me as bipedal, with features I might even call a head.

    But not¡­ not really. While there are more similarities to a human form than in the average alien, that''s a low bar to clear and this monster barely passes.

    Its legs are stubby and deformed, with thick thighs but incredibly thin calves, almost like a bird. Its feet spread outward into five equidistant toes that remind me of a starfish, yet each of those toes seems to split into five more minuscule digits at the tip. Splitting seems central to the entire design of the creature, with two tentacle-like arms that branch in twain halfway down their length, then branch again halfway down that length, then again and again and again like a Zeno''s paradox of limbs until the tips are nothing but a fuzzy mess of micro-tendrils.

    And then there''s the head. Or¡­ the heads, maybe? There are technically two of them, but I can''t seem to see them as anything but a single head, cleaved in half down the middle. The whole creature sags from the split, each of its shoulders drooping outward like the petals of a flower thanks to the cut that cleaves the monster open from top of head to sternum. Yet it''s not bleeding, not injured. This is just how its body was made. A perpetual split, as if in reverence to the very power always trying to cut me.

    The Angel''s seven-and-a-half-foot form is covered in the same thick skin as the other aliens, largely featureless and seemingly sexless. A very pale gray, its body is only marred by the black spots of the eyes surrounding the crown of its split head and various openings in its body for breathing and eating. I don''t know what most of them do; I could probably find out by analyzing what I know about the biology of other aliens, but I haven''t wanted to risk delving too deep into the well of knowledge available to me. I need my full mental faculties focused on keeping everyone alive.

    And something about that seems to interest the Angel. Something about us seems to interest it. It approaches, slow on its stubby legs, its body swaying with each step. Its power surrounds us and chokes out our own, but not in an aggressive way. Somehow, it seems¡­ curious. Questing over the barriers keeping us alive. Tasting them. Judging them.

    I choke in a breath. A shiver suffuses through my body. Somehow, I feel like I''m being asked a question, but I don''t know why. I don''t know how to respond. The monster steps ever closer. Emily and Christine look like they''re struggling to breathe, hands over their faces and panic in their eyes.

    But I don''t feel fear. I feel paralyzed, but not with fright. With indecision. I see no path forward that leads to our survival. I have failed my task. I have no one else who I can support in my task. So what more is there to do, but die?

    The reality of my impending death isn''t scary at all. It''s simply a fact. As the Angel''s impossible-to-follow tendrils snake towards me, filling the front of my vision with their intertwining, coral-like reach, I consider if I should attack. If I should at least try to go out in a blaze of glory, an assault to defend my charges to the last. But I am told, in no uncertain terms, that I should not. My task is over. So I wait for the end.

    "Lia!" Emily shrieks, still using that goddamn name even in my final moments. "Do something! Please! Don''t let it touch you!"

    I¡­ probably should, shouldn''t I? Why am I so content to die? I know I wouldn''t normally just give up like this, but right now it feels so strongly like the thing to do. Anything else would be¡­ inappropriate. Uncomfortable. Am I being mentally influenced by the Angel? Shit, probably. What should I do about that? I should definitely do something. Definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely! What the fuck do I care about it being ''inappropriate?'' Social rules are constructs, and a construct that tells me to shut up and die deserves to be smashed.

    I''m about to die, for fuck''s sake. Now, if ever, is an appropriate time for fear.

    I take a step back and shift. Limbs elongating, body thinning, tail shriveling back into nothing, I cannonball into the ice-cold pool of humanity all at once, my fight-or-flight kicking into gear in an instant. Fuck, fuck, fuck, that''s a goddamn Angel! Is it possible to run!? Maybe if I get the others onto my back I can shapeshift into a Behemoth and get them onto the roof? Or I could try to step over the smaller monsters between us and freedom? But then where would we go?

    Seemingly startled by my change¡ªbut maybe just murderous¡ªthe Angel''s slow advance quickly becomes much, much faster, its tendrils reaching out and wrapping around me in an instant. Now I can damn well feel the fear pumping through me, and the thousands of mycelial threads wrapped around my throat certainly aren''t helping the matter.

    No rush of knowledge pushes itself into my head from contact with the Angel. My power tries, oh it tries, but the throbbing pulse of division emanating from the Angel blocks me out, overwhelming any thread of ephemeral influence I try to poke into the monster''s body. Yet it has no trouble worming its way into me, power pulling at my hips and shoulders until I suddenly feel air rush between the limbs and the joints they''re supposed to be attached to. My arms and legs are removed effortlessly, without a dash of pain or a drop of blood.

    They just¡­ aren''t a part of me anymore. I have been sorted into five distinct pieces, as if I was that way all along. I''m not sure what I would see if I could turn my head to look at the stumps of my limbs, and I''m not sure if I want to find out.

    "No!" Christine shrieks, and she clearly tries to do something. I feel her power explode outward as well, yet another pressure like the Queen''s fighting for dominance over my body. Nothing flies apart or gets held in the air, though. Her power doesn''t seem to work¡­ but I do feel the Angel''s hold on me weaken considerably, and it immediately turns to focus on her in surprise.

    I push back with everything I have. If I''m no longer capable of fighting with my limbs, I''ll use my power. I feel like I''m being crushed on all sides, trapped in a ball that''s slowly shrinking around me, but now that the pressure is weakened I manage to reassert control, driving the alien''s presence out of me. My limbs snap back into place, a horrid, tingling pain screaming through my body as they do, and I shove my power into the Angel''s body for good measure. It staggers away, dropping me to the ground, but not before I drink up every last detail on its body, what it is, how it''s put together. I''m not¡­ I''m not really sure how helpful that will be, but at least it made the Angel let go.

    Because of course it did, right? I don''t have any idea what sort of power this Angel might have. But from the way it reacted, it doesn''t know what we can do, either. It doesn''t know that my power doesn''t hurt anyone unless I use it to shapeshift into something dangerous and stab them with it. It just knows that, apparently, I can use my power on it. With Christine at my back, its resistance isn''t high enough to stop me.

    I do not know how that works. I do not know why that works. I don''t understand any of the power shit happening right now. But damn if I''m not going to try and abuse that anyway.

    I let my power diagnose and repair whatever was wrong with my arms and legs on its own, turning my right arm into the piston-blade I used to kill the Wasp as I advance on the Angel. Everything I thought about the Raptors and about how engaging them would be a bad idea still one hundred percent applies, I just don''t care right now because it''s the best plan I have and I''d rather do something stupid than do nothing at all. The enormous blade drags against the ground, the weapon alone nearly as long as I am tall, but I lift it anyway, the freakish hybrid of alien and human biology churning with power as I bring it up to defend myself. The whole time, I''m missing the ability to see behind me and keep track of what Emily''s doing, because I refuse to take my eyes off the Angel. It regards me just as warily, but it doesn''t make a move. We''re not under attack, but we''re definitely still trapped.

    I flinch only slightly when Christine suddenly walks up next to me, pushed from behind by Emily to stand with me. She''s quaking in terror and clearly in no shape to fight, but the Angel takes a step back anyway, its top-heavy body wobbling in a manner that might be funny if it wasn''t so goddamn terrifying. Ugh, I wanna go back to having an alien brain again.

    ¡­Wow, okay, tabling that thought for later. Assuming I survive. I really think about stupid shit while in mortal peril, don''t I? I focus my attention back on the Angel, which continues to regard us carefully, barely moving. It''s tense, ready to spring into action at any moment. The infinitely branching tendrils of its arms group together, condensing into thicker, more dangerous trunks of alien musculature.

    Fuck it, enough dithering. One of us has to break this stalemate, and I think I''d rather it be me. I take a step forward, feel something dig into my ankle, and immediately eat dirt.

    What!? My mind stalls in confusion for a second before I figure out what happened. Dozens of minuscule tendrils wrapped themselves around my legs without me ever noticing. We''re well out of reach of that monster, how did¡­ shit. It''s just like how the Angel got here, it must have separated some of its body parts and had them appear near me! Without even a click of sound as a command, the Raptors all burst into action, rushing towards us and converging on my position as the Angel locks me down. Christine screams¡­ and turns away from me, unable to look.

    Damn, Emily. I am so fucking glad we went out of our way to save this girl.

    The Raptors converge on me, a half-dozen blades stabbing into my torso at once, teeth biting down on my legs and ripping through muscle and bone. It hurts, but pain is just one of countless ways my sense of touch has been trying to distract me since this whole trip to hell started. I remove my own limbs with my powers, regrowing them outside their restraints and cleaving through one of the Raptors. One down. I try to kick the others off and get to my feet, but they surround me, ignoring the others and keeping me occupied on all sides.

    The situation dissolves into panic and instinct, after that. I shift into the form of a Raptor myself, taking three bites in order to give one lethal blow before shifting back into a blade-armed human and hacking through another. I''m healing as quickly as they can hurt me for now, but I can feel my reserve of power rapidly dwindling, the hunger that brought me to the brink after fighting the Wasp aching louder in the back of my mind. I won''t be able to get them all before I go down. I need help. I need help!

    But as always, everything is up to me. Christine is a hyperventilating ball in the corner, choosing to spare herself the pain of watching me die rather than actually trying to fucking help me survive. And Emily¡­ well, if she really does have a power, it probably isn''t one that makes her any better at fighting. She knows damn well she''s dead if I go down here. She wouldn''t hold anything back in a moment like this.

    Right?

    An explosive rumble suddenly shakes the ground, nearly knocking me over yet again as a shockwave thunders through the air. The Angel jolts in surprise, and then a full 1812 Overture of explosions follows suit from the east. Holy shit, it''s the military! They''re doing a counterattack! It''s too far away to help us directly, but the Angel distinctly hesitates from further attack for a moment before it turns east and unravels, its body separating into a hundred different pieces that swim into the air and vanish. The Raptors, likewise, stop their attack on me, backing hesitantly off for a few steps before turning and bolting away.

    What? Really? I can''t¡­ I can''t believe it. Our asses just got saved hard. Fucking god in heaven, how are any of us still alive? I just fought an Angel, I just¡­ fuck!

    Slowly reverting to a fully human form, I stagger over to the nearby alley wall, lean one arm against it, and attempt to vomit out everything I''ve eaten lately as the adrenaline crash proceeds to hit me harder than those Raptors did. They just¡­ they just left!? Why would they do that? Is the Army that much of a risk? Shouldn''t the aliens already have a plan for them? How the fuck did we just get that lucky? I don''t manage to throw anything up, despite my stomach putting a full ten out of ten effort into the task.

    I''m alive. We''re all still alive! How the goddamn shit are we alive?

    "O-o-okay, we need to m-move," Emily stammers, apparently doing just about as well as I am on the post-traumatic stress front.

    "Move her if you can," I huff between gulps for air, motioning at the comatose ball of shivering that is Christine. "I need a second."

    Emily walks right up to me and shoves a big wad of all my clothing into my arms. She''s blushing profusely for some reason, which is kind of weird. Didn''t she drag my naked ass all the way down a street and into a house? She didn''t really seem to care about that.

    "G-get dressed. You have thirty seconds," she snaps. "And get out of my body!"

    Huh? Oh. I look down at myself. Yep, that''s definitely not Lia. That would explain it.

    "I like yours better, though," I pout, but I toss the clothes on and shift back into Lia anyway.

    "Don''t¡ª!" she squeaks. "Don''t fucking say that. It''s way too soon for jokes."

    "...Wasn''t joking," I grumble. Lia''s body is a constant, horrible reminder of the worst parts of my situation. Emily''s body is at least owned by someone I like. All the more reason to respect her wish for me to not use it, though. Emily doesn''t respond to me anyway, focusing her attention entirely on Christine and trying to pretend that her ears aren''t turning a little pink. Geez, no wonder Lia fell for her. No doubt she absolutely adored having someone so easily flustered around.

    By the time I finish getting dressed, Emily is still desperately trying to coax Christine back to her feet. She''s doing it all wrong, though. The terrified girl isn''t even responding. Sorry, Em, you can''t seduce your way out of this one.

    "Hey, focus on me," I say firmly, kneeling down in front of Christine. "Christine, focus on me."

    I inject just a hint of motherly disappointment into my tone, and the girl locks onto my face immediately. Oh boy. Abuse victim, maybe? We got a good chunk of those at the orphanages. Kids who weren''t actually orphans but damn well would have been if there was any justice in the world. But obviously there isn''t because sending the poor things to live with ''families'' like the ones I was stuck with is the government''s only idea of helping.

    Unfortunately, we don''t have time for me to play unlicensed therapist. I want to help her, I should help her, I probably could help her if I had time, but we absolutely don''t have time to do this the right way. I need her on her feet and moving a minute ago, and if that means I poke a trauma then that means I poke a trauma.

    "On your feet. Now," I order. It''s not a good way to go about it, but it''ll get her to listen. Sure enough, she flinches and tries to comply¡­ but she can''t. She''s physically shaking so hard and breathing so erratically that she falls to her knees the moment she tries. Immediately, she balls her hand into a fist and smacks herself in the head. Fuck, okay, this won''t work. I have to carry her.

    "Stop," I snap, doing my best to enhance my musculature a little as I carefully push her over, loop my arms under her knees and back, and scoop her into a princess carry. She is mortified, and clearly very uncomfortable, but just like in the battle against the Angel, she doesn''t fight, she freezes. And at least for now, I can work with that.

    "Okay, lead the way," I tell Emily.

    "...Are you sure you want me to?" she asks. "After all this?"

    "It''s not like I know where we''re going," I scowl. "It''s damn lucky that the military is launching an attack, but we''re not going to be able to sneak through an active warzone with artillery shells falling all around us, right? There''s going to be even more aliens heading east than before."

    "...Yes," Emily agrees. "Exactly. I''m glad you''re¡­ thinking clearly."

    I adjust Christine''s weight in my arms. It would be nice if other people could think clearly a little more often, wouldn''t it?

    "Are we going or not?" I press her bluntly. She opens her mouth to respond, but then closes it and heads out of the alleyway. I follow. She''s not even bothering with the pretense of keeping skin-to-skin contact with me anymore. Although¡­ I suppose she told Christine that she''d be safe while in the radius of her power. Maybe that just applies even when the power isn''t active. I can still kind of feel it, and even though I''m touching Christine now, my power isn''t able to pick up on her biological information. Maybe I could if I pushed a little harder, like with the Angel, but she''d probably detect that and freak out. There''s no real reason to, anyway.

    Hesitantly, Emily steps out of the alleyway with me in tow, glancing around. Not an alien in sight, except for a couple distant Wasps in the sky, heading east. After only a couple seconds of deliberation, she picks a heading and continues leading me northwest. Deeper into alien territory.

    "I''m really trusting that you know what you''re doing here," I tell her. "You do know what you''re doing, right?"

    "I know more than you," she answers, and I guess I can''t argue with that.

    Still, something bugs me. It doesn''t make sense that the Angel would leave to go fight humans while just ignoring the three powered humans already in the middle of its territory. Sure, that fight just now proved we aren''t exactly a major threat, but it still seems absurd. The farther we walk unmolested, the more the thought digs into my mind. It''s ridiculous. There''s no way, right? I have to check.

    I suck Lia''s hair back into my scalp like keratin spaghetti, thickening my head to make space for as many alien sensory organs as I can fit. It''s a lengthy process, one that I''m unsure is even possible before I attempt it. But my power doesn''t just feel capable of combining human and alien biology, it feels eager. It''s nothing like mixing features from Lia and Emily''s bodies together, but still, I find ways. I make connections. I grow eyes on the back of my head, I widen my nostrils and introduce countless new olfactory detectors, I twist and change and grow and design and redesign until everything is in place. Every possible detector I could have used to determine if there were other aliens around while I was a Raptor. It all works.

    ¡­In theory. In practice, my brain just interprets it all as complete garbled nonsense. Even if I''ve hypothetically connected alien nerves to human nerves successfully, the end result just feels like a painfully overwhelming synesthesia and I nearly knock myself out. My brain¡­ no. Lia''s brain can''t handle this kind of information.

    But I have another brain that can. I make the shift, stumbling and almost collapsing to the ground as I suddenly feel my human body stop making sense, my balance all wrong, my limbs completely foreign, completely¡­ alien. But that''s okay. I only really need to do this for a moment.

    I can feel them. The Raptors. At least two dozen of them follow us now, slinking around out of sight, carefully surrounding us in every direction but moving away before we can get too close. They aren''t attacking us. They''re tracking us. Our safety, it seems, is quite the temporary state of affairs. If the military ever lets up its attack¡­ well, the Angels will need a new target for divine intervention, won''t they?

    Paradoxically, the thought relaxes me a little. I knew I couldn''t actually get lucky. Now, once again, all is right with the world.

 7. Oh That Sweet And Beautiful Violence

    "It''s getting dark," I point out. "We should probably find a place to sleep soon."

    "We need to go a little further," Emily huffs.

    I frown. The sun has almost completely set, and power is down in the entire metropolitan area. It''s not just going to be dark outside, it''s going to likely be darker outside than we''ve ever seen before in our lives. And since my alien eyes are even worse than my human eyes¡­

    "None of us are going to be able to see, Emily," I insist.

    "We''ll manage," she snaps. "We need more distance. Pick up the pace if you''re so worried about it."

    I let out a long breath, adjusting Christine''s weight in my arms. We''ve been walking for hours now, and I haven''t told Emily that we''re being tracked yet¡ªnot because I don''t think she should know, but because Christine''s barely hanging onto her sanity by a thread. No matter how far away we go, the aliens are already covering our position. Making distance is pointless. But I''ll only feel comfortable letting Emily know when we''re alone.

    It doesn''t matter how far we run away. That''s what I want to tell her. But that comment on picking up the pace sticks with me. Maybe she''s not running away from something. Maybe she has a specific destination in mind. So I stay quiet and continue to let her lead.

    ¡­Of course, that doesn''t stop me from being right. Night descends quickly, and though the stars above are vibrant and beautiful, the moon isn''t back out yet and finding my footing is difficult. I feel like I could probably do a lot better in an alien body, since they rely on sight a lot less, but I have to carry Christine and I''ve noticed that mixing alien and human parts tends to create a body that isn''t very good at moving instinctively. In this situation, that would defeat the entire point.

    "Where are we going, Emily?" I press her.

    "I''ll know it when I see it," she insists.

    "Emily, we can''t see shit."

    "Then maybe I''ll know it when I hear it!" she snaps. "Just trust me!"

    I sigh and drop the subject. Being out in the dark like this makes me nervous. I guess it makes most people nervous, but I always did my best to avoid it at all costs because of how screwed I used to be if I ever tripped. I''m incredibly self-conscious about my footing, and while I''ve done a good job at ignoring that habit ever since I gained the ability to run (because ignoring how I run is currently a very important step to performing it successfully) the darkness is bringing that nervousness out in full force.

    But still, I let that all slide as best I can, because it only takes one look at Emily to know she''s not exactly doing this for fun. She''s absolutely exhausted, her body finally demanding that she pay the bills after surviving a car crash, multiple fights with aliens, and running halfway across the city without dinner. By all rights, I should feel the same, but I guess my power protests the concept of physical exhaustion on principle. Rather than get worn out, I seem to slowly chip away at my power''s energy reserves as I run, my body shapeshifting away any exhausted muscle and replacing it with fresher versions of the same thing unless I specifically focus on not letting it do that.

    It''s odd to think about. This means it''s likely impossible for me to naturally build muscle anymore, right? I suppose that''s fitting, since none of my bodies are really ''mine'' in any meaningful way. All the physical therapy I''ve been through to get myself mobile and keep myself that way is down the drain now. Completely wasted effort. I''ll never have to do that again, because I''ll never even be able to.

    Christine flinches a little as I start gripping her a lot harder than I meant to, so I relax and whisper a quick apology. I need to think about something else. Wait, shit, is she crying?

    ¡­No. No, I hear crying, but not from any of the three of us.

    "Emily," I say.

    "What?"

    "I think I''m knowing it when I hear it. Follow me?"

    Her eyebrows raise and she turns to me, her eyes glancing around at nothing like I''ve noticed several times before.

    "I¡­ yeah," she agrees. "Lead the way. But¡­ be careful."

    Hmm. I don''t like the sound of that, but what can you do? I nod and head towards the sound, clutching Christine closer to my chest and keeping low to the ground. Moving in an awkward position won''t make my muscles burn anymore, it''ll only consume energy faster, and if there''s one thing we''re not running out of anytime soon it''s energy bars. The aliens don''t seem super interested in raiding houses for supplies, so as long as Emily can keep finding us homes that actually had occupants in them before this disaster struck, we should have a nearly limitless supply of nonperishable food and can openers to access them. Maybe they''re just saving the houses for later, though; they have bigger things to deal with right now.

    ¡­As do we. The crying suddenly tapers off and turns into a scream, the sound sending a cold terror through my bones. Holy fucking shit, that sounded like a child! What did¡­ oh damn it, they must have run into the Raptor pack that''s been keeping ahead of us!

    "Take Christine!" I shout at Emily, dropping her into the other girl''s arms and breaking into an immediate sprint.

    "Wait! I said to be careful!" she shouts after me.

    "I know!" I call back. "Sorry!"

    It''s not like I didn''t think of that, it''s just that if this is a trap then I''m fucking springing it. If there''s a kid alive right now, I''m not going to let them get eaten by aliens. I''m not. It''s the only thing on my mind as I accelerate, clothing falling off my body as I shift into my far-faster Raptor form. Definitely not the friendliest body I could meet a child in, but my first priority is making sure I meet them at all, and for that it''s perfect.

    Everything snaps into place as soon as the change hits. I have my task. I feel where the other Raptors are all around me. I know exactly where the fight is breaking out and how to get there, my steps quick and sure in the pitch-darkness. The pack is converging on an unexpected threat, confusion and surprise forcing them into an engagement that endangers the primary task. Threat assessment is assumed low, reassessed higher, then reassessed higher again and again as I rush closer, waves of increasing danger flowing into my senses and still not evoking a single spark of fear. If I die, I die; all that matters is the task.

    I rush down an alleyway between two buildings, jumping up against the wall and pushing off right at the end to redirect my momentum down the street. It''s a straight shot from here to my target, and through the darkness and my blurry vision I barely make out the rapidly moving shapes of combat. My fellow Raptors converge on the target from all sides, corpses of the first responders leaking the stench of death and warning around it. Seven more Raptors need to die before the threat of fighting is a greater risk to the primary task than the threat of allowing the threat to live, so the task is clear: take the target down.

    Except, of course, that''s wrong. My task is to protect it.

    The moment I assert that, a burst of confusion rings out among the Raptors and another one dies as the collective hesitates. The fight continues immediately afterwards, but now I''m part of it, leaping onto the back of the nearest assailant and digging my claws into its back. It staggers, trying to reach up and bite me with its tail, but I force it to the ground and bite its tail with my own, cutting it open and leaving it to bleed out as I jump towards the next Raptor.

    The pack''s prior confusion seems to vanish at that, immediately understanding me as an additional threat to be culled. The screams of a child are right next to me now, so close yet so impossible for me to clearly make out with my eyes. But to my ears, they no longer sound like screams of fear. They sound like screams of anger, the sort of sound you hear from a kid tired of being kicked to the ground by bullies and completely ready to bite their tormentor''s face off with sheer, animal rage.

    The kind a child makes when they are out of options, out of friends, and out of adults in their life they can turn to. The kind a child makes when they have been abandoned by the entire world and they have nothing left to keep them going, so why not just make their tormentors hurt and damn the consequences?

    Something bursts out from the direction of the screaming, and I feel the motion before I see it, a shapeless mass whipping around and cutting through Raptors with wild abandon. I tear a chunk of meat out of my current victim as I try to jump away, but it twists mid-swing to stab me anyway. It hurts, but more than anything I find myself surprised by how warm it is. Not hot, not burning, just warm. It''s a strangely pleasant temperature for a stabbing implement, but my surprise doesn''t last long before it suddenly goes limp inside my wound, falling apart from a spiderweb-thin curved blade into an inanimate mess of liquid the moment it pierces my skin.

    I feel the power controlling it in that moment, surrounding and shaping the weapons the child is using to attack. To my surprise, though, it feels nothing like the Queen''s at all. Unlike Christine, unlike the Angel, this power presses into me with an experience utterly devoid from the concept of cutting, dividing, and grouping. Touching it is like hearing a genre of music for the first time, utter confusion followed by judgment followed by understanding its unique beauty.

    And judgment, perhaps, is a good word to use, as it''s central to the experience of this power. The force before me does not desire any one static thing; it is not an actor, but a reactor, the pure essence of accepting, considering, and responding in kind. Debts will be paid. Karma will be weighed. And goodness shall be met with goodness, while evil shall be met with evil.

    And violence, oh that sweet and beautiful violence, will be met with yet more of its kind, too.

    A mass of additional liquid converges on my position, all shaped into blades, as the screaming redoubles. My presence seems to be making the kid even more upset, but I leap away from their attack and let it carve open one of the other Raptors instead. My task is making sure my target is safe; I can deal with calming them down and getting them to stop trying to kill me later.

    Ducking under another strike, I tackle a Raptor to the ground and tear into its chest with my foreclaws, biting the front of the torso off another Raptor trying to flank me from behind. It''s obvious the more I fight that the best way to approach Raptors is from the side¡ªwe have powerful natural weapons from the front and behind, but very little ability to attack targets next to us without turning ninety degrees to face towards or away from them. And the other Raptors are smart enough to understand this too, because the next time I dodge I end up getting boxed in from the left and right.

    ¡­But I''m not only a Raptor. My body bursts into a different configuration, standing up straighter as a blade rapidly grows from each of my now-humanoid arms, using the momentum from each of the Raptors leaping my way to impale them through the chest. It doesn''t kill them fast enough to stop them from biting into me and ripping into my flesh, but I''m already shapeshifting and it''s just a twist of will to regrow the parts of me I''ve lost, though the ache of my power''s hunger grows ever-more prominent the more I use it.

    Not to mention, the shift in body and brain hits me like a bucket of ice water to the head. Pain, panic, and adrenaline flood into my veins between blinks of my now-clearer vision. Now, in what little light is left in the night, I can make out the form of the girl in front of me. She looks like she can''t be more than nine years old, with pitch-black hair long enough to touch the small of her back. We stare each other in the eyes for a timeless moment, my terror for both of our well-beings overwhelmed by the intensity of her despairing hatred. Silhouetted against the light of the Milky Way, long, curved claws tip each of her fingers in place of nails, dripping with blood.

    Her own blood.

    It pours from every wound on her body, from bite marks on her torso that leak dark crimson to gouges in her wrists that look like they could have been slashed open by her own claws. The blood pools out of her, floating in the air and forming the weapons she cuts open the Raptors with, reaping them like chaff. In the time it took me to disable a few she''s completely eviscerated ten of them. They''re retreating now, and she looks torn between chasing after them and continuing to attack me.

    The crimson blade she jabs towards my stomach is enough to understand what decision she chooses.

    "Stop! Wait!" I call out, but she ignores me and slams the blade of blood into my belly, which once again destabilizes and reverts to unshaped liquid while inside me. The other¡­ I mean, the Raptors didn''t look like they had any such defense, their wounds appearing more like they were impaled and then ravaged further from the inside, if not outright cut in half. I feel her power thrum against mine, fighting for control and losing. Which seems great for my ability to survive this, but terrible for the girl''s mental state: the anger and fear in her expression are only growing as she tries and fails to murder me.

    It''s a horrifying sight to see. Tears and snot mix with the alien guts on her face, a bladed hydra of blood pouring out of her wounds and thrashing around her like a wounded animal. She''s hyperventilating, well past despair and teetering on the edge of madness. It''s easy to imagine what happened to her. How a child that young must have been with her family when this all went down. How she got powers, but the rest of her family must not have. What that must have felt like when monsters began falling from the sky and claws began growing on her fingers. What that must have been like for her when the Queen dropped, and everyone she loved was turned from person into meat.

    Is that who I would have become if I had gotten powers the first time around? Just a raging mess of terror and hatred, killing everything I can before the monsters finally got me like they did everyone else? She has nothing now. No one. Just like I did.

    "Stop, it''s okay!" I call out again, turning my blades back into normal arms as she stabs me again. "It''s okay, I''m here to help!"

    "Liar!" she shouts, and god her voice is so raw. So small. "Monster!"

    "I''m human!" I insist. "I promise I''m human! I have powers, like you!"

    "Lia!" Emily shouts, finally catching up with Christine in tow, the shivering woman once again running on her own two legs. "Watch out!"

    For what, the deadly blood blades directly in front of me? I see them, Emily, and I don''t care. I step a little closer to the girl and she cuts my arm clean off at the shoulder before my resistance destabilizes it, but I just flinch a little and keep walking. Christine screams, but I don''t care. I can just grow another one, but I seal the wound and leave the arm gone for now, to save on power.

    "Please calm down," I beg the girl softly. "We''re going to get you out of here. We''re going to help you."

    "No! No, no, no!" she wails. "Everyone is dead!"

    "I''m sorry," I whisper, leaning down a little as I continue to slowly approach. "I''m sorry. So many people are dead. It isn''t fair."

    Her blood curls around me and stabs me from behind. I flinch again, coughing as it destabilizes and leaks into my lungs.

    "Lia!"

    "Hurt me if you need to," I tell the girl. "But I''m here to help you. I''m not going away."

    "Shut up!" she shouts. "Liar!"

    "I understand why you feel that way," I tell her, "but I mean it. I''m not going away. Please. Let me help."

    I''m not leaving a fucking child alone in this place. I don''t care how many times she stabs me. I''m not going to attack her. I''m not going to defend myself. I''m not going to let some kid who just lost everything be alone. And she needs to know that. Everything on my mind right now is finding a way to show her. I squat down and hold my one remaining arm out to her, an offer to take my hand. She stares at it, terrified and confused, but when she stabs me yet again I''m ready for it, and I do not flinch. I just reach a little farther forward, and grab her hand myself.

    "Please," I repeat.

    The moment our fingers touch my power pushes hers aside like a curtain, diving into her biology with rabid interest. And it is interesting, I''ll give it that. The way a child''s body differs from an adult''s is an interesting enough subject of study by itself, but this child''s body is far more than that. She isn''t in danger of dying from the many wounds on her body, to start with¡­ and what the fuck else do I need to know, right now? I wrench control of my mind back from that obsessive distraction, clamping down on the shifts and changes my power has already started making to my body, and I focus on her.

    There''s only a brief pause before her already-crying face erupts into sobs, completely breaking down in front of me. The suddenness of it surprises me, but the thrashing blood around us collapses to the ground as the child wails up at the sky, the fight kicked out of her from a single human touch.

    "That''s it," I say quietly, squeezing her hand. "It''s okay. You made it."

    She steps into me and pulls me into a crushing hug, bawling into my collarbone. I regrow my other arm, wincing at the protest and exhaustion from my power before wrapping it around her back and returning the embrace.

    "You made it," I repeat. "You''re so strong. It''s going to be okay."

    It might not be okay right now, but it''s going to be. Fucking hell, there was a kid out here. I take back every doubt I had about where Emily was taking us.

    "...Lia?" Emily says again, she and Christine approaching us slowly. I turn my head just enough to spot her and give her my best smile, though I doubt she can see much in the dark.

    "Can you find us somewhere to hole up for the night?" I ask her.

    "...Sure," she answers. "I''ll do my best."

    "These are my friends," I tell the girl, her tears still flowing, though she was too exhausted to stay screaming for long. "Emily and Christine. And I''m¡­"

    I glance at Emily. Ah, damn it.

    "...Lia," I lie. "Can you tell me your name?"

    The sniffs and sniffles are not immediately forthcoming, but I can tell the kid is trying to gather herself and don''t rush her. It takes a while, but eventually she answers.

    "...My name is Anastasia," she mumbles.

    "That''s a pretty name," I tell her. "It''s good to meet you, Anastasia."

    "Are you sure you aren''t a monster?" she asks.

    "I''m not," I promise. "I''m sorry I looked so scary when I first arrived."

    "S''okay," she sniffs, staring at her bloody claws. "I look scary too."

    Now that I''m so close (and so aware of everything about her body) I can make out a lot more detail on the poor girl. The contrast of her long, dark hair and deathly pale skin likely wasn''t so prominent before she got her powers; while she looks almost entirely human but for her claws and slightly off coloration, her changes are far more comprehensive underneath the skin. It seems that since her power focuses on telekinetically moving her own blood, her body has adapted to a severely increased need for blood, with a massively accelerated metabolism and dramatically faster development of all rapidly-developing cells. That includes blood, of course, but it also includes her hair, her skin, and countless other little things that are going to affect her for the rest of her life.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    But she heals fast, at least. Very fast. Every wound on her body is already scabbed over, and I wouldn''t be surprised to find it fully healed a few hours from now. And considering how she carved through those Raptors, it''s hardly a surprise that she''s managed to survive alone out here for so long. She''s dangerous. Possibly more dangerous than the rest of us combined.

    I wonder if Emily brought us here to save her, or if she brought us here to have the kid save us. She''d better not have, but¡­ I guess I can''t really ask until we''re alone. Still, she''s crazy if she thinks I''m going to be okay with letting Anastasia fight anymore.

    I''m the adult here, if only just barely. It''s my responsibility to keep everyone safe.

    "...Alright, we have a bit farther to go," Emily announces. "Lia, get your clothes back on and we''ll head out."

    Huh? Oh.

    "Right, yeah," I agree, taking my clothes from her and tossing them on as quickly as I can. I''m gonna need to figure out an outfit-friendly way to use my powers soon. Still, I take the time I spend changing to quickly grow myself some alien sensory organs again, flipping my brain to the inhuman one and getting an update on where the Raptors following us are. Hmm¡­ well, there''s less of them now, obviously, but they''ve just spread out a bit more and are back to maintaining the circle around us. I''d really like to go help them establish the perimeter now that they''re below designated pack size, but I already have a different task so I don''t.

    I scowl as I quickly swap back to a completely human mind. Those sort of thoughts sure do happen a lot when I have a Raptor brain, don''t they? They haven''t been problematic so far, because I''m still¡­ me, somehow? I don''t get it, but even when my whole brain changes I''m still me in the ephemeral way that allows me to maintain my goals, priorities, wants, and dreams even in the face of instinctive desires to do otherwise. Those desires are concerning, though. The encounter with the Angel proved they can definitely affect me in a significant way, and if they ever take over completely, well¡­ it could be bad. And since I''ve had these powers for barely a few hours, I have no reason to assume my good luck will continue.

    ¡­Which is unfortunate, because the ability to keep track of what our enemies are doing and where they are out of sight is a bit too useful to just ignore.

    "Alright, I''m ready to go," I announce, the distant sound of an explosion to the east causing Christine and Anastasia to flinch. "Lead the way, Em."

    She nods and we head out, guiding our path while I make sure everyone sticks together, grasping Anastasia''s hand reassuringly in my own. Now that I have a few different samples, I understand a bit more about how the human eye handles low-light vision, so I start making tweaks to improve my sight. It''s a slow process, but after a few blocks I''m no longer feeling like every step I take could result in an unexpected faceplant and my ability to guide the others improves a lot accordingly.

    It''s barely twenty minutes of walking before Christine starts to visibly tire, but fortunately I don''t need to find a way to subtly poke Emily about it. She finds us a place shortly after, nabbing the key out from underneath a nearby flowerpot and unlocking the door. We could probably just break into the house without any consequences, since it''s not like having an intact lock is going to do much to stop the aliens, but there''s something that just feels safer about being behind a locked door so I''m weirdly glad that Emily does it this way.

    We shuffle inside, flicking the light switches and being entirely unsurprised when absolutely nothing happens. No power, no running water, nothing. It''s impressive how quickly everything stops working, but we have no way to know if it''s intentional sabotage by the aliens, the natural consequence of the massive earthquake dropping the Queen caused, or just municipal companies cutting their losses and being assholes.

    "Okay," I announce. "Let''s scrounge for food. Are we planning to be here all night, Emily?"

    She thinks for a moment and then nods.

    "Yes, I think so," she confirms. "You make sure to eat everything you can, Lia. I''m right about your power being fueled by food, aren''t I?"

    "Definitely," I sigh. "I''m almost burned out already. Anastasia, Christine, let''s all make sure to eat."

    I think Anastasia is malnourished. Analysis of her body indicates to me that she has a lot of poorly repairing tissue and a noteworthy iron deficiency. Not long-term damage. A recent issue, caused by constantly being injured and having to heal during the incursion.

    "Sh-should we be taking the food here?" Anastasia says quietly, speaking for the first time since she stopped crying. "Stealing is wrong."

    "Normally, you''re right," I agree, kneeling down in front of her and giving her a soft smile. "But right now it''s an emergency. The people who live here would want us to make good use of their food, since they won''t be coming back."

    Because they are probably dead. But I''m not going to emphasize that point; if Anastasia thinks of it on her own, so be it. But right now, I need to make sure she eats. The brave girl nods at me, seemingly satisfied by the logic that emergencies change the rules, and I turn my focus to the kitchen cupboard. Enough time has passed since the likely cause of the power outage that stuff in the fridge might not be safe to eat anymore, but anything that doesn''t need to be refrigerated should be completely fine, and¡­ oh! An unopened jar of peanut butter! Score!

    "Grab a mix of things you want to eat and things that are hearty meals," I instruct. "Anastasia, I want you eating as much as you can. Your body will need a lot more food because of your power. Look for beans, jerky, or dried fruit. Christine, I don''t know what you need. I haven''t scanned you yet because your power blocks mine out. I think I could, though, if you want me to. It helps me know if you''re injured or in need of certain nutrients or whatever."

    Christine flinches. She hasn''t even started to look for food yet, so I needed to address it directly to push her.

    "I¡­ would that tell you about other parts of my body?" she asks. "Would that let you shapeshift into me?"

    "Yes," I confirm.

    "Then don''t do that," she says. "Ever."

    "Okay," I nod, hiding my frustration. I understand my power is incredibly invasive, and I''m the last person looking to violate someone''s bodily autonomy. So I''ll respect Christine''s decision there, no questions asked and no pressure given. But still¡­ really? This is the one thing she shows some spine over? This? She''s putting her foot down over something that could materially help both of us after I risked my life to save her over and over and barely got any help in return?

    Whatever. Doesn''t matter. She''s made her choice and pressing her further would be morally wrong and liable to further damage her likely already-shaky opinion of me. I have to suck it up and be the nice one.

    "You want to go through some of the canned meals, then?" I ask. "We don''t have any way to heat them, though."

    I doubt it''ll be a problem. She absolutely seems like a cold Chef Boyardee sort of person.

    "Yeah, that''s fine," she nods.

    Called it. I toss her some canned ravioli, which she fumbles for a bit and ultimately drops on the ground. It doesn''t burst though, so whatever.

    "Any luck finding a can opener?" I ask Emily, who is rummaging through the other cupboards.

    "No, but I found the bowls," she announces, sliding one along the counter towards Christine. "Maybe she can just open the can with her power?"

    Oh shit, smart thinking Emily! We need to get her competent, and that means we need her to practice.

    "I¡­ I don''t know how to use my power," Christine stammers. "I don''t even really know what it is! I don''t know how you two do it."

    "Do what?" Emily asks. "I don''t have powers."

    "Yeah, she''s just a badass," I lie for her. "Do you feel anything different now than you did before? I only learned to use my power because it tries to use itself pretty much any time I touch something alive."

    "I-I don''t know. Kind of? It''s weird."

    "Christine, I turned into like three different aliens today," I reassure her. "Ate some of them, too. I''m well past weird."

    "It''s just¡­ whenever I look at something I can feel what it''s made out of," she mutters. "What the assembled parts are."

    "Including the ravioli can?" I ask.

    "Well¡­ yeah," she mutters, glancing down at where she clutches it with both hands. "It''s a little hard to grasp. There''s a bunch of different ways it can have different parts. Like, the can itself is¡­ maybe it''s three parts: lid, label, and body. Maybe the bottom of the can is a fourth part. Maybe each ravioli is a separate element. Maybe all the things inside each ravioli are also separate elements. Maybe the sauce is one thing, or maybe it''s everything that composes the sauce, and I just¡­ whenever I think about it it''s just overwhelming. It can always be more, more, more, more different parts, but it can also not be. It can also all just be one thing. I can barely even think anymore. Whenever I look at anything, I just¡­"

    She swallows.

    "I start thinking about how to take it apart like a puzzle. And I can''t stop."

    I share a glance with Emily, briefly reaching over to help Anastasia open up a packet of beef jerky.

    "...Does that happen when you look at aliens?" I ask.

    "I¡­ it doesn''t happen to you," she mutters. "Your powers block mine."

    "That''s not what I asked," I say. Could she have just ripped the aliens into chunks this entire time? Her power does feel like the Queen''s. At first I thought maybe that was just what powers felt like, but Anastasia''s is incomparably different.

    "That''s not important, Lia," Emily butts in, knowing full well that it absolutely fucking is. "If your power is making you think about all the possible different ways to take apart that can of ravioli, have you tried just¡­ choosing one?"

    Christine looks at her intensely, seeming desperate for a way out of the conversation I tried to start.

    "What do you mean?" she asks, as if what Emily said was in any way unclear. Come on, Christine, get a hold of your brain for a second.

    "Choose one of the configurations," Emily says, almost like a command. "Determine the can''s division. It doesn''t matter which one, just choose."

    Christine hesitates, glancing back and forth between Emily and the can a couple times before staring intensely at it for a few seconds. Her expression gets progressively more and more vacant until suddenly, the can explodes¡­ and then freezes in midair, its pieces as still as a photograph.

    The can is in four parts: cylinder, lid, bottom, and label, the latter unfurled and grouped with the others. The content of the can is separated into intact ravioli and a clump of red sauce. It all waits in the air in front of her, immaculately organized.

    "Put the can back together," Emily orders, and it happens. Each individual part reassembles itself, the lid resealing and the label re-gluing like it was never opened in the first place. The can''s explosion reverses itself in slow motion, but the food that was inside still floats in the air. The can is empty now, and once it has been put back together it clatters to the ground.

    "Put the food in the bowl," Emily says. This doesn''t come as naturally to Christine. She can''t seem to figure out how to just make it happen, but after a bit of confusion she just grabs the bowl, lifts it underneath the sauce, and simply lets the sauce drop inside. Then, by hand, she does the same to each of the ravioli, grabbing them and pulling them out of her power like she''s picking berries off a tree before dropping them into the bowl.

    "Looks like you''ve got a handle on it," Emily declares, giving Christine a winning smile and passing her a spoon. The poor girl nods quickly and takes the utensil with a blush. God damn, Emily. Well done. I give her a silent smile and a nod. She nods back, then motions her head towards Anastasia. The message is clear: she''ll handle Christine, so I should handle the kid. Can do.

    I walk back over to where Anastasia is glumly chomping down on beef jerky without complaint. She doesn''t look like she''s enjoying it, but she''s hungry and she''s devouring it for now. I''ll see if I can find some food that''s a bit more of a complete meal on the upper shelves in a bit. For now, I open my jar of peanut butter, grab a spoon, and sit down next to the girl to eat with her. She''s a complete mess, her clothing ripped in a dozen places and her whole body covered in dirt and grime. Bathing is going to be a problem for all of us, I think.

    Hmm. Well, she doesn''t object to my presence, so that''s good. It''s always a danger with kids that they''re just going to randomly decide they don''t like you at first sight, but Anastasia is understandably pretty subdued. Still, I need more than that. I''ve got to start a conversation. Establish some rapport. It''s a bit of a delicate situation, though. Start with a compliment?

    "You''re a really brave kid," I tell her.

    "Sorry," she whispers back.

    Huh? That''s not what I expected.

    "What about?" I ask.

    "I hurt you," she says.

    Oh, right. That.

    "Eh, I''m fine," I assure her. "Not even a scratch on me. Don''t worry about it."

    "I still hurt you," she mumbles. "That''s wrong. Powers aren''t for hurting people."

    I nod slowly. I can respect that answer. Hmm¡­ I want to reinforce that answer but also reassure her.

    "That''s true," I agree. "You''re exactly right. If I didn''t have powers myself, I could have really gotten hurt. But I do have powers, Anastasia. So I forgive you. It''s okay."

    "I cut your arm off," she says quietly. "It was scary."

    "I was definitely scared, but not about that," I tell her. "I just wanted to make sure you were safe. I''m glad you are."

    She starts to shake a little, pausing between bites. Tears begin to fall down her face again. Shit. Did I screw up? I''m not sure, so I reach out slowly to grab her again, and to my relief she takes it, squeezing hard as tears fall down her face some more.

    "I''m a witch," she whispers. "I''m a bad witch."

    "No," I tell her.

    "I am."

    "Anastasia¡­"

    She pulls herself closer and hugs me again, breaking out into sobs. I freeze up for only a second before returning the hug, idly running my fingers across her scalp and untangling her hair. Poor kid. The reality of her being here with us, orphaned and trapped in alien territory, fills me with a cold dread that''s equal parts fury and despair. We''ve been busy putting one foot in front of the other so far, finding endless things to do to maximize our chances of staying alive and minimize our chances of having a complete mental breakdown. But here in the dark of night, as exhaustion catches up to us, our thoughts start to catch up with us, too. There''s nowhere to run from them anymore.

    Barely half a day ago, I was celebrating my birthday for fuck''s sake. It may not exactly have been the happiest moment of my life, but I never would have imagined any of the things that just happened to me these past few hours as something that could actually occur. The sky split in half. An insane set of superpowers crawled into my head and tore my body away from me. Nearly my entire foster family died. Emily''s awful girlfriend died, and I''ve somehow been convinced to pretend to be her for the foreseeable future.

    It''s incredible how Emily can be so optimistic about our chances of survival that she''s already planning for what we do after we get out of this hellscape. It''s insane. The rumble of distant artillery shells tickles my eardrums as I push down the urge to laugh at how pathetically nonexistent our chances are. The aliens know we''re here, we''re just such a non-threat to them that they can''t even be bothered to deal with us yet. Eventually, the battle at the front lines will stabilize into a position that''s too costly for either side to press further on, and the Angels will come to clean us up. We''re on a hard time limit and we don''t even have any way to know what the limit is.

    And yet the world isn''t done being cruel. It has to give me a child to hold in my arms. It has to remind me that if I die, if we fail, she dies too. The poor, innocent kid breaking down from grief and survivor''s guilt right in front of me. She''ll fight with us, won''t she? If aliens come after us, I won''t be able to stop her from fighting them.

    That might be the worst part, I think. Knowing that this child is fated to be a weapon. Because after all, if we do make it out, the military will take her. They take everyone with powers, no matter the age. Because we''re needed. Because the rest of the world doesn''t care about sacrificing children to keep themselves safe.

    I don''t know what to do about it. I just don''t know. More than anything, I want to cry too. To break down and sob and wail and just let all the hopelessness out. But I can''t. I can''t do that to her.

    "...We should keep eating, if we can," I whisper to her once the tears start to slow again.

    "Don''t want more jerky," she mumbles.

    "That''s okay, I''ll eat it," I tell her. "Do you like chili?"

    We do what we can and eventually stuff everyone full of food. ¡­Except for me. I eat a lot, more than everyone else combined, even. But I still don''t feel full. My power is aching for more food, but we need to make sure there''s still enough for breakfast tomorrow and I''ve already cleared out nearly everything I''ve found palatable to actually eat. We start raiding the house for clothing next: fresh clothes, warm clothes, hot-weather clothes, backpacks for Christine and Anastasia, not to mention flashlights, batteries, pocket knives, and everything else we think we might need.

    "How are we doing sleep?" I ask Emily while Christine and Anastasia are both changing. "We setting up a watch rotation?"

    "...I''m not sure it''d be a good idea to have Christine be on watch," Emily admits.

    "Definitely not," I agree, and not having Anastasia in the rotation goes without saying. "Just between you and I, though?"

    "It would be prudent," Emily agrees. "Do you think your powers will help you stay awake at all?"

    "Hmm. Maybe," I admit. "They prevent my muscles from getting tired, but I''m not really sure how to do the same for mental exhaustion."

    Even though I''ve swapped it out a couple times, my brain remains quite tired. I''m not really sure how that sort of exhaustion works, but I could look into it. ¡­But I don''t say any of that. I don''t intend to go into detail because that would start a conversation about the whole ''completely destroying and reshaping my entire brain'' thing and I don''t want to have that conversation. Ever.

    "Well, we should keep everybody awake a little longer, though," Emily says. "Let''s try to keep them busy."

    "Uh. Why?" I ask.

    She just gives me a look and I sigh. Right. Just trust her. It is, admittedly, not too difficult keeping everyone busy and awake; there''s plenty to do in order to prepare, and the war going on nearby doesn''t make for the calmest sleeping environment in the world. But I start to worry that everyone is just going to pass out from sheer exhaustion on the floor before we actually make it to whatever Emily is trying to keep people awake for.

    "Oh hey," Emily says suddenly, staring out a nearby window. "The moon is back out. Would''ve been nice earlier."

    Hmm. I don''t disagree; the extra light would have been nice. But I''m not really sure if it''s worth bringing attention to¡­

    To¡­

    I''m vaguely aware of my jaw starting to hang open, my body going slack as I stare at the sight above me. Above us all. The moon. It''s always a beautiful and terrifying sight, but something about it enraptures me now even more than it ever did before, digging into my attention like a cat''s claws. Looking at it, I almost feel lighter, like it''s trying to pull me up into the sky. It''s a bit of a terrifying thought considering the context, but in the back of my head I know, intellectually, that we don''t have to worry.

    After all, the Queen in the moon is dead.

    Its corpse still hangs in the sky, enormous tentacles trailing behind the shattered, lifeless rock like a comet''s trail. It was thirty years ago that this war started, and it was thirty years ago that, completely without warning, those massive tendrils burst out of the inside of the moon in a screaming flash of power and light. There are hundreds of recordings of it, from telescopes to phone cameras to satellites, and they all depict a horrific beast suddenly emerging from inside, thrashing violently enough to break the moon apart, and then dying barely an hour later. It still hangs up there, half-emerged from the shell of rock that our scientists are absolutely certain was not ever hollow, drifting along surrounded by all the floating fragments of what was once a pockmarked sphere.

    Those shards often break out of orbit and fall to Earth, most of them burning up in the atmosphere. It''s a special kind of meteor shower we call a moonfall. They''re always beautiful, but even more notable is how much likelier it is for people to get powers if they live underneath one.

    It''s like a bad movie. Superpowers come from the moon. Except for when they don''t, of course. Sometimes people just get powers, completely out of nowhere. It''s the rarest way for it to happen, but it happens, at least so far as anyone knows. I''m sure there are other ways I don''t know about, too. But the moonfall is reliable enough that the military always tries to launch a jet full of special forces operatives underneath where it falls, high up above where most aliens can get them, to maximize the chances of the people they most want to have powers getting powers. And oftentimes, this works. Exploiting moonfalls has been one of the big things humanity has started to do to slow down the rate we''re losing ground.

    ¡­Or so they say, anyway. I''ve always privately wondered if it''s propaganda or a bad rumor overblowing their importance. After all, astronauts had been to the moon plenty of times before it exploded and they certainly didn''t get any powers. Staring up at the moon now, though, I can''t help but believe it. I would be a fool not to. I can feel the moon now. In fact, I''ve been feeling the moon this entire time, ever since I got powers, without ever knowing it. Something tells me I''ll always be able to point to exactly where it is, even if it''s not visible in the sky at all. It almost feels like I should be falling towards it instead of Earth, calmly floating up into space like it was the most natural thing in the world.

    It''s mesmerizing.

    "Um, guys?" Emily says, a tinge of worry in her voice. "What''s gotten into you?"

    I don''t answer her. I''m dimly aware that none of us do. We all turned to look, and we no longer want to look away.

    "Guys!" Emily shouts, snapping her fingers in front of my face. That breaks the spell, and suddenly I''m myself again, fully anchored to Earth and trying not to gasp for breath like I nearly just drowned. The others are brought back to themselves just as easily, a simple touch or noise or shake being all that''s needed to end the hypnotic effect.

    "Okay, uh, new rule everybody," Emily says. "Nobody with superpowers is allowed to look at the moon."

    That¡­ that was it, wasn''t it? That was what she was waiting for. We needed to know looking at the moon would do that to us, so we don''t get caught off-guard later.

    "A-agreed," I say. "Let''s¡­ close the blinds before we sleep, yeah?"

    No one objects. We all agree to sleep in the same room together on a collection of pilfered mattresses and pillows, and I volunteer to take the first watch. The others all curl up together and swiftly fall asleep.

    In the darkness, I take a deep breath, open my senses, and let my fear fall away. The other Raptors surrounding us have replenished their numbers and then some, with upwards of thirty aliens surrounding our chosen house. It''s a bit difficult to tell their exact positions with the walls between them and myself, but the important thing is that they aren''t gearing up to attack us. That''s not their task. Not yet.

    But when it is, I''ll be ready. Because my new task is getting everyone out of this alive.

 8. Theyre Gone Now. But Im Not.

    I''m falling.

    It''s a slow, almost comfortable fall. Maybe ''sinking'' is the more appropriate term, though I don''t feel like I''m underwater. Though the air around me is thick and strangely resistant, it isn''t wet. I might be able to swim through it anyway, with how slowly I''m falling, but I don''t feel any real desire to. The pull is comforting. It reassures me that, should I ever just relax and let myself drift, I will end up exactly where I belong.

    I open my eyes, an impossible vision dancing before them. Before me are countless ever-shifting planetoids, worlds that could be and might be and isn''t that so wonderful? To be anything, but not everything, all at once? A limitless number of possibilities, waiting to collapse into a singular truth and then become infinity again?

    The thoughts and emotions hum inside me, feeling like my own yet so utterly alien to my normal fare that I have to wonder if I''m dreaming, and¡­ well, yes, that does seem likely. I blink a couple more times, looking around and trying to sit up and feeling the sleep paralysis of my body deny me. Stupid muscles, refusing to listen.

    ¡­But I don''t really need muscles to move, do I?

    I have a conscious control and understanding of my body that goes beyond my brain, now. The concept of ''lying on my back'' exists only so long as I will it to. I could shift my entire body to turn my back into my front. I could grow crystal blades out of my shoulder blades to push myself into a sitting position. I could simply will my nervous system into a state where it is already sending the signal for me to sit up, my muscles contracting and staying contracted, no matter the current state of atonia. The possibilities flood into my mind, endless and overwhelming. And all around me, something incomprehensible feels joy.

    It''s a happiness and excitement so intense that it crashes through me like a tidal wave, ripping open my mind in an instant. For that moment I do not exist, only that overwhelming happiness, but when it sees what it has done to me it retreats, putting me back together from the thousands of pieces it just shattered me into. I almost wish it hadn''t. I almost wish I had felt that joy forever. But that urge vanishes, too, and I am again myself.

    "...What?" I croak. This pleasant dream turned into a nightmare real quick, didn''t it? I suppose that should be expected. I''m probably traumatized as fuck.

    The feeling caresses me again, a soft squeeze of apology. But gentle this time. Careful. Distanced. Like tweezers holding a butterfly''s wing. Which¡­ okay, alright. I feel like that shouldn''t be reassuring at all, but it is somehow?

    "What''s going on?" I ask the ever-changing abyss. "Is this an insane hallucination dream or a superpower-induced vision dream?"

    There''s no answer. The feeling hesitates a bit, and then it retreats. I am alone here again, with nothing but my body, my thoughts, and the impossible, ever-changing worlds around me. Hmm. Well, hopefully I''m actually asleep and not teleported into some horrible fucked-up dimension from which I can never escape. Feels like it would be a bad way to go. I use my powers a couple more times, just to make sure I can. Shifting into different bodies, mixing parts of one body with parts of another. It works. It feels good, like stretching after spending all day sitting down.

    It''s honestly a little hard to stop. I try out some variation on all my forms, ending with the Wasp when I remember that my version of a Wasp body has a giant, gaping hole in its organs. Blood and acid leak out of me in a choked stream, pain screaming through my body as it was in the body of the Wasp I killed. I know this template is wrong, and it bothers me, but I don''t have a correct version. Maybe I can fix it?

    By looking at the structure of my wounds and the healthy tissue surrounding them, I can potentially extrapolate what this body would be like when uninjured. Symmetry is present in most parts of the body, which helps the reconstruction process a lot, but in the more severely damaged areas there isn''t necessarily a¡ª

    "Aaaahhhh!!!"

    Pain blooms throughout my body and I awaken with a jolt, new wounds opening all over me faster than I can shift them away. Sharp, pungent, and gibberish smells assault me from all sides, like I''ve been surrounded and assaulted by terrified wild animals in my sleep. Instinctively, I try to spit acid at them, but I only manage to cough it onto the ground below me, my torn glands unable to supply any pressure to the internal chambers. I twitch and shake, lashing out and trying to drive the monsters back, but¡­!

    "Stop! Oh god, stop! Wait!"

    Huh? Wait, why did that¡­ oh! Oh! I retract my limbs into my body, remove my acid glands, get rid of any part of me that could possibly hurt anyone. Please, please please please, is she¡­ wait, why am I doing this instead of turning human?

    I gasp as I wrench myself back into humanity, eyes glancing around and desperately seeking the three other people I shared a room with tonight. Christine is at the edge of the room hyperventilating. Emily has her hands reaching out towards Anastasia, aborted mid-movement as if she''s too afraid to get closer, and Anastasia¡­ Anastasia is bleeding.

    No. No, no, no! How could I, how¡­ wait. There''s a wild look in the child''s eyes, her whole body shaking as she stares me down. Blades of blood are poised to strike all around me, but their only source is a set of wounds on her arms, thin and long. Inflicted by her own claws. I never stabbed her. Thank god, I never stabbed her.

    ...Jesus Christ, where do I get off feeling relieved about this? Julietta, you fucking idiot, this is still your fault!

    "I''m sorry," I say, starting to stand but freezing when the blood blades around me twitch. "I''m so sorry. I didn''t realize I would shapeshift while I slept. It''s me. You''re safe. I''m not an alien."

    Anastasia doesn''t look like she''s really listening, though at least she''s not stabbing me anymore either. I have to calm her down. I have to solve this. Fix this. In the back of my mind my power churns, and though I keep it firmly away from anything alien I don''t have the focus to avoid a multitude of other changes. Of wondering if there''s something I could do to my face to help. To make me look more trustworthy. As if more of this damn power is somehow the solution to the problem it caused. The problem I caused.

    "It''s me," I repeat, as soothingly as possible. "It''s just me. You''re safe. I didn''t mean to scare you."

    Something about that gets to her, and the bladed blood-weapons finally droop. She takes a couple of hesitant steps forward, tears glistening in her eyes, and I open my arms to her. She rushes forward and accepts the hug, squeezing me with both her arms and the now-weaponless tendrils of blood. It''s¡­ a bit creepy, in the abstract, but I''m too busy living in a glass house to throw stones at that one.

    And based on the looks Emily and Christine are giving me, I''m definitely considered the creepier of the two.

    "Okay, well, I guess the good news is that we survived the night," Emily sighs, handing me a wad of clothes. "Get dressed, Lia. We''re going to have to carry a lot of spare outfits for you, aren''t we?"

    "Yeah, sorry," I say with a frown. "I mean, I can probably¡­"

    After a moment of focus figuring out how, I remove my breasts and genitals, leaving me smooth as a doll.

    "...There!" I say. "Less weird, I hope?"

    "Uh, no, definitely more weird," Emily says, she and Christine both staring at me with complicated expressions on their faces. "Please get dressed."

    "I am, I am," I grumble, slipping the outfit on. What do I even look like right now, I wonder? I guess it doesn''t matter. I should at least be trying to make Lia''s body my default. I shift into her. "So what''s the bad news?"

    "Huh?" Emily asks.

    "You said the good news is that we survived the night," I remind her. "What''s the bad news?"

    "You mean besides the fact that we''re stuck in the post-apocalyptic murder zone behind enemy lines?" Emily asks.

    "Yes," I say seriously.

    "No, Lia, that was pretty much it," Emily sighs.

    I nod. Not bad, not bad. It''s always a pleasant surprise when things don''t get worse. Although, on that note, I should try and take a moment to confirm it. Shifting into an alien sensorium for a moment, I relax a little as my stress and fear become so much more distant and reach out to see how many other Raptors are nearby. Hmm¡­ it''s a little difficult to tell with so many walls in the way, but it feels like¡­ a lot. And maybe some non-Raptor aliens, too. Oh boy.

    "Well, I have some bad news," I report, trying not to feel dread in the moments before I return my brain to a human one. I fail, and the dread only gets worse as the fear returns. "The number of aliens surrounding us has multiplied considerably. They''re not under orders to attack us yet, but we''re pretty firmly boxed in."

    "...I was afraid of that," Emily frowns. "It''s far from the worst situation we could be in, though. We''re not really able to outpace them if we were to try and run anyway. Taking advantage of the time they''re giving us to rest, eat, and breathe is probably the best plan."

    "You guys just want to sit here while we get surrounded by aliens?" Christine asks incredulously. "How do you even know this stuff, Lia? What do you mean by ''they aren''t under orders to attack us?'' Are you communicating with them?"

    "Sssort of?" I admit. "When I''m part or full Raptor I can kinda feel where any other Raptors are nearby. And I can just¡­ kind of tell that they''re supposed to follow us but not attack us somehow."

    "Somehow?"

    "Yeah, somehow," I scowl at her. "Y''know, the method by which you rip houses apart with your mind and suspend them in midair. Do you really expect me to know how it works?"

    Christine squirms a little, shrinking away.

    "...Fair point," she concedes. "Sorry."

    Hmm! Contrition! That''s nice. I can work with that.

    "Don''t worry about it," I allow. "Trust me, I get that this is stressful as all hell."

    "Yeah, because we''re all going to die," Christine mumbles.

    "We''re not going to die," Emily butts in. "Christine. Hey! Look at me."

    Christine glances her way, hugging herself tightly.

    "We''re not going to die," Emily repeats. "I promise. I know the odds for people in our situation are one in a million, but we''re one in a million. The three of you have powers. Good powers. And we''re only a few hours away from the edge of the incursion zone. Before you know it, the military is going to push in and rescue us. Or worst-case, they''ll fight the bastards hard enough to give us an opening to run. We''re gonna be fine."

    The distant sound of an explosion punctuates her words, though without knowing which side of the conflict is doing the exploding I''m not sure whether the emphasis is good or bad. Beside me, Anastasia shuffles a bit and squeezes my leg, staring Christine in the eyes.

    "It''s bad to give up," she chimes in softly, and I can''t resist the urge to give her a pat on the head.

    "...I know," Christine mutters bitterly. "Sorry."

    Hmm. Seems like that struck a nerve. Guilt centered around the concept of giving up? Or shame, maybe. Good to keep in mind. I wish I knew more about her, though. All this guessing is leaving us floundering on handling her and relying on her crush on Emily. But what''s the best way to figure out more about her? Hmm¡­

    I guess¡­ I could just ask? I clear my throat.

    "So, uh, Christine," I start, trying not to sound as awkward as I feel. "I feel like we¡­ never really got a chance to formally get to know each other."

    "...Being chased by aliens will do that," she deadpans.

    "Well, uh, yep, no arguments on that point," I agree. "But now that we have at least a little breathing room, I want to know more about you."

    "Is this really the best use of our time?" she asks. "I don''t¡­ I''m not really sure I can just have a casual conversation right now, Lia."

    I do my best not to flinch at that name and keep a smile on my face. My first thought, in that naturally bitchy part of my brain I always try to keep a hold of, is ''can you do anything at all, or will I have to carry you again?'' But of course, I don''t say that. I might be an asshole, but it isn''t because I want to be or because I think it''s okay. It''s just¡­ what my mind does.

    So I hold it in, and force my thoughts to move on to an answer that might actually be productive.

    "My goal here isn''t really to be casual," I tell her. "Our relationship is anything but casual. We''ve saved each other''s lives and we''re probably going to have to save each other''s lives more in the future. I wanna know more about you. I want you to know more about me."

    I want you to be motivated to help me. I want you to care enough when we get hurt to do something. Credit where it''s due; while Christine totally flubbed any and all power use and I had to carry her across the entire damn city, she very well might have saved my ass when she tried to use her powers on the Angel. Despite failing to affect it, the Angel still backed off. And that very likely mattered a lot.

    She''s not useless, no matter my internal grumblings. I just have to get her to try.

    "I don''t know what you expect me to say," Christine answers. "There isn''t really anything interesting about me."

    "Bullshit," I say. "That''s just a lack of self-esteem talking. What do you like to do? What do you think about? What do you and your friends talk about? It doesn''t have to be anything profound, you''re¡­ what, seventeen?"

    "Like you''re any older," Christine snaps.

    "I¡­" I start, and then I remember that I''m supposed to be Lia and I have no idea when her birthday is. "...I''m not trying to compare ages with you, I''m just trying to get you to be less self-conscious about sharing your hobbies."

    Christine looks away, but after a brief pause she finally, finally answers me.

    "...I''m pretty into anime, I guess?"

    The fuck is ''anime?''

    "Oh yeah?" I ask. "What''s that?"

    "Uh, it''s basically an old kind of TV show. Or movie. From Japan?"

    Oh, no wonder I haven''t heard of it.

    "Neat," I say. "I like old movies. I dunno if I''ve ever seen an ''anime'' before, but I''d be down to watch one sometime. What''s your favorite?"

    "Um¡­ I really like Gundam," she answers.

    "What''s that about?" I ask, because I have to constantly interject after every four-word sentence to keep this conversation moving. It''s like pulling teeth with this girl.

    "War, I guess?" she answers. "And how much it fucks people up."

    "Ah. Yeah," I agree. "It sure does that."

    I think I''m starting to see a bit more of the situation, here. I have with me a girl who, like me, isn''t a slave to the propaganda machine. Who sees no glory, no rightness in a united fight for survival against a heartless foe. Honestly, that makes things easier. I can be a little more real with her.

    "And I''m not sure if you''ve noticed," Christine says, "but I''m already pretty fucked-up as-is. Even the six-year-old is more useful than I am."

    "I''m nine!" Anastasia insists, puffing up indignantly.

    "...Really?" Christine frowns, examining the girl closely. "But you''re so short."

    "Y-you''re just way too tall!" Anastasia sputters.

    Christine shifts uncomfortably, slouching a little.

    "Don''t I know it," she mutters. "Look, my point is just¡­ please don''t risk yourselves to save me again, alright? Because it''s gonna keep happening. I''m gonna fuck up. I could barely handle life before the aliens attacked my house, I''m not¡­ I''m not gonna get better. You can just leave me."

    Woah, okay, what the fuck? I could tell she had self-esteem issues but I didn''t know it would be ''please leave me to get eaten by aliens'' bad. That''s¡­ not great, but for fuck''s sake at least have the presence of mind not to say it in front of¡ª

    "No!" Anastasia shouts, shaking slightly at my side. "Never! We won''t! Never ever!"

    Her. Yeah. Ugh.

    "Would you rather Lia get killed hauling me everywhere because I''m too pathetic to walk?" Christine snaps.

    "Nobody''s dying!" Anastasia shouts.

    "That''s right," I agree loudly. "Nobody''s dying! Also, new house rule: no suicidal ideation in front of the nine-year-old!"

    "Oh, don''t act like you haven''t thought about it!" Christine snaps at me. "I know the face people make when they see me as worthless. Well congratulations, you''re right. I am a liability. I know I''m a liability."

    "Your power is one of the strongest here!" I insist.

    "Well that doesn''t matter if I''m just gonna have a panic attack whenever I need to use it!" she shouts. "I can''t help you, Lia. I can''t. I''m just going to fall apart when it matters most because that''s what I always do. And you can take that as your official, number-one most interesting fact about me. Can we talk about something else now?"

    I mean, I''d really rather we didn''t. Because that''s a lot of unresolved baggage that needs resolving yesterday, and it''s actively imperative to our survival to do so as soon as possible. The problem is, my years of experience cleaning up other people''s metaphorical shit tells me that I can''t push her any more on this now. If I do, she''ll just get even more emotional, even more worked up, even more in her head about all her numerous failings. The only way I know how to progress this conversation forward is to give her time to cool off, regret yelling at me, and process her frustration into something a little healthier before I poke at it all over again.

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    We don''t have that kind of time, of course. We could need her in fighting shape in the next few seconds, for all I know. But it doesn''t matter. I can''t magically solve her problems that fast, because at the end of the day she''s not wrong. She has proven she will fail us when the chips are down. And that just fucking sucks for all of us, because I''m pretty sure we still need her. Emily''s definitely-not-a-power had us go pick her up for some reason.

    ¡­Not to mention, it would be a fucked-up thing to do to just leave her to die. I feel like I might be the sort of person to not really lose sleep over it¡­ which I don''t really consider to be a good thing, but it''s a thing I suspect about myself. Still better not to have to find out, and it''d certainly affect Anastasia in a big way. The poor girl has probably already lost her whole family to this. As the oldest person here and the only technical adult, it''s my responsibility to keep her and everyone else safe.

    I''ve already failed at that, of course. Anastasia''s own power forces her to hurt herself, and unless I get a lot stronger a lot faster I won''t be able to stop her from fighting. I won''t be able to stop needing her to fight. And then if we actually get out of here, the military will scoop her up immediately¡ªshe couldn''t hide her powers even if she wanted to, since she has so many physical alterations¡ªand they''ll force her to fight for them, too. Everyone with powers is forced to be a soldier. Age, health, criminal record, none of it matters. The military will make you fight.

    Anastasia will never know peace again. And there''s¡­ there''s nothing I can do about it, is there? My fate is the same. I''ll be forced to fight, too, and I won''t even be doing it under my own name. My plans for after we get out of this place are just as war-torn, just as hopeless. I''m devoting my life to impersonating a girl I hate so that Emily doesn''t have to fight. It''s laughably unfair, but she''s the only one who has a shot at getting out of hell. Better her than no one. What am I supposed to do, if not open the path?

    I''ve always known my life was fucked. Even when everything has gotten this much worse, it''s easy to accept. I''ve just got to stay useful, keep helping people, make sure everyone stays together, and get us all out of here alive. It might not feel like I''ve made progress with Christine, but I have. Now I have to make it up to Anastasia for scaring her this morning, and then maybe we''ll still have time to form a real plan after Christine cools off. Oh, and we should all eat breakfast! That should help everyone''s mood. I head for the cupboard, seeing what nonperishables we can turn into a hearty meal.

    ¡­The answer is not a lot, but when Emily sees me looking she steps in and starts making some simple things. Cool, I can leave her to it. Time to deal with the kid.

    "Hey, Anastasia," I say, staring at her nearly knee-length hair as she twists it between her fingers. Wasn''t it shorter yesterday? Damn, it grows fast. "Did you sleep okay?"

    She shrugs, shrinking in on herself in a manner that I interpret to mean ''no, not really.'' Which, yeah, understandable. Kind of a dumb way to start the conversation on my part.

    "I had a weird dream," she mumbles.

    Hmm. Just a weird dream? Not a nightmare?

    "What was it about?" I ask.

    "Um¡­ I''m not sure," she admits. "It was like¡­ two stars orbiting around each other. And they kept shooting fire at each other. Kept¡­ burning each other. One after the other. And I think they said something, but it mostly just hurt my head."

    Uh. Hmm. Okay.

    "Were you like, floating in a void?" I ask. "Falling really slowly?"

    "Yeah!" she nods. "Yeah, I was!"

    "...I had a dream like that too," I say, glancing at Christine. Yep, she''s staring at us. "Christine?"

    "Uh, yeah," Christine says. "I don''t really remember it well, but¡­ I think I dreamed of something like that? I think I remember the falling."

    "It kind of felt like looking at the moon," Anastasia says softly.

    "...Yeah," Christine mutters. "Yeah, the moon was¡­ something."

    I glance at Emily without really thinking about it.

    "Hey, don''t look at me," she says, sliding me a bowl of room-temperature tomato soup. "I dreamed of getting chased by aliens, like a normal person."

    "Yeah, like a normal person," I deadpan, taking a sip of the soup. Woah! This is nothing like I expected. I thought tomatoes were a fruit?

    "Normal for our situation," she huffs. "So what, you guys just get power dreams now?"

    "I guess we''ll have to see," I shrug. "We''ve only slept the once since getting powers. Unless¡­ either of you had powers before this whole mess?"

    "Nope," Christine says.

    "That would be illegal!" Anastasia agrees, offended. Wow, what a good little citizen.

    "Yeah, so, not a lot of data yet," I say. "Signs are pointing to yes, though. Not that I''m complaining, honestly? It was way better than a nightmare."

    I almost miss it, but Emily''s mouth twitches into an irritated scowl for a moment when I say that. Hmm.

    "Jealous?" I prod her shamelessly.

    "No, Lia, I''m not feeling the slightest bit worried or inadequate about being the only powerless person stuck in the middle of an incursion zone," Emily fires back, though her words lack even a hint of the genuine emotion I briefly saw on her face, so it comes off like a joke. Hmm.

    "Your power is being the only one of us with your head on straight enough to make the plans," I say, rolling with the deflection. Again, I remind myself that my curiosity can wait; Emily might be full of shit, but at least she has that shit together.

    "Hey now," she smirks at me. "You know I''m anything but straight."

    Ha! Yep, that''s a critical hit on Christine. I snort with amusement, since that seems more prudent than flirting back. Yes, the person I''m impersonating is Emily''s girlfriend, but for now it''s better if Christine thinks she might have a shot. And considering her self-esteem issues, that''s an easy hope to crush.

    "Are you two dating?" Christine asks anyway, because of course she does.

    "Yeah," Emily confirms casually. "It''s an open relationship though, we''re poly."

    We are? Y''know what, fuck it, sure. It''s a good save, and easier cover for me.

    "Yup," I back her up. "Don''t tell my parents, though. They''re bitchy enough about the gay thing by itself."

    Anastasia and Christine tense up at that. Oh, god damn it, I''m so stupid. Of course they do.

    "Are your parents¡­ alive?" Christine asks slowly. And like, fuck, no they aren''t. They haven''t been for years. I''ve been in this situation before, I''ve lost everything, I''ve moved households¡­ but I can''t say any of that. Because I have to be Lia. Ugh, why the fuck did I agree to this? I glance desperately at Emily, but she gives me a subtle shake of her head. Don''t tell them. Fine. Fine!

    "...Uh, as far as I know, yeah," I mutter, irritated with myself. "They live outside the metropolitan area. I was just Emily''s plus one to her foster sister''s birthday party when all this went down."

    "Sheesh," Christine grimaces. "What a birthday present."

    Fucking tell me about it. But hey, at least Christine is joking again.

    "My family were all at Grandma''s house," Anastasia says softly, and the entire room quiets around her. "We all have dinner together a few times a week. We would eat together and then my parents would go home first and my big sister would go out with her friends and me and my brother would stay with Grandma and Grandpa and we would watch old cartoons together from when they were kids."

    I almost interject to ask ''what was your favorite,'' but I''m too slow. Anastasia keeps talking, her voice empty.

    "My sister''s friends were busy today so she went home with Mom and Dad. But my grandma and my grandpa and my brother and I all got on the couch and we started to watch Danny Phantom which is about a boy who is a ghost but only sometimes because he''s not dead yet. And then the sirens happened. A-and Grandma and Grandpa can''t drive very well anymore so they said we should wait for Mom and Dad and¡­ and we waited. We waited because Mom and Dad were gonna come right back."

    "Anastasia, you¡ª" I try to say, I try to tell her she doesn''t have to talk about this, but she just ignores me and keeps going.

    "Then everything started hurting," she says. "I got a headache and I heard voices and I turned into a witch. And everyone was saying that it would be alright and I was lucky and I would be a superhero and then they fell apart. They fell apart and I watched them and they''re gone now. But I''m not."

    There''s a pause. None of us try to stop her from continuing. I''m not sure if we can. We can see the tears building in Anastasia''s eyes, but she''s not crying. Not yet.

    "I left. Some aliens hurt me so I hurt them back. I found Mom''s car on the road. She and Dad and my sister fell apart, too. Some Raptors were eating them. I stopped them. And I cried for a while. And then I left because I didn''t want to be there anymore."

    The tears are flowing now. But she keeps talking.

    "Why did they fall apart?" Anastasia asks. "Why did that happen?"

    All eyes in the room turn to me. Which I guess is fair. I do have an answer, one simple enough for a kid and true enough for an adult, too.

    "...Because the Queen chose to kill them all," I answer simply. "Maybe she did it because she''s just an animal, lashing out at everything around her. Maybe she did it because she''s a person, and she''s just flat-out evil. But either way, the Queen here did it. She''s a monster, and every last bit of this is her fault."

    Because that is the advantage of apocalyptic war, isn''t it? Everything might be screwed, but at least it''s simple. It''s not a relationship, it''s not a power dynamic, it''s not politics, and it''s not a fucking puzzle. Literal monsters are dropping out of the goddamn sky and committing active omnicide against our entire species. There is no moral debate to be had here; they are the motherfucking bad guys, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. There is a huge and obvious target for all our hate resting its cataclysmically fat ass in the southern Chicago suburbs and by god the human race is going to storm over there and rip it the fuck apart or we will die trying.

    There is no need to sugarcoat it. The situation does not get more complicated than that unless we actually somehow win.

    "How do you¡­ how do you know it''s the Queen?" Anastasia asks between sniffs, tangling more of her hair up between her fingers. I glance at Emily and mouth the word ''hairbrush'' and she nods, quietly slipping away.

    "Emily and I were outside when it happened," I tell her. "And it was right after the Queen came to Earth. Emily lost her brother, too."

    "Oh," Anastasia says.

    "That, and I can feel it," I continue. "Sort of¡­ in the air. Pressing against us. That started when the Queen dropped."

    "Oh. Oh! That''s¡­ the Queen?" Anastasia asks as I carefully guide her out of her seat and towards the couch. She looks at her own fingers and the extra-knuckle-length claws at the end of each of them. I feel her power pressing angrily out against the air, shoving and fighting against the Queen''s with a victim''s rage.

    "I was wondering if I was the only one who felt it," I admit, trying to slowly pull the conversation in a different direction. "I never really thought about it being anything other than the Queen, honestly. It feels like she''s still trying to cut us."

    "It does," Anastasia says quietly. "Yeah. It''s the Queen? I thought¡­ I thought that was my power."

    "Wait, what are you two talking about?" Christine asks.

    "In a sec," I tell Christine, putting up my hand to shush her. "Why did you think it was your power, Anastasia?"

    "Well, my power only works if I get cut," she says. "Or if I cut myself. I thought it was¡­ instructions. I guess."

    "Oh, Ana," I say softly, and she flinches a bit so I quickly make sure to ask. "Is it okay if I call you Ana?"

    "Um, yes," she confirms quietly. I gently direct her to sit in front of the couch, and Emily returns with a stiff-looking hairbrush. Perfect. I take it and flash her a thank-you smile, sitting down behind Anastasia.

    "I''m sorry, Ana," I tell her.

    I wish I had something other than a worthless apology. I wish I could be a good adult, a good person, and tell this kid that I won''t ever let her be in a position where she has to hurt herself anymore. I want to say that. I should be able to say that. But it would be a lie. A blatant and dangerous lie, because it''s not a promise I''m strong enough to keep. Our first encounter with an Angel is proof of that.

    It''s pathetic, and it''s wrong, but we need her. We need Anastasia. We need a fucking child to fight for us. And I know that''s morally inexcusable, but I don''t see us surviving without her and I don''t think the ethical high ground in this situation is letting everyone die. So at the absolute bare minimum, I have to make sure we''re doing right by Anastasia in every other possible way. She''s part of the team, not a weapon or a tool. And I have to help her in every way I can, to even out just a little bit of the bottomless debt we''re accruing.

    May as well start with all this hair.

    "You don''t have to be sorry," Anastasia says. "You didn''t do anything."

    That''s exactly the problem, though. I can''t do anything. So I don''t answer, and just carefully start to brush out Anastasia''s hair. I''d offer to cut it, but I don''t think that would actually work. My knowledge of her biology tells me that the hair on her head is only going to grow faster the shorter it currently is. If I shaved it all off right now, it''d probably hit over a foot long within the hour, with the growth rate curving sharply down to near-zero at around the knees. Why does her body do this? I have no idea. But she has to live with it now, and I figure the best way to deal with absurdly long hair is absurdly fancy braids.

    "I''d like to braid your hair, if that''s alright," I tell her. "I think your body isn''t going to let us cut it very short, but it''ll be easier for you to move and less of a bother if I wrap it up nice."

    She stiffens a bit, her fingers freezing in her tangles as she glances back at me.

    "...You know how to braid hair?" she asks.

    "Yep," I confirm. Of course I know how to braid hair. I''ve been the big sister to like a dozen different girls.

    "She taught me how to do this," Emily says, pointing at her own braids. Which¡­ is actually true. I did that. Julietta. Not Lia. I''m surprised she''s willing to mix the histories of the two, but I''m thankful. It makes me happy to be acknowledged. Terrified for the stability of our collective lie, of course, but happy. ¡­Though I guess everybody else who actually knew both of us is probably dead anyway.

    Anastasia doesn''t answer us, but she leans in a bit when I do some of the brushing and releases the death grip she''s had on her hair to let me comb it all out. I hum one of my favorite songs as I go through the motions, ironically a bit awkward to perform now that my limbs work so much better. But it''s nothing I can''t adapt to. Adaptation, after all, has always been one of my best skills.

    "Yours feels a lot nicer," Anastasia says softly.

    "Hmm?" I ask, holding her hair firm in my fist so it doesn''t hurt as I work out a bad tangle.

    "Than the¡­ than the Queen''s," she says. "Your¡­ power, I guess."

    "Oh," I say. "What does it feel like?"

    "Like¡­ hope, I guess?" she hedges.

    Oh gosh. Okay.

    "Woah, wow," Emily snorts in amusement. "That''s so corny!"

    "W-well it does!" Anastasia insists. "It''s like¡­ it''s like anything can happen. Anything. And good things kinda don''t feel like they''re gonna happen right now, so isn''t that hope?"

    "Kid''s got you there," Christine deadpans.

    "Hnng. I guess," Emily says, frowning slightly.

    "What''s all this about powers having feelings, anyway?" Christine asks. "I don''t feel anything like that."

    "Well, I do, and it seems like Ana does too," I say. "Gotta say, I''m happy to not be the only one. Power stuff already makes me question my sanity a little."

    "Mood," Christine grunts.

    "What do I feel like, Lia?" Anastasia asks. I don''t flinch at the name. How do I make this sound good¡­?

    "You''re like¡­ karma, I guess?" I say. "Do you know what karma is?"

    "It makes good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people," she answers, humming in approval. "Yeah. Okay. Like a witch of justice."

    "What''s with this witch stuff?" I ask.

    "It''s because I''m a witch!" she insists firmly. "I have gnarled claws! And super long woods hair! And I''m a gosh dang bloodbender! Which is evil!"

    Nuh-uh, nope. I''m nipping that shit in the bud. No intrinsic evil in this house.

    "It''s not evil or good until you do anything with it," I tell her. "Good and evil is only in how your actions help or hurt people. If you help people with your¡­ blood-ender, then it''s good! And you did do that."

    "Bloodbender! It''s bending, not ending!"

    "Of course, sorry, sorry," I smile. "Also, your claws aren''t gnarled. They''re cute! Like a kitty cat!"

    "Wh¡ªno!" Anastasia sputters. "Claws aren''t cute!"

    "How could you say that?" I gasp. "Ana, do you not think kittens are cute? Little baby kittens?"

    "I''m not a baby kitten!"

    "But your claws are so cute!"

    "I''ll claw you!"

    "But then how will I braid your hair!?"

    Christine interrupts us by clearing her throat, likely saving me from a horrible mauling at the hands of an adorable baby kitten.

    "Circling back to this power vibe horoscope stuff," she says, "you''ve got me curious what mine feels like."

    Uhh. Oh. Hmm.

    "...Why''d your face go half monster skin for a second there?"

    Aw, shit. Did it really?

    "Sorry, it''s just¡­ your power kinda feels like the Queen to me?" I hedge. "It, uh. Y''know. With the cutting and separating and stuff."

    "...Oh," she frowns.

    "What about you, Anastasia?" I ask, hoping she''ll save it.

    "I guess it kind of does," she admits. "It''s similar. But your power doesn''t keep telling me to cut myself, it''s more that¡­ I''m a mess and I should be organized? But the cutting is still part of it."

    "Oh. Geez. Do you¡­ do you think that''s bad?" Christine asks hesitantly.

    Anastasia shrugs.

    "It doesn''t feel that bad. Like¡­ maybe a little, but it''s nowhere near as bad as Emily''s."

    Silence. I pause in brushing Anastasia''s hair for a moment. I can''t help it. Back in the kitchen, Emily slowly looks our way, a huge and disturbingly fake smile on her face.

    "Hmm?" she asks. "Ana dear, do I feel like I have powers?"

    "Well, not right now, but¡ª"

    "Powers don''t just go away, do they?" she presses.

    "Don''t cut her off," I snap. God, she''s acting so obviously suspicious. Now I have to cover for her. "I know powers are a bit of a sore spot after what happened, but you don''t need to bite her head off. I''m sure there''s a reasonable explanation for what she felt."

    That should do it. Nothing like a Noodle Incident to act as a convenient explanation you can then decline to explain. Christine is too socially awkward to press us anyway.

    "...Right, sorry Anastasia," Emily concedes after a pause. "I genuinely don''t have powers, though. Believe me, if I had some magic trick to get us out of here, I''d be using it."

    What were the dozens of magic tricks you used to get us this far, then? I wish I could ask that out loud, but of course I don''t.

    "Well, you felt something, right Ana?" I say instead. "Even if we don''t know what it is, it could be important."

    Emily shoots me an annoyed look, but I ignore it. Not encouraging Anastasia to tell us the things she feels with her apparently-quite-sensitive power senses would be a fucking dumbass thing to do, pointlessly hurting both our survival chances and Ana''s self-esteem. Never discount or dismiss the weirdly perceptive kid while in dangerous territory, that''s Eldritch Bullshit Survival 101. ¡­Also, I''m curious.

    "I guess it could be something else," Anastasia concedes. "I didn''t know the Queen''s power was from the Queen. I thought it was mine because it was all around me, and this power just felt like it was coming from your direction."

    "Uh-huh," Emily says flatly.

    "What was it like?" I ask. "When did you feel it?"

    "I felt it right before we all looked at the moon," Anastasia says. "It was¡­ sort of like the opposite of yours? Like anything could happen, but it didn''t matter because we''d probably mess up. It felt like¡­ like a vulture. Circling above and waiting for us all to die."

    I turn and look Emily dead in the eyes, her fake smile twitching with annoyance.

    "Well," she says, that smile still on her face, "maybe it''s good I don''t have powers. Because that one sounds really unpleasant."

    Uh-huh. Yeah. Like maybe the kind of power you might not want anyone to know about? The kind of power that could make people worry if they could trust you? The kind of power someone might be incentivized to hide for selfish reasons?

    "Be sure to tell us if you feel it again, okay Ana?" I say, still staring at Emily.

    "O-okay!" Anastasia promises. "Sorry! I would have said something sooner, but I sort of forgot with the moon, and I didn''t really know what it was until you told me about the Queen anyway¡­"

    "No worries," I say. "It might be nothing, but we are in enemy territory. You never know when we could unexpectedly be under attack."

    Speaking of, I should check on our friendly neighborhood monster army. While Emily gives me a look like she''d be flipping me off if I didn''t have a nine-year-old sitting in front of me, I shift into the ever-tempting fearlessness of a Raptor brain, sensing the aliens around us. They''ve got us boxed in good, now, and I think they want to keep us that way. I''m confident: they''re waiting for another Angel. Wherever we are on the priority list, it''s high, but it''s not number one. The aliens are definitely intelligent enough to understand the threat we pose and the best counter to that threat. Personally, I''m less than inclined to keep waiting here, warm and ready to be eaten like a burger patty at a fast food joint. Knowing that, I can''t imagine a world where sticking around is the right call to make.

    "So, Emily," I say. "What are the plans for the day, anyway? Are we sticking around or making a break for it?"

    She blinks, frowns for a moment, and then answers after her usual delay.

    "...I feel like we should stick around, yeah?" she says. "Why invite violence when we''re being allowed to rest?"

    "Because I can tell that the Angels are currently busy," I say. "That''s why we''re being allowed to rest: we''re wasting our best chance to leave. Does that change your calculations at all?"

    She scowls at me.

    "...No, Lia, it doesn''t," she says. "We need food, we need rest, we need time. When we''re ready, we''ll go. Trust me."

    Should I? I know I agreed to this, but there are only so many brazen lies and ominous statements I can tolerate before that trust starts to wane.

    "Lia," she says firmly. "Come on. We didn''t get each other this far just to die squatting on some random person''s sofa. We just need time."

    I sigh and turn back to my work on Anastasia''s hair. Fine. I''ll give her time.

    I''m just worried that''s all the aliens need, too.

 9. Chill Out And Drink Your Juice Box

    "Any movement, Lia?" Emily asks.

    "Definitely," I nod. "They''re slowly shrinking the circle. I think they''ve decided they don''t like us scrounging for more food."

    "Oh, no, no, no, not today¡­" Christine worries under her breath.

    It''s the morning of the fourth day since we found ourselves trapped in the incursion zone (four fucking days out here, I still can''t believe it) and once again we''ve found ourselves anxiously prowling the streets instead of sitting in the relative comfort of a nice house. I''d been hoping that we could just hole up in one spot and wait out whatever it is that Emily insists we stick around for, maybe break out some board games and get downright domestic while the apocalypse rages around us, but it was not to be. Between the four of us¡ªand especially Anastasia and I, who apparently have ravenous appetites¡ªwe tend to clean houses out of their food stockpiles pretty fast, not to mention bottled water and other fluids. And without food and water, well¡­ we obviously have to move.

    The aliens don''t like it, but we''ve survived so far. The bulk of their forces still just follow us in a wide circle, but we''re hit with a few probing attacks pretty much any time we have the audacity to try and move. It''s not as bad as it could be; Anastasia is an absolute storm of violence whenever an alien gets close, so between the two of us we''ve kept the team pretty safe. We might be a disgusting mess of unwashed homeless women breaking into any house that looks lived in and clearing out the pantry, but damn it we''re alive, and that''s honestly a lot more than I expected from us at this stage.

    We all desperately need to wash ourselves, as no matter how many fresh outfits we steal, the grime, blood, and alien guts caking our body don''t go away. Emily, Anastasia, and I have at least taken a sponge bath with bottled water once or twice, but Christine had a panic attack when she tried and refused to try again. Not that it really makes her that much more rank than the rest of us; Christine makes up the difference by simply wearing the most clothing, which contains things the majority of the time. The stench only gets particularly bad when I have to swap over to alien senses, though that''s a concerningly frequent occurrence.

    I think Anastasia is the cleanest out of all of us, and I couldn''t figure out how until I saw her washing her body with her own blood after a fight. And that¡­ kinda makes sense, actually? She controls it finely enough that she doesn''t leave a single drop of it on herself when she''s paying attention. It really does clean her up. I''m legitimately tempted to ask her to clean me that way, too, but the sponge bath was already an unpleasant mess for my still-hyperactive senses. I can''t imagine my newfound ability to experience touch would handle what amounts to an automated car wash very well.

    "You''ve got this, Christine," I assure her. "You''ve been practicing. You can feel the nearby buildings, right?"

    "I¡­ yes," she mumbles. "Yes, I can."

    "It''ll help a bit if you can give us a path, but you don''t need to worry about it," I assure her. "If you can''t do it, we''ll smash our way through. It''s alright either way."

    It would be insane to have a plan that relies completely on Christine, after all. That''s the main way I''m learning how to deal with her. If she''s capable of functioning, great! But we can''t expect her to be. It''s a recipe for failure to not have a backup plan, and weirdly? The more I deemphasize the degree to which we''re relying on her, the more comfortable it seems to make her.

    "Yeah," Christine nods, sure enough. "Yeah. Okay."

    At least, I think that''s what''s happening. I consider myself to be pretty good at understanding people, but Christine still feels like a black box a lot of the time. I''m still trying to pick her apart and reverse-engineer wherever the hell her thoughts are coming from. She''s obviously traumatized by something; her self-esteem is so low you could use the pit for a geothermal plant.

    ¡­Now probably isn''t the best time to worry about it, though, because we''re currently surrounded by increasingly aggressive aliens. None of them are close enough for us to have line-of-sight with them, but I can feel them around us and they can¡­ well, I don''t think they can quite tell exactly where we are the way I can with them unless I go full Raptor mode, but they can at least get a pretty close guess. I''m not quite sure what''s going on with the aliens, but I know their sense of smell is way more powerful than the human equivalent.

    Though at the same time, I find it a lot easier to handle than my unfamiliar human senses. I guess their brains are just better adapted for it? It''s still a bit overwhelming, but I''m slowly figuring it out and learning to recognize what all the different smells are.

    "Okay, there," Emily says, pointing at a house ahead of us. "I see a decoration in that window. Think we can make it there before they attack?"

    The fact that most houses were unlived in and empty means that most houses don''t have any food. But of course, Emily always seems to know the right way to go in order to find the next safe place.

    "Maybe," I admit. "That''s pretty close. They''re converging on us, though."

    "W-what do you think has got them so worked up?" Christine asks.

    "How should I know?" I ask. Maybe something on the war front? We don''t have any idea how that''s going, though. We''re still too far away.

    "Well, you always know weird things about the monsters," Anastasia says quietly, her body full of tension as she constantly glances around, looking for danger. For targets. She''s already bleeding, having learned the hard way not to wait to be wounded whenever we leave the house. I hate it, but I never stop her.

    "...Not always," I grumble, but I take a deep breath of the air and try to see if anything comes to me. I guess the very fact that I can tell they''re agitated without even being able to see them counts as a weird thing I know about them, but I''m not sure I can intuit why they''re agitated. I''ve never really felt that way when I use a Raptor brain.

    "Could still be useful to know, if you figure it out," Emily hums.

    "Now''s not the time to wonder about it," I answer. "They''re close. Coming from behind that fence."

    Anastasia moves immediately, placing herself in front of Christine and Emily. She tries to put herself in front of me, too, but I don''t let her, quickly unzipping my jacket and shrugging it off in preparation. I don''t have a shirt on underneath, but I don''t tend to keep breasts on my body while we''re moving around anyway. My go-to outfit lately has been an easily removable top and a short skirt, since with a stretchy enough waistband the skirt stays on when I become a Raptor. It protects my decency a bit, which is nice, but it''s mostly just good because it means Anastasia never mistakes me for the enemy.

    "Oh god, oh fuck," Christine swears, and at least for this I can''t blame her. Anastasia and I have regenerative abilities. She and Emily do not. It''s a miracle they''ve managed to avoid serious injury so far.

    "Just keep moving, we''ve got your back," I promise her. "Straight through the yard, right?"

    "Right!" Emily confirms, and we speed up as the Raptors leap into view. I crouch, my body shifting into a full Raptor form, though modified from days of skirmishes. I''ve made my body bigger, with longer forelimbs for better slashing attacks and a superior range of motion to let me defend myself from the sides. To counterbalance, my tail needs to be longer, too, and I''ve modified the teeth to be more incisor-like, long and thin and based more around puncturing deep into an alien''s body than biting off chunks of meat. I also gave the body a rudimentary voice box, and while I don''t have anywhere near complex enough of a vocal system to speak, I can at least bark to get people''s attention or send signals, which can be extremely useful.

    I''m kind of proud of the design. Is that weird? It feels weird. Now''s not the time to worry about it, though.

    I throw myself at the enemy, crashing into their ranks before they can rush in and surround the others. Anastasia backs me up, blades of blood carving up the aliens on either side of me as I corral and distract the enemy, doing my best to keep them in her range without letting them attack her back.

    "WASP!" Emily shouts out from behind us. Shit! I bark twice and rush back towards Anastasia, but the damn thing is already in range. I don''t really have any intuitive way to tell the difference between Wasps and Raptors with my extra senses; they feel more or less the same to me, except for how they move. That''s usually more than enough, of course, but this Wasp actually walked all the way into range before suddenly taking to the air to shoot at Anastasia. Did they do that on purpose!?

    Again, it''s not the time to think about that. The glob of acid flies towards Anastasia, and while her regeneration ability is good I don''t think it''s going to be good enough if that hits her. I tackle her to the ground and take the shot to my back, shivering with pain as it devours my flesh faster than I can regrow it. But there''s only so much of the stuff; it''ll stop eventually. I can take it.

    My task is to protect.

    "Lia!" Anastasia shouts, but I just bark twice at her again and she quickly scrambles back to her feet and climbs onto a healthy part of my back. I dodge the next acid shot with a jump, quickly noting the positions of every alien I can feel to determine if Emily and Christine will be safe if we try and fight the Wasp rather than run back to them. I think¡­ we need to fight the Wasp. It''ll be dicey, but the situation will never stop being dicey until the flying acid turret gets taken care of.

    With a roar I leap at the house closest to the Wasp, digging my talons and forelimbs into the outer wall to leap again. The Wasp sees what I''m doing and spits one more acid glob before rushing away, but I leap right at it, shielding Anastasia with my chest as I get her into range. I feel a pulse from her power in the air, the feeling of karma thinning out a bit as she stretches the range of her control to its limit. Her blades start to fray and lose force, but she catches the damn thing, slicing through its relatively thin wings and letting gravity take the kill. Hell yeah.

    We don''t land all that well ourselves, though. I crumple when I hit the ground, my legs and arms too damaged by acid to function for another second or two. Anastasia is nearly thrown off my back, but I feel her power thicken again, blood pouring out of her and gripping hard around my torso.

    "The others!" she shouts, and I feel my own power reserves wane as I stitch together my wounds and push myself back to my feet. Damn it, the Raptors are closing in on them! We were too slow!

    "Christine!" Anastasia calls out, and I grit my tail-teeth. That''s a mistake. Yes, Christine has the power to protect them both all on her own, but calling her name is just going to make her turn around and¡ª

    "Ahhh!" Christine shrieks, suddenly realizing how close the Raptors chasing her and Emily actually are. She breaks into a sprint rather than defending herself with her power, but that''s a race she''ll never win. It only gets the Raptors even more inclined to catch her. Would it kill you to fight for once, Christine!?

    "Damn it!" Emily growls, and to my surprise and horror she tackles Christine to the ground. The pair goes down screaming, letting the Raptors easily catch up to them. The pack circles around to box them in, which¡­ why, though? Why not just kill¡ªoh shit wait there they go.

    One of the Raptors lunges at Emily, who grabs Christine by the shoulders and rolls both of them away. For some reason I don''t understand, this makes the Raptors hesitate. With Christine now lying on top of Emily, the aliens don''t seem to know what to do. Which¡­ what? Why? They have both of them dead to rights, and I can feel that they know it.

    Doesn''t matter. Anastasia and I get there seconds later, so blood carves through the remaining Raptors like a serpent through water. But we''ve really poked the beehive now, and I''m not sure going indoors is going to get them to stop this time.

    Still gotta try.

    I stand up and rapidly shift into my human form, Anastasia staying gripped to my back as I grab Emily and Christine to help them to their feet.

    "They''re pissed now!" I announce. "We run!"

    "Lia, you need to stop constantly jumping in front of attacks!" Emily snaps. "Ana can block shots like that with her power!"

    "Is now really the time!?" I growl.

    "Yes!" she insists. "If you run out of biomass because you keep taking acid baths and letting monsters eat you, we''re fucked!"

    I get that. But if she expects me to put Anastasia in harm''s way just to save on food intake, she''s crazy. And besides, if Anastasia blocks an acid glob with her blood, the acid will destroy that blood, meaning she''ll have to¡­ well. Replenish it.

    And that just means she''ll get hurt anyway.

    "Just focus on running for now," I tell her, and thankfully that''s a hard thing to argue with. A whole lot of Raptors just rushed onto the street, with the stomps of a Behemoth not far behind.

    I really like not being able to feel fear.

    Sometimes it''s hard to know if the best choice is running or fighting. We''ve definitely made the wrong choice plenty of times over the past couple of days, but we''ve scraped through it. The aliens still aren''t swinging at us with anywhere close to their full force strength, after all, and Anastasia in particular is pretty damn dangerous.

    ¡­But she''s not unstoppable. Not by a longshot. She''s limited by the amount of blood she has access to, and while she can do a lot with it she can''t do everything all at once. Even ignoring the many, many reasons we don''t want her to be bleeding any more than absolutely necessary, using too much blood too quickly leaves her lightheaded and struggling to think straight. There''s a hard limit to the amount of aliens she can fight off at any one time, and the force coming at us now exceeds it considerably. So running naturally seems like the best option, but¡­ well. It''ll only work if they eventually stop chasing us.

    They always have so far. Let''s hope the luck holds.

    "Oh god, oh god, oh god," Christine huffs. Come on, we''re running for our lives here. Stop swearing and breathe properly.

    "Christine, can you get that wall!?" Emily shouts, pointing at the house we''re sprinting towards.

    "I¡­ I¡­!"

    "Christine, please!"

    "Grabbing you," I announce, since she''s starting to hyperventilate, her run speed staggering. She panics even harder for a couple seconds when I pick her up from behind and swing her into a princess carry, but thankfully we''ve done this enough times that she''s starting to get used to it. There, now you can waste air as much as you like. It''s tiring to carry both Anastasia and Christine like this, but my reserves can take it.

    "Please, Christine!" Emily practically begs. "You can do this! We know you can do this, you practiced!"

    That''s just freaking her out even more, but I can''t really take over the conversation while figuring out how to keep us all alive. The eyes I just grew in the back of my head aren''t liking what they''re seeing. Anastasia preps her blood tendrils to attack, ready to aim for the legs of the closest set of monsters.

    "Come on, come on, come on¡­!" Emily says frantically. We''re close to the house now, within seconds of running right into the wall. Easily within Christine''s range.

    "Die!" Anastasia shrieks as she attacks, starting to lose her own cool a little. I start to decide what I''m going to do if that wall doesn''t move. Smash it? Climb it? Both. I''ll swap Christine over to one hand, grab Emily, and break in through a second-floor window. That should be at least a little troublesome for the Raptors to follow us through, and it''ll give Anastasia a strong chokepoint if they insist on following. Can''t jump high enough with human legs, though. I''ll need to turn into a Raptor. ¡­With hands, I guess? Fuck, no time, we''ll wing it.

    "Ahhh!"

    Christine suddenly shrieks and the house in front of us explodes, the parts expanding into the air and freezing. Oh, okay, nice! I sprint as fast as I can, doing everything in my power to make it to the foundation before the Raptors run us down.

    "Drop it!" Emily shouts, and Christine does, closing the house back around us the moment I step inside. The walls thunk back into place, just as sturdy as they were before being taken apart, and the Raptors skid to a stop outside. Okay. Okay! Now just don''t break in, don''t break in, don''t break in and murder us all even though there''s nothing stopping you¡­!

    They don''t. I feel them prowling around outside the house, but the attack is over. Shakily, I set down the people I''ve been carrying and collapse onto a nearby couch.

    "Good job, Christine," I breathe, grinning at her. "You saved our asses."

    She doesn''t answer, just sitting on the floor and seeming even more miserable than before I gave her the compliment. ¡­Why, though? Did I say something wrong? I really meant it, she finally helped out a lot. I think if I had smashed a window or otherwise broken in here, the Raptors would have kept chasing because they''d keep smelling a direct path to us. It''s the only thing I can think of to explain why they don''t engage when we''re in a house.

    But¡­ I just don''t know why that matters. They know we''re here. They know how to get to us. I''m not sure how smart they are but I know they have object fucking permanence. I just don''t understand. If it were really as simple as them just not wanting to fight until they have an Angel to back them up, then why do they fight us when we leave a building? There''s clearly something they want beyond just killing and eating us.

    ¡­Hmm. They hesitated when Emily used Christine as a shield. That looked very much like a planned maneuver, not a desperate attempt to save her own life by sacrificing Christine''s. Emily is the one who took us so far out of our way to rescue Christine in the first place, too, and the first thing I noticed about the girl is that her power feels suspiciously like the Angel''s and the Queen''s.

    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    I don''t know how these puzzle pieces fit together yet, but I am really not liking the picture I''m starting to see printed on them.

    "...So is there food?" Anastasia asks, reaching up to tug at her loosening braids. Without even thinking about it, I move over and fix them for her.

    "Yep," Emily confirms, opening up the cupboard. "Plenty. Is anyone super hungry right now?"

    "I mean, we all just ate before leaving the last place, right?" Christine says, still breathing pretty hard. "I''m full."

    "Alright, then," Emily nods. "Lia, get over here and eat all of it."

    "Huh?" I blink.

    "Get over here," Emily repeats, "and eat every single fucking thing in the entire cupboard. We''ve stalled enough. We''re getting out of here."

    "Excuse me?" I ask, raising an eyebrow. "I thought you were insistent about us waiting to be rescued."

    "I was, yes," Emily says. "And I stand by that being the best move we could have made, but the fighting hasn''t been getting any closer to us. Humanity isn''t winning. I thought the odds of them pushing in as deep as they could go were good since the Great Lakes were such an important strategic spot, but sometimes you have good odds and things still don''t work out. So this is plan B: we stuff you full of as much food as we can so you don''t die of chronic martyr disorder and then we all make a run for it."

    Ugh. I can kind of see the logic, but¡­ ugh. Food. I hate eating food. Some of it''s really nice, don''t get me wrong, but most of it is just awful and when I try to make a whole meal only out of the stuff I actually like Emily gets mad at me. Apparently, an entire jar of peanut butter doesn''t count as lunch. I walk over and glance into the cupboard, hoping for some kind of miracle, but¡­

    "...You want me to eat all of this?" I ask, cringing.

    "Lia, I''ll shove every last box of uncooked pasta down your throat myself if I have to," Emily insists. "Unlike everyone else, your power is fueled by your food intake, and so far we haven''t reached an upper limit. Shit''s going to get rough out there."

    "Isn''t it bad to say words like that around me?" Anastasia asks. "Mom said I''m not allowed to swear until I get older."

    "Ana honey, if we make it out of here alive you can swear as much as you damn well please," Emily answers, still scowling at me.

    "Oh, cool!" Anastasia smiles, perking up.

    "Now eat, Lia," Emily demands. "You know I''m right."

    Yeah, I know. It''s obviously the best play, it''s just really fucking annoying that I get a power that simultaneously runs on and ruins food. Not that I ever really enjoyed food before gaining the ability to touch and taste, but I can tolerate food being boring. I''m used to it. All of this¡­ it''s kind of overwhelming.

    "...Look," Emily sighs, seeing my hesitation, "you can turn into a Raptor first if it helps. They sure don''t seem squeamish."

    I turn around to follow her gaze and spot the living Raptors devouring the ones Anastasia and I killed outside our window, brutally and efficiently swallowing as much of their dead fellows as they can fit in their bellies. If there''s one thing we''ve learned about the aliens these past four days, it''s that they don''t seem to feel grief. I think that''s one of the biggest pieces of evidence we have against them being people so far.

    "It, uh, probably will help, actually," I admit. Everything is still overwhelmingly intense in an alien body, but it''s just¡­ easier, somehow. Everything I do in Lia''s body just feels wrong by comparison. "If people are okay with that?"

    "I don''t mind," Christine shrugs.

    "...If you have to," Anastasia frowns.

    "To eat five boxes of uncooked pasta?" I say. "I think I might."

    She nods, seeming to accept that, so I make the shift. Inhumanity washes over my mind like a refreshing shower, and all of a sudden the cupboard is just another task. Something to complete without complaint or hesitation. I get that this is concerning. I get that I shouldn''t like it this much. But I''m starting to suspect that if it didn''t make moving around in my human body so awkward, I might be using a Raptor brain all the time. This is why people get so into drugs, isn''t it? Not having to worry as much about stuff is just so nice.

    I don''t feel inebriated. I don''t feel like I''ve become someone else. If anything, I feel like how I''ve always wanted to be. Someone strong enough to always do what I know I should do, rather than someone too weak to resist her own emotions.

    I can''t help but glance at Christine as I reach up with my tail to grab the first part of my meal, but she isn''t privy to my private musings and doesn''t even try to match my multi-eyed gaze. All the better, really. These thoughts and feelings aren''t productive anyway. My task right now is to eat.

    "God, we''re all gonna be so fucked up after this," Emily sighs.

    "What, only after?" Christine deadpans.

    "Okay, we''re going to be even more fucked up after this," Emily corrects. "We''re gearing up for the big push now, ladies. Anyone have anything they need to take care of? Ana, let''s get you some juice and Gatorade. Christine, I hit you pretty hard earlier. You doing alright? Any scrapes?"

    "Um, I''m fine," Christine says.

    "You sure?" Emily asks.

    "...Yeah," she says. "Sorry for panicking. I should''ve¡­ I know what I should''ve done."

    "There was no good option in that situation, Christine," Emily lies easily. "We''ve been lucky so far. It''s not your fault it''s running out now."

    Christine frowns and says nothing. No one comments on the fact that Emily tackled her to the ground and used her as a shield. Anastasia probably didn''t even notice, being laser-focused on the aliens. Christine probably thinks she deserved it. I''m not sure what to think, so I just rip open the next packet of uncooked instant mashed potatoes and drop the powder down my gullet. It''s not too bad, actually. I bet I''d like mashed potatoes.

    "Eat faster, Lia," Emily says. "We don''t want to stay a second longer than we need to."

    Though the feeling is heavily muddled by the fact that we''re inside, I do my best to keep track of the aliens as I eat. They must be keeping track of me in the same way, right? They seem to react to me looking for them like this, something about the way they''re feeling changing over time whenever I do it. Some part of me feels like I should know what it is, too. Like if I just give into my instincts, it''ll all suddenly make perfect sense. But I can''t do that. My instincts want to listen to those urges that say my task is wrong, that I shouldn''t be selecting it myself. My instincts almost gave in when that Angel ordered me around. Almost like¡­

    Almost like how I''m starting to feel right now. I swallow the rest of whatever the heck I''m currently eating and shift back into human form, panic hitting me like a truck as my brain changes.

    "Guys, I think we need to go."

    "Keep eating," Emily snaps.

    "But¡ª"

    "Eat!" Emily demands. "Don''t stop until something breaks in or you''re done."

    Why would¡­ oh. Oh, damn it. She thinks running is already impossible. A fight is inevitable now, so I may as well be prepared. With a hesitant nod, I shift back and double my efforts. I have a lot left to devour.

    "Uhh, what do you two know that I don''t?" Christine asks.

    "We''re about to fight again," Anastasia says, her claws moving towards her wrists.

    "Chill out and drink your juice box, little cutter," Emily snaps. "You''re gonna need the blood sugar."

    Jesus Christ, Emily, did you have to phrase it that way? ¡­Though actually, she must be pretty shaken up if she''s being that crass. Which I guess makes sense. Her power is obviously something information-related, with how she seems to know things she shouldn''t and constantly makes wild decisions that somehow work out for us. And now we might be getting attacked by an Angel again, with nothing to bail us out of it this time. I wonder what she knows about that?

    Whatever it is, it clearly isn''t good. After a moment''s thought, Emily shoves an entire case of sports drinks into her backpack before walking into the closest bathroom, rummaging around for a bit, and coming back with a bottle of iron supplements.

    "Eat both of these," she says, pulling two pills out of the bottle and flicking them at Anastasia.

    "Uh, isn''t iron overdose like, super deadly for kids?" Christine asks.

    "Just do it, Ana," Emily insists. "You''re going to need it."

    Anastasia nods and downs them both without hesitation. I don''t interfere; I know she''ll be fine. Even if it did poison her, she''d process a poison out of her system too quickly for it to do much. I just don''t like the implication that she''s going to be losing a lot more blood than usual.

    "Christine, come with me," Emily continues, heading towards the basement. "There was a bunch of military crap on display in the bathroom. I bet these people had a gun safe."

    "Okay, but¡­ even if they do, it''s a safe. How would we open it?" Christine asks. Y''know, the girl with the ability to open literally anything.

    "You just help me find it. Leave opening it to me."

    Oh okay she''s not even gonna bother to acknowledge that one, I guess. Probably the right play, honestly. They head downstairs, and without Emily''s constant anxious task-finding to fill the silence, I''m stuck with nothing but the impending sense of triumph and glory in the air to keep me company. Not our triumph and glory, of course. The aliens can feel that an Angel is coming, and it means something profound to them that I can''t really describe. It''s different from the first time around, when that Angel just suddenly appeared and took control of the situation like it had always been there. This is less immediate, less¡­ present. Something different is coming. Something far more dangerous.

    "Got it!" Emily''s muffled voice calls out from below. "Nice, they''re well-stocked."

    "How the hell did you do that?" Christine asks.

    "Here, you take this one."

    "I don''t know how to use a gun."

    "You pull the trigger and the bullet comes out of the hole, Christine. It''s not rocket science."

    "I mean, arguably it is!" Christine yelps, the two of them returning back up the stairs. "And seriously, how''d you know the combination?"

    "The numbers were worn," Emily lies.

    "How''d you know the order?"

    "Lucky guess. Lia, you done eating yet?"

    Just about. I wish the packaging for all this stuff wasn''t so full of plastic, because I might be able to digest cardboard, actually? I could potentially just gobble everything whole, but unfortunately the plastic is definitely a no-no. Still, I manage to devour the last thing left in the cupboard, and I gotta say¡­ I feel kinda good. There''s an odd comfort in having more food in me (or in my power, or wherever the hell the food is) than I''ve ever had before. Like I''m not just a couple mistakes from running out of regeneration and dying for real.

    I''m like, maybe a dozen mistakes from running out. And that''s way better. A lot more wiggle room, that. I shapeshift back into a human and put my jacket back on, giving Emily a thumbs-up.

    "Please don''t make me shoot this," Christine whines, staring at the handgun she''s holding like it''s going to explode.

    Christine, if we could make you do things we''d all be in a very different situation right now. ¡­But of course I don''t say that.

    "That''s for your protection," I tell her. "When a monster barrels your way, maybe twitching your finger will turn out to be a little easier than you expected."

    "As long as you don''t shoot Anastasia or me, I don''t care what you do with it," Emily grunts.

    "...Hey," I complain.

    "Oh, you''d walk it off, Lia. Don''t bitch about it."

    Alright, that''s one too many.

    "You okay, Emily?" I ask. "Like seriously, you''re acting even more suspicious than usual."

    She stares at her gun, occasionally performing a swift movement to do something like eject the magazine or flick the safety before going back to stillness. Again, like she''s waiting for instructions.

    "...I don''t know what you want me to say, Lia," she says, and I can''t help but frown a little at the name. Does she really have to rub it in so often? "We''ve been skirmishing and surviving for days, but this is where it comes to a head. This is literally do or die, and our best shot at survival already failed to pan out. I''m just stressed, okay?"

    "And it has nothing to do with the power you definitely don''t have, I assume?" Christine says.

    "Stop fucking interrogating me, Christine!" Emily shouts, and Christine flinches away, breaking eye contact and shrinking down immediately. "I don''t have a power, and you will never under any circumstances tell or imply to anyone otherwise. You got that!?"

    "I-I¡­"

    "Do. You. Got. That."

    Christine nods rapidly, unable to speak as tears start gushing from her eyes. Well that bubble is officially popped. Great idea, yell at the girl with so much anxiety she can barely function. Way to step in some trauma and twist your heel, Emily. I grab a tissue from a nearby box and start walking over to give it to her, but Christine turns away from me and shakes her head frantically, so I stop and just¡­ pretend not to see her crying. Best I can tell, that''s what she wants.

    "Okay, so, tensions are high, and with good reason," I say, trying to restabilize things a little. "Anastasia, we''re probably going to be up against an Angel. Emily, Christine, and I ran into one before we met up with you, and¡ª"

    "Woah, you did!?" Anastasia gapes. "You survived an Angel?"

    "...Only barely," Emily scowls. "We got completely bailed out when the military started their counterattack and it left. The whole point of my strategy thus far was to try to avoid another confrontation with an Angel, but nope! The military''s goddamn useless, as always! Should have never relied on them to keep us alive, and now we''re fucked, we''re so goddamn fucked!"

    "Emily!" I snap. "You said it was our best shot, right? You said you stood by that."

    "I¡­ yeah," Emily admits. "I mean, it was."

    Not ''I thought it was.'' Just ''it was.'' Hmm. A cracking sound from outside the house rings through the room and Anastasia immediately slices open her arm, crouching low and fully ready for threats. It says a lot about my life that I''m not terribly surprised that the nine-year-old who had to watch her family die earlier this week is currently the most competent member of my group.

    "Then it''s not your fault, right?" I say, grabbing Emily''s shoulders and looking into her eyes. "You made the best move you could have made, it didn''t work out, that happens. You make the plans, and I clean up the messes. That''s how it''s always been, and that''s how it''s gonna stay. You make whatever fucking call you think will get us out of here, Emily, and I''ll make it work. Just find us that path, okay?"

    "B-b-but I don''t know what the right path is anymore!" she babbles. "Every second we stand here talking I''m only thinking up worse and wor¡­ which means we need to leave right now holy shit everyone we need to leave right now!"

    Uhhh, fuck, okay!?

    "You heard her!" I shout. "Christine, Ana, let''s roll! Wall or door, Emily?"

    "Wall!"

    "All the walls," Christine mutters, and then the house explodes around us, ripping itself open and exposing us in every direction. I''m about to scream at Christine to stop, but then I see the dozens of Raptors she has suspended in the air around us as well, about to breach into the building.

    "Fuck yes, Christine!" I praise her (it didn''t go well the first time, but I don''t know what else to say when she does well) and then I shift into my combat form.

    "Bigger!" Emily orders me as she jumps onto my back, and I oblige, increasing my size and scooping my tail between Christine''s legs and tossing her onto my back as well while Anastasia gets up front. "Go, go, go!"

    Christine groans miserably and I break into an immediate sprint, Anastasia''s blood blades carving through the immobilized Raptors around us out of pure spite. Not that I blame her, but still¡ª

    "Focus forward, Ana!" Emily barks. Hell yeah, exactly what I wanted to say. Good to know she''s quick to bounce back from a breakdown, at least. "We''re running east and not looking back! Straight to the front lines!"

    Uh, only one of us is running here? And for some reason it''s the girl that couldn''t walk unassisted until four days ago. Whatever, I won''t pretend this isn''t our best way out of here. As long as I have the energy reserves, I won''t get tired and can maintain a full sprint for unreasonable lengths of time. If anything, I''m glad we''re finally doing this. I don''t have to micromanage people anymore. I don''t have to keep everyone''s spirits up. I don''t have to herd cats. All of that shit is out of the way.

    All I have to do is carry everyone on my back and make the whole trip myself. I can''t even begin to describe how much less stressful that is.

    A pack of Raptors jump out in front of us, and while Anastasia carves most of them open I just keep charging straight, leaping over the bodies in front of us without caring if they''re dead or alive. I just have to keep going. Just keep going, and don''t stop. My task is to get everyone out of here.

    I''m overcome, suddenly, with a feeling of directness and specificity. My mind knows, somehow, of an indication of one lacking designation. The indicated is incomprehensible; the indicated acts with madness; the indicated is accused; the indicated is failing communication; the indicated is enemy. The indicated is to be killed. I don''t understand. What is indicated? What am I supposed to kill?

    There is surprise, but it has been deemed irrelevant. The one who asked what to kill is to be killed.

    ¡­Wait, I''m supposed to kill myself? That''s not right. I''m not gonna do that. I can''t protect everyone if I''m dead.

    There is agreement on the trueness of that statement, but it has been deemed irrelevant. Combat engagement is now occurring.

    A pulse of power causes every one of us to shiver, a brief touch of that need to split, to create more from less, designate a fraction of something as important, as noted, as more than just the whole, that hated, wretched whole. To designate one as two or three or four, to make it so, to cut and rend and declare and destroy. It is a rejection of fullness and oneness and vagueness and broadness, the unapologetic essence of¡­

    DiV-s--N.

    It reaches into me, suffuses me, disgusts me¡­ and then leaves just as quickly, like a snake flicking its tongue into my ear. My eyes follow the feeling as it retreats, and immediately catch on the figure of a monster cresting the roof of a house far in front of us, gleaming crystalline blue in the morning light.

    It looks nothing like any alien I''ve ever seen before, with its entire body being covered in miniature versions of the sapphire blue blades that tip the limbs of its lessers. Every inch of it is composed of these crystal dagger scales, yet rather than act like a beast laden with armor, it''s a sinuous, flexible monstrosity, with numerous tentacles emerging from a round central body that constantly flow and shift. It has no apparent front or back or top or bottom; the tendrils seem to move relative to each other across the surface of the main body with the same ease that they dance slowly through the air, even as it stares at us without approaching. And oh, does the Angel stare. The only breaks in its blue, scaly flesh are ringed, black-and-white eyes that follow us with mad caricatures of a human pupil, patterns along the monster''s body connecting them to each other with lines like constellations.

    It is horrific and beautiful and I was made to obey it, why am I denying my purpose? How meaningless and worthless my life must be, to hear the commands of an Angel of God and to still turn away and say "no."

    But of course, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about being called worthless, so I can''t help but glower back, point my tail at the bastard, and roar. Of course I reject you. Of course I do! None of us are going to die today. That''s the most natural thing to want in the world.

    And again, there is surprise, but again, it is deemed irrelevant. My head hurts. My senses are swimming in things I don''t understand. But I know that much, whatever it means. I watch as a Raptor is ordered to the Angel''s side, and the Raptor obeys. And I watch as two tendrils reach out, grab each side of the beast, and then rip it in half.

    Each piece of the bisected Raptor tumbles off the roof, twitching and bleeding. Huh! Freaky, but one less Raptor for me to worry about, I guess? But then I realize both halves of the corpse are still twitching, until they suddenly regrow their missing halves all at once. And so two Raptors start rushing our way.

    "Oh, fuck," Emily mutters. "I mean, okay, that''s not a huge deal. We''ve fought a bazillion Raptors before."

    Then the Angel rips off one of its own arms, the arm starts to twitch, and our confidence, fittingly, is cut into a million pieces.

 10. I Have Someone To Save

    As the twitching alien tendril falls from the roof, new organs blooming out from it into an entirely new copy of the Angel, the thought running first and foremost in my mind is ''I should probably stop running directly towards that.''

    I keep running anyway, because I''m not yet sure where else to go and running is certainly better than stopping. Emily isn''t giving me any alternate directions either, though I''m not sure if that''s because this is the best path or because she''s a bit shell-shocked by the dismembered tentacle thing. I bark at her, trying to get her attention and hoping she''ll figure out what I mean.

    "Left!" she says, because of course she gets what I mean, god damn I love how she does that. I break left immediately, tearing through someone''s yard and trying to get at least a fence or something between us and the Angel. Line of sight might not mean a whole lot to the aliens, but they can still see things so it can''t hurt to deny them that.

    Especially given the Angel''s weird eyes. Who knows what''s up with those. I rush across the ground, the dry, unmaintained grass of the yard crinkling between my toes with every thudding footfall. In the rush of adrenaline¡ªor whatever weird alien equivalent is in my bloodstream right now¡ªmy mind feels clearer than ever, obsessing over every tiny detail of my footfalls, charting a course for each step to ensure I run at my maximum speed with minimum risk of tripping. I''m ready as the recently-cloned Raptors jump over the fence to attack us, already leaping to the side so I can stab one with my forelimb.

    Anastasia gets to it first, shearing the monster in half with a rising arc of blood. But as she does we feel that pulse of power, that demand for separation as creation, and both halves of the fallen Raptor ripple and bubble as they regenerate into wholes.

    "Stab, Ana!" Emily shouts. "Don''t cut!"

    "R-right!" Anastasia confirms.

    Is that really all there is to it? I guess we''ll see. My number one focus is just going to be on maintaining maximum speed as much as physically possible, since it''s pretty clear that if we let ourselves stay in one place for more than a second we''ll get completely swarmed. ¡­As opposed to just regular swarmed, I guess.

    I might be faster than other Raptors, but we''re directly in enemy territory rushing towards an active battle zone. There are plenty of Raptors already in front of me. More dangerously, I''m not faster than Wasps¡­ and I don''t think I''m faster than that Angel, either. That one might be particularly bad.

    The moment we''re over the next fence, the monsters are back in view and closer than ever. The multi-tentacled abomination moves like nothing I''ve ever seen before in my life, effortlessly twisting from limb to limb with complete disregard for its resulting orientation. It reminds me almost of one of those novelty plasma globes, the ones that look like an ever-shifting ball of lighting that twists and reacts to your fingers when you touch the glass casing. It''s almost hypnotizing the way the Angel flows as it moves, gliding across the ground in a manner completely detached from any living being I''ve ever seen before in my life.

    I kind of want to move like that. Is that weird? I feel like that''s weird. It''s definitely not something that I should be thinking about right now, fleeing for my life with the responsibility of keeping three other people alive literally weighing on my shoulders. But for basically my whole life, as long as I can remember, I grew up in a body that more or less just didn''t work. I''ve been tuning it out as much as I can, since we''re in this whole life-or-death situation, but just walking and running in a normal human body feels as alien to me as doing it as a Raptor. It feels wrong to me. I have to actively suppress the instincts I''m used to: the vertigo from speed, the constant search for walls to brace myself against, the flashes of panic when I realize I don''t have my cane¡­ running my mind on someone else''s brain tends to help bury those instincts, but somehow deep down they''re still there. I still have just enough of me to be terrified of how little of me is really left.

    What''s the difference between a body like Lia''s, a body like this Raptor''s, and a body like that Angel''s? I''m scared to find out, because I''m pretty sure the answer won''t be anywhere near as much as I feel like it should be. And the way the Angel moves is beautiful. Maybe that''s just the Raptor brain talking, in the same way it feels so unnatural and strange to not drop everything and kill myself for disobeying the monster approaching me. But maybe it isn''t, and I''m not sure what that says about me other than the fact that I''m still really bad at not letting my mind wander while running for my life.

    ¡­I guess that could be the part of this that''s Raptor-brained. My task doesn''t require a lot of thinking, and while my odds of death seem quite high I just can''t bring myself to be afraid of that because I can''t be afraid of anything at all.

    Step, step, jump, step. Outside the realm of my thoughts, the world is a blur of movement and a rhythm of claws against the ground. Above all else¡ªeven speed, for it is essential to speed¡ªis balance. Balance as I push each foot off the ground and drive myself forward. Balance as I leap over a charging Raptor and bat away its tail as it tries to yank me to the ground. Balance as the three girls cling desperately to my back, the slightest jolt of uneven footing threatening to send them tumbling into an army of hungry maws. I am their life and they are my Task. We must run, so I run.

    But despite my best efforts, I am not running fast enough. Perhaps I shouldn''t be surprised that a plan with ''step one: have Julietta use her legs'' is already encountering a snag. A week ago, the closest I could get to running was to smack the ground with my cane harder so that people remember I''m behind them and slow the fuck down. Yet now I''ve slipped into a monster''s body like a second skin, wrapping up everything I used to be into brand-new packaging, so it almost made me believe there was someone different inside.

    Anastasia attacks the Angel as it rapidly gains on us¡ªit and its clone, not that I can tell which is which anymore¡ªbut as she reaches out to strike at the edge of her range, another pulse of power reaches out, briefly hitting my senses for just a moment and seeming to disrupt Anastasia''s control. I feel her flinch on my back and a large chunk of her blood falls to the ground, left behind as I continue to run. Still, the brave kid immediately gathers what she has for another attack.

    "Wait, Ana," Emily says firmly, twisting around and putting a hand on her shoulder. "Don''t attack. Let it come closer."

    "Closer?" Anastasia asks, scared and a bit incredulous. I leap over the back of another intercepting Raptor, gouging it with my talons as I use it as a springboard.

    "You felt it, right?" Emily asks. "It pushed you away. Your power is like a balloon. The more you expand it, the thinner it gets, until the slightest poke can make you pop."

    "Pop!?" Anastasia yelps, turning to her.

    What is Emily talking about? This is the first I''m hearing of this. I''m a little busy focusing on the Angel behind us, watching how its undulating limbs hook into and carry it across walls just as quickly as it seems to move across the ground, and decide to head for the road. It''ll have dangerously long sightlines, but the Angel is way better at cornering than I am and avoiding straightaways will put me at too much of a speed disadvantage. That monster is gaining on us, but the faster I go the more time I buy us and the closer to our destination we get before the inevitable fight.

    "You''ll be fine," Emily assures Anastasia, squeezing her shoulder a little tighter and pointing to the Angel. "Stay focused. Look at your target and listen to me. Your power has a range. Inside that range, you can move your blood. But you can also keep other powers out. That''s how you and Christine protect me from the Queen. And that''s how the Angel is going to protect itself from you."

    "W-what do I do, then?" Anastasia asks.

    "You wait for their balloon to expand," Emily says, "and then you pop it. Christine!"

    "W-what!?" Christine yelps, nearly falling off my back.

    "You been listening?" Emily asks. "Because if there''s any time we''re gonna need you, it''s now."

    "I-I don''t know if I can really help¡­"

    Are you kidding me, Christine? Is this a joke? You can get stuff out of my way. You can blow up objects close to the ground so their pieces block pursuers. You can rip structures apart in front of me and then reform them around things. Anything with a brick or concrete foundation thick enough could probably let us give the Angel the slip just like that!

    "You take things apart," Emily says. "Living things are made of parts. I''m pretty sure you can explode aliens."

    Or maybe you could have just done that the whole time! What!?

    "N-no," Christine stammers. And then, a bit more firmly, "No."

    "Christine," Emily says in that classic, patronizingly pleasant customer service tone, "we''re going to fucking die."

    "I-I know, but I can''t," Christine insists. "I can''t just do things! It''s too much! I''m not like you or Lia or Ana, none of this¡ª"

    A crashing sound cuts her off as a Behemoth suddenly walks through a house in front of us, splintering the wooden frame and shattering the drywall with all the ease of wading through a kiddie pool. Seriously, why didn''t they do that the whole time we were taking shelter? No time to turn, that''d just get us caught. We''re going under the legs.

    Christine screams bloody murder as I barrel directly towards the gangly Behemoth, not sure if I can rely on my reflexes to actually dodge its legs but not having much in the way of choices. I''ve been one of those, if only briefly. I know how its legs work, the sort of angles it''s designed to be stable with¡­ but I don''t have time to try and analyze it for some hidden weakness, it''s already here.

    The first leg moves predictably, though the jerking leap I have to perform to dodge it still almost knocks everyone else off my back. It''s the second strike that I fuck up on. Not even the fifth, fourth, or even the third. I fuck up right at round two, before I even manage to get under the thing at all. The next giant, bladed leg is on its way to cut me in half, and while I might actually survive something like that nowadays I don''t think it would bode well for our escape chances.

    But as always, Anastasia''s got it covered. A child cuts herself to make up for my mistakes, and the limb that was about to shear me in half is torn apart in my stead. The massive monster stumbles as its weight suddenly unbalances from the loss, and that''s all the time I need to jump around the back limb and keep running. Thank you, Anastasia, thank you. I''m so sorry.

    Another pulse of power pushes against me from behind, and the Angel picks up the discarded limb with a tendril as it passes by, rushing under the Behemoth after us and hurling the leg our way like a javelin. I dodge to the side, barely avoiding the crystal spear as it passes us and clatters to the ground ahead of us¡­ where an entirely new Behemoth starts to form out of it and stand back up.

    Out of the frying pan and then back into the frying pan, like a flipped omelet. We don''t even get the progress of the fire. This is crazy! What the hell is this nutty power? How come I have to eat my weight in peanut butter in order to have enough mass to shapeshift but this thing gets to generate free Behemoths out of thin air!?

    Trying to go under the legs didn''t work well last time, so I veer off to one side of it. I can''t give it a wide enough berth to prevent myself from being attacked while still heading mostly in the right direction, but only being under threat from two legs instead of four might help. Emphasis on ''might.''

    I have to dodge this time, though. I can''t just let Anastasia keep saving us, especially with how her power seems to make it easier for the Angel to use its power. So fucking focus this time, Julietta. Quit getting distracted and get prepared. It''s not a matter of whether you can do this or not. You don''t have a choice.

    Failure isn''t excusable, regardless of whether or not it''s in any way my fault.

    One step, two, three¡­ now. Feint right, dodge left. The Behemoth doesn''t fall for it, taking a swipe at me, but I kick off the ground again and let it barely pass by. The next leg comes for me, too, but I''m ready for it, having learned my lesson and avoided jumping too far off the ground. Two more quick steps, and the blade whiffs by me. We''re home free. I did it. I did it!

    Then Anastasia cuts a leg off anyway.

    What? Damn it, no! Another pulse of power slams into my back, devoid of physical force but still a crushing weight against me, clawing at my mind in eager anticipation of seeing me cut apart. Shit, the same thing is going to happen again! I suppose the Angel could always rip the limb off itself, but that would at least slow one of its bodies down a bit. Did Anastasia panic because I cut it too close? Should I be taking a more circuitous route after all?

    I flinch in shock as, in the same moment I start to panic about this, Anastasia rips a deep gouge across the entire length of her arm and launches the blood at the Angel and its clone all at once as two giant, impaling spears of crimson. She shouts in fury, her own power flaring out as she does, emboldened by her rage and her injury. And this time, they don''t dissolve. Anastasia reaches out to the Angel at the same time the Angel reaches out to the Behemoth, and her spears strike true.

    Both Angels are impaled dead-center, knocked back and sent collapsing onto the road behind us as Anastasia''s blood rends them from inside, puncturing countless holes without ever cutting a piece off.

    "Holy shit, Ana, yes!" Emily whoops. "That was perfect!"

    Anastasia just nods, the grip of her knees on my back loosening a little as she presses the deep wound on her arm firmly against her body. She''s still awake, still glowering at the Angel, but that attack just left a lot of blood behind. While her tiny body has a lot more of the stuff in it than the average kid, it''s clear she''s not in good shape. I bark loudly a couple times.

    "What''s up¡­ oh. Oh!" Emily yelps. "Christine, grab Ana! Don''t let her fall!"

    Christine jolts and takes a moment to comply, but she successfully twists around and gets a firm arm around Anastasia, though it''s a little awkward since the girl is sitting behind her.

    "Take deep breaths, Ana," Emily says as we continue to make distance from the dying Angel. "You did good. You did really good. Just don''t fall asleep now, okay?"

    Yeah. She really did well. She protected us, but she had to hurt herself to do it. It''s not right. It''s not. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it so much. And yes, I get that I do it too, but I''m not nine years old, damn it! Still. Given the size of those wounds, she very well might have just killed an Angel. That''s incredible, and it almost certainly saved our lives.

    But then, of course, that horrific mass of tentacles reaches inside its own wound and rips itself in half. It twists and bubbles and regenerates into two new wholes, and then it continues to rip off parts of itself to expand its army. In the end, all Anastasia did was buy us a bit of time and convince the monster to stop holding back. But you know what? I''ll take it. It''s more than I could ever ask of her, and now it''s up to me to make sure the time isn''t wasted.

    I wish there was something more I could do than run. It''s harder to do that, now, since Anastasia is barely conscious. She''s holding on, but her attacks are slower, her decision-making is poorer, and I can''t simply rely on the obstacles in my way being cut down before I need to deal with them. I can feel her swaying on my back, and she would have long since fallen off if not for Christine holding onto her. At least she can do that much.

    Minutes of sprinting pass, my energy reserves slowly burning as my alien muscles tire and get replaced with identical, fresh copies. The Raptors still hound us and the Wasps start to swarm, slowing us down as I have to bob and weave wildly between sprays of deadly acid, but something''s weird about it now. Especially with the Wasps. Given how many of them there are, the attacks on us are strangely infrequent. Some of them even seem like they''re intended to miss, to just try and slow me down or corral me. I don''t like it. There''s nothing I can do about it, either, and that makes me like it even less.

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    Maybe it''s possible to return fire, though. I do have a mental repository of Wasp biology, and while the acid organs are damaged I could potentially figure out how to repair them and fire back¡­ but would that even help? There''s a ton of Wasps, and they''re designed to attack from above. Even if I could fire an acid glob high enough to reach them, they could just fly out of my range and continue attacking me anyway because they have gravity on their side.

    ¡­No reason not to have the trick in my pocket though, right? I''ve already been thinking about this for the past few days, and finally cracking this problem and solving it could be key to getting us out of here alive. I just need to¡­ oh, shit.

    It''s back. And it has brought a lot of friends.

    I can feel them. The Angels. A swarm of them, something that shouldn''t even be possible because that''s not what Angels are. They''re the powered aces, the super-dangerous singular threats that might only number in the single digits in any given incursion. Even the Raptors and Wasps around me seem perturbed, confused, overwhelmed¡­ I don''t know how I feel it but I do, the pervading sense that this is wrong, this is a lie, this isn''t what Angels are because Angels are special, unique, exalted, chosen! They cannot be copied so cheaply, and yet¡­ and yet¡­!

    This¡­ this might be the closest thing I''ve felt to fear while in this body.

    A dozen Angels¡­ no, two dozen have all entered my senses all at once, and soon after we see them. Swarming over rooftops, surrounding and overtaking us, I get the distinct impression that everything up until now involved a few pairs of kid gloves and now they are coming off.

    "Oh fuck," Christine whimpers predictably.

    "Oh, fuck," Emily swears, and that actually makes me worried. I give her a questioning bark, slowing down very slightly as I watch her head whip around in panic, looking for a new way out.

    "I-I don''t know, Lia!" she answers me. "They circled around us, I don''t¡­ I think we can''t¡­"

    She glances around in every direction, her panic increasing until her eyes finally settle on Christine. Then she takes a deep breath and lets it out.

    "We''ll have to fight," she tells me. "Don''t try to jump over them or dodge them. We have to kill them."

    Literally how, though?

    "How?" Anastasia croaks. Yeah, thank you, what she said. "I tried. I tried and it didn''t¡­ I couldn''t¡­"

    "Lia," Emily snaps. "You''ll need to figure it out. Grab one. Learn where its goddamn brain is."

    ¡­Ah. Okay, I can see the strategy. If we can kill it instantly, it can''t use its duplicate power on us. Risky as fuck, since we''ll be getting in close to the monsters, but I guess we don''t have a great alternative. I bark in affirmation and speed back up, picking my target as best I can. We want to maximize the amount of time it''ll take to be swarmed in any particular engagement, or even better¡­ there. That one''s going through a thin alleyway. We''ll only have to fight on two sides, rather than in every direction. I rush for it.

    Touch it. All I have to do is touch it, keep everyone alive in the process, and tell Anastasia how to kill it. Easy, right? So easy. It''s only a writhing mass of dexterous limbs covered in sharp scales, able to trivially reach around me to grab the people on my back and rip them in half. We''re pretty much doomed, no two ways about it.

    But for better or worse, I can''t feel fear.

    Twenty feet, ten feet, five feet¡ª! I jab out my forelimb blade as the writhing mass reaches greedily for me, tendrils rushing forward to tear us all to pieces. But my feet sprout new back toes, digging into the concrete and hooking into a crack. The newly made bones snap as my momentum suddenly halts, but I ignore the pain because all that matters is this one little touch!

    And I get it. My blade scrapes its scales, and I feel the Angel in all its glory. A glorious masterwork of near-incomprehensible biology, the Angel''s flesh is perhaps the most beautiful thing I''ve ever witnessed. Its scales are made of tiny crystals, protruding from the skin underneath as miniature versions of the blade-limb tips of other aliens, stacked and interlocked in such a way as to provide phenomenal protective coverage without sacrificing its dazzling flexibility. The skin itself is loose on the creature''s body, capable of shifting and twisting over its internal organs in ways completely unlike anything I''ve seen before.

    Internally, it is no less impressive. The muscular and organ structures necessary to enable that level of strength and power across the entire creature''s body are incredible. All its necessary systems are efficient and well-protected. Like the other Angel I''ve seen, this one is clearly crafted to perfection, a labor of love with clear evidence of wisdom and understanding behind the design. But looking back now, I can see that the last Angel I touched was designed to be art, but this one? This one was designed to be a weapon.

    Copies of its tendrils burst forth from my back, almost entirely without thought on my part. I don''t think I could have stopped myself from making them if I wanted to; my body needs these changes, it needs this beautiful new form, at least in some small way, or else I''d go mad from the yearning for them. They burst from my flesh and clash with the tendrils seeking us, fighting them off long enough for Anastasia to strike.

    She doesn''t know where she''s aiming, not yet, but at point-blank range she doesn''t need to. Her blood stabs deep into the Angel''s body and tears it to shreds from the inside, pulping every organ in seconds. The brain, naturally included among them, is no exception. The monster falls limp.

    And then, just a moment too late, the pulse of power hits us from somewhere else.

    I don''t really have a good idea for a way to communicate while in this body, so I opt for a bad one and form an eyeless human face on the end of my tail while I burst back into a sprint.

    "Brain is off-center, a little over a foot away from the midpoint of the monster," I say. Geez, my voice sounds weird like this. "Also, I think we just confirmed the clones don''t have powers. There''s an original."

    "Off in which direction?" Anastasia asks, breathing heavily.

    "That depends entirely on the core body''s orientation to the ground, which can be anything," I answer. "It has no set up, down, left or right; you can see them rotate as they move."

    "But¡­ then where do I aim?"

    I don''t have a good answer to that, and we don''t have any more time to talk about it anyway. I shift my tail back into the weapon it should be just as we get flanked by three other Angel clones at once. The Angel''s pressure fills the air, and while I do my best to leap away Anastasia still has to cut through a tentacle that latched onto my leg, nearly dooming us immediately. And so, yet another monster starts to form.

    "Christine, do something!" Emily shrieks.

    "Do what!?" Christine shouts back.

    "It doesn''t matter!" Emily says. "Something! Anything! Just use your goddamn power!"

    Christine''s only response is to start hyperventilating, because to everyone''s unparalleled surprise it turns out that screaming and swearing at a person with an anxiety disorder doesn''t help them focus. I don''t know why Emily hasn''t already written the girl off; I''ve been operating under the assumption that she''s dead weight for days, since it seems like the only logical way to make plans around someone who would fail to uphold her end of them ninety percent of the time.

    I grab another pair of tendrils with a pair of my own and quickly toss them as far away as I can when Anastasia cuts them; she seems to intuitively understand that delimbing the Angel is definitely bad but letting it lock me into a grapple is far worse, so we don''t really have much of a choice in the matter. Her blood swirls in a crimson storm around us, blocking and protecting and attacking all in one as it pours from her still-bleeding arm. I don''t think I''ve ever seen her control this much at once before, and where my power brushes up against her skin it warns me that her blood pressure is dangerously low. Her eyelids flutter with an empty-headed need for sleep, Christine''s grip the only thing keeping her on my back and raw adrenaline the only thing keeping her still conscious.

    This isn''t sustainable. We''re going to lose, and I don''t see any way to turn the tables.

    More and more of the swarm catch up to us as we make our fighting retreat, slowly but surely completing the encirclement that will spell our demise. I fight harder, dodge better, move more and more erratically as I desperately look for a way out, but all I ultimately end up doing is fucking up. I kick off a wall a little too hard, and the sudden movement is finally too much. Anastasia jerks out of Christine''s grip and starts to fall.

    I try to catch her with a tendril, but the addled girl cuts it off thinking it''s an enemy and hits the ground hard. Fuck! The Angel clones try to converge on her, so I step over her body and shield her with my own, growing limbs and blades and anything I can think of to protect the people that I must protect, burning through my reserves of energy with reckless abandon to become something I don''t even understand, a whirlwind of panicked limbs and inefficient, barely functioning nonsense.

    It''s not enough. The Angels tear me apart. They peel open my cocoon of arms piece by piece, scrambling for the rich, gooey center of the humans I have to save. Emily screams, cowering back from the questing tendrils of the monsters. Christine screams as alien arms wrap around her body, yanking her off my back. And then Anastasia screams, and the world becomes red.

    For a couple seconds, all I can see or smell is blood. Then the crimson storm clears all at once, the blood splattering loudly onto the ground all at once as Anastasia loses her tenuous grip on the cliff edge of consciousness. And somehow, when it falls, there is no movement left around us. The corpses of aliens pile around us, ravaged and broken to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. Emily, Anastasia, and I are the only living things left that I can see.

    Because Christine is gone.

    Christine is gone!

    My body twitches and shudders recollecting itself from the broken chaos of what I was into something almost human, because I need to talk and I need something familiar and I need a single moment of something approaching sanity after that chokingly throat-deep kiss with death. I-I have to¡­ where is¡­?

    A scream rings out. Her scream. There she is. I have to go. But I¡­ no. The Angel has her. Or one of its copies. I can''t keep up, I''m not fast enough! The only thing that could catch up to her would be a Wasp, but I haven''t finished fixing¡­ no. No. Quit letting such a fucking flimsy excuse stop you, Julietta. I don''t need to ''know how to fix it.'' My body just turned into a Lovecraftian horror and back, I can just patch the fucking holes and force myself to stay together.

    The real problem is that a Wasp can''t fly while carrying the weight of a human. I snap around to look at Emily, who''s kneeling over Anastasia and wrapping her shirt around the girl''s wounds.

    "Can you keep Ana safe!?" I demand.

    "What!?" she asks, seeming caught off guard. "Can I¡­ oh no. No! We''re leaving!"

    "But I have to¡ª"

    "You don''t have to do shit!" Emily snaps. "Are you nuts!? You wanna run back in there!? Look around you! This is our door! Ana opened it and we''re home fucking free! If you grab us and go, right now, we live. I guarantee it."

    "But Christine¡ª"

    "What about Christine!?" Emily demands. "For shit''s sake, Julietta, you don''t even like her! You gave up on ever expecting her to be worth something to you the same day you met!"

    I stare at her, a little taken aback by the outburst and honestly struggling to process it a little through all my panic and burning need to do something. But I can''t waste time, so I have to force the first words I can think of out of my mouth.

    "You''re completely right," I admit. "But fuck you for assuming that means I wouldn''t save her."

    I''m already regretting the words the moment they leave my mouth. Needlessly inflammatory, more likely to piss someone off than convince them. Stupid way to get my point across. Stupid, stupid. But Emily seems shocked for a moment, I watch her face slowly morph into horror as she realizes how serious I am about this.

    "...You have five minutes," she growls. "You''d best be back before then or Ana and I are completely fucking dead, you got that?"

    I snap her a quick nod and let my body shift. I don''t have a working Wasp template? Fine. Who cares. I only need the body to work in the ways that matter. I can remove the ruined acid organs, I can seal up the holes, I haphazardly shift into something already dying and barely not bleeding out because it doesn''t matter as long as my wings work and I can fly. My arms and legs twist into thin crystal blades, my head is devoured by my expanding body, and my back sprouts its four thrumming wings, my stolen brain knowing what to do when I demand to go up, to chase, to follow that goddamn thieving Angel. I attack the air around me with furious speed, kicking up a storm around me as the vibrations churn through my body. And then, I''m in the air.

    There is almost a moment where I can appreciate the heart-dropping majesty of it, the sudden freedom from the ground, the willful defiance of god''s pull. But I cannot, must not, will not indulge in any unnecessary thoughts anymore. I am now one of the very monsters that killed my family and stole my life, and I have someone to save.

    I rocket off towards where I can still hear Christine screaming, and it isn''t long before I see her, too. As fast as I had been as a Raptor, as fast as the Angel is in its beautifully perfect form, Wasps are still faster and still have the advantage of the air. I close the distance at a startling speed, the Angel seeing me and exuding fury and indignance. It carries Christine with surprising gentleness, cushioning her as it holds her, not letting her hurt herself as she thrashes in terror. It cares about her. It''s worried for her. I can smell it.

    The indicated is the one held. The indicated cannot speak or hear. The indicated is known to be loved. The indicated is known to be blessed. The indicated is of something beyond, something, theirs, something holy. It is contemptible to take such a thing from its place. It is contemptible to take such a thing from its place. It is contemptible to take such a thing from its place.

    I am contemptible, a thief, an enemy. I know this to be true as sure as I know myself, because that which an Angel speaks is fact.

    This is why we''ve been handled with care. This is why the aliens have been corralling us, not killing us. Because for whatever reason they wanted Christine, and they wanted her alive and well and in their hands. They care about her very, very much¡­ but since the kidnapping bastards obviously don''t seem to care enough to give a shit about her free will, I drop on them like a hammer anyway.

    ''The indicated cannot speak or hear'' my ass. She''s literally screaming for help right now. I have your body plans, I know you can hear it. I freefall at the swarm of Angel clones blades-first, aiming for the one in the middle holding my Task. And somehow, for some reason, the Angel seems startled enough not to dodge.

    I impale it in four different places and keep moving through it, my blades slamming into the ground hard enough to break all my legs. Christine is nearly smashed into a pulp between the two of us, but at the last moment it throws her away, sending her careening through the sky and screaming even louder before another clone body catches her and keeps running.

    So that''s how it''s going to be, then. I leap after her, my wings thrumming with strength as I tackle the next one, copies of its tendrils snaking out of my torso to fight over my Task. I have to cut off the tendrils holding her, I don''t have much choice. My reserves feel so low. My power feels so weak. I''m so hungry, and the crushing weight of the Angel''s power nearly chokes me now that I''m this close. Is this the real one? Is it one of the ones next to us? Does it matter? The power is everywhere.

    Except for the inside of my body.

    Because that''s the thing, isn''t it? Anastasia, Christine, the Angel¡­ their powers reach out far into the air, creating huge bubbles of presence in which they may command the world. But my power doesn''t extend past my own skin. On one hand, that seems like a weakness. On the other hand, it means my power is dense. It''s concentrated. And it can keep. The Angel. Out.

    I grow my tail out like a Raptor''s, cut the tendrils off of the Angel, and devour them. The bubbling, regenerating horror stops the moment they slide down my throat, my power taking precedence as I swallow the delicious morsel and digest it in seconds, feeling it vanish from inside me and fill that waning reserve of power I don''t understand but call my own.

    But that''s not important. What''s important is that I''ve freed Christine, and with her still screaming I pull her away from the mass of Angels, tying her to my back with tendrils as I grow my body more, thicken my legs, increase my height, and devour more and more Angel flesh as they try to climb up my growing legs and claim back the girl they think is theirs by right. I won''t survive against the swarm, I could never eat them fast enough, but fighting them was never the goal. With the last of my reserves, I grow into a modified Behemoth body and, with my enormous bladed legs, I run.

    I can''t track Emily and Anastasia the way I can track the aliens, so I don''t know precisely where they are, but that doesn''t matter. I just have to head in the right direction and Emily will be the one to know where to go to meet me. Even if she didn''t have something telling her the right decision all the time, she''d simply be able to follow the sound of my rampage.

    I saw a Behemoth crash through a house with ease, so I don''t hesitate to do the same if one happens to be in my way. My enormous legs and massive stride mean I outpace the Angels¡­ but not by anywhere near as much as I''d like to. My long, spindly legs are somewhat unsteady, and the additions I''ve made to the body don''t help with balance either. And worst of all, I''m starving now. I''ve pushed myself to the limit of my shapeshifting. I won''t be able to grow or regenerate anymore.

    Not unless I get something to eat.

    "Lia! Lia!" I hear Emily shout, and I immediately alter course to rush towards the sound. I spot her rushing out from a trapdoor to a cellar that she somehow found in a ruined home with Anastasia still unconscious in her arms. I stop next to her and kneel down just long enough to grab her with my tentacles and hoist her onto my back, and then I return to sprinting.

    My lack of reserves means I can get tired now, but I ignore it as best I can while we head East, a swarm of aliens hot on our heels. But I can see our destination. Peering over the sea of abandoned houses, I can see the row of tanks that hold the line just outside the Queen''s reach, the periodic explosions and sounds of industrialized combat all the clearer now that we''re this close. We''re almost back. We''ve almost made it to safety. We''re going to make it. We''re going to make it!

    A new power presses into me unexpectedly, solid and united and made of endless hordes standing shoulder-to-shoulder. It is order and camaraderie and the many working as one, and as I feel it a crisp, clear voice from somewhere ahead of me rings out with its power.

    "Leg shot! Take it down!"

    A shot rings out as a high-caliber round shatters through a nearby window and punches a hole in my front left leg, shattering the hydraulic musculature with a perfect hit through the joint. I stumble to a stop but refuse to fall, because what would happen to everyone I''m protecting?

    But the damage is done. I can''t run anymore. And with an ambush squad of humans in front of me, the furious, slithering tide of Angels behind me pour over the homes and out from the horizon like a tidal wave, ready to drown me and reclaim what is theirs.

    I guess I should have seen this coming. Looking as I do, there was no way human territory would actually be safe.

 11. May Your God Weep Upon Your Corpse

    "Friendlies!" Emily shouts from atop my back. "Friendlies, friendlies!"

    I''m not sure if the soldiers hear her or not, but either way it doesn''t stop them from blasting a hole through another one of my knees, causing me to start to topple. I''m completely out of reserve, so I can''t heal¡­ but maybe I can shift into something smaller?

    I don''t have much choice. Everyone on my back could get pretty seriously hurt if I fall. I try to shrink and pray it works, and sure enough it does. I start to feel my reserves of power refilling a little as they reclaim the mass from my enormous Behemoth body. But just a little. Not anywhere near as much as I''d like.

    But that''s okay. The important thing is that it lets me better control everyone''s descent to the ground. My fall goes from a catastrophic topple to a controlled collapse, except the collapse is less like a building and more like a star. My mass consumes itself, rapidly condensing down and folding away and ultimately getting tucked safely somewhere outside the realm of everyday physics. Emily hops off of my back and hits the ground running, Anastasia in her arms, as Christine falls off of me in a heap the moment the tendrils holding her let go. I grab her by the wrist, yank her to her feet and start forcing her to sprint alongside me. I don''t have the kind of energy needed to tirelessly carry her around anymore, not in human form. And I don''t dare to use anything other than my human form.

    "Friendlies, friendlies, friendlies, don''t shoot us please!!!" Emily continues to shout as we rush directly towards the building those gunshots came from. Behind us, the Angel-clone tide rapidly gains on us, and I''m almost thankful for it because it means whoever''s in charge of this ambush squad suddenly has way bigger things to worry about than us. Not that they sound worried.

    "Weapons free! Cut those monsters down!"

    A thunder of automatic weapon fire erupts towards us, and though I instinctively turn my body to shield Christine, the bullets somehow all whizz past us without making contact, splattering through the Angel clones behind us without mercy.

    That new power, that feeling of unending legions, presses into me again. It''s in the air all around us, a ward against the wrath of the Queen. Whenever an alien enters this bubble, it dies, torn apart by unnaturally accurate gunfire. But outside its aegis, there is no such protection. For the moment I''m turned around, I watch as a dozen Angel clones get chunked by a storm of bullets, but the moment a bullet exits the power''s radius¡­ it vanishes. It''s gone, in a puff of what looks like smoke.

    At first, I think it must be some aspect of the power surrounding me, something that makes and guides weapons that only exist within its limited range. But then I realize the little puffs aren''t smoke but dust, the microscopic remains of the bullet rapidly decelerating and spreading out as the Queen slices them into nothing. Just like what would happen to any soldier who leaves the range of this power, too. Just like what happened to Andre, and the real Lia, and probably most of my foster family.

    Oh right, I can feel fear now. That''s what this is.

    I start sprinting again, doing my best to remove myself from the line of fire since the soldiers seem to be courteously doing their best to not shoot me. A side door from the building slams open and a guy in full tactical gear runs out of it, beckoning us.

    "Over here, over here!"

    Don''t gotta tell me twice, but I''m not gonna complain that you did. I book it his way¡­ or at least I try to, when something suddenly wraps around my ankle and yanks. I faceplant right on top of Christine but I have the presence of mind to at least let go before I''m dragged backwards, bullets impacting the Angel clone behind me but not fast enough to prevent it from getting replaced by another one before I can untangle myself.

    "Go!" I shout at Christine. "Go!"

    She stares at me in shock as another Angel clone leaps over the one dragging me to grab her, but fuck that. I didn''t haul her ass the entire fucking way here just to let her get taken away now. I can''t shapeshift much right now, but I really only need one thing: something to eat with.

    My body shifts into Raptor form and reverses orientation in one motion: my head turns into my tail, my legs turn into my forelimbs, and all at once I go from being on the ground and dragged away helpless to being on the attack. I grab the clone trying to vault over me and yank it into the ground with my tail-mouth, biting down and swallowing just enough flesh to keep me going as the Angel attacking me tries to wrench my forelimb off. That limb suddenly being mostly blade makes that difficult for it, but since its scales are made of the same crystal as my swords I can''t do any real damage to its limbs without a lot more leverage and force. Y''know, like with a bite.

    I take another. I''ll need it. I''ll need every last scrap of biomass I can steal, and wouldn''t you know it, there are suddenly piles of it all over the damn place. I take a split-second to roar at Christine, finally startling her enough to get her on her feet and running away as I intercept the next clone leaping for her.

    And then, I''m so deep into the fray that I couldn''t run away if I wanted to. I don''t want to, though. With the soldiers handling the protection portion of my Task, the most important factor in ensuring my success is stopping this Angel. And for a few moments, I start to make headway at that; they''re all so obsessed with grabbing Christine that I manage to start eating more than I have to heal, slowly making progress towards surviving in a situation where surviving, frankly, doesn''t seem possible. But it doesn''t need to be, as long as I do enough to complete my Task.

    But of course, whatever machine guns they have set up in there are express-built for mowing down unarmored targets, and while the Angel clones are technically armored, the bullets are thick. For every round I see deflected off the scales, three successfully penetrate, though that could be due to the unnatural accuracy the weapons seem to have as much as the stopping power of the weapons themselves.

    So the first thing I do when I have enough biomass is grow another tail. Angel clones die in droves around me, swarming furiously, silently screaming their accusations of theft and blasphemy into my mind. The air is thick with anger, loss, and death; single seconds and single bullets are the only things keeping me between life and death. But that''s fine. Hate me all you like; I don''t care. I can''t care, because nothing matters except for stopping you.

    I devour Angel flesh by the mouthful, tearing and biting and being ripped apart and growing back ever the more ravenous. My legs are crushed in the grip of a Tendril, pulped into blood and powder so I shift again, taking the Angel''s own form, replacing its tendrils with ravenous tails so I can eat and eat and eat and eat and stay alive just one second longer.

    A Raptor''s brain doesn''t know how to handle an Angel''s form. But of course, I don''t have the time or ability to be afraid. I make the change, and the screaming demand for my death quiets into something even more impotent.

    After all, I don''t have to take orders from a peer.

    I am a thief, a raider, an insane, mad beast that must be put down¡­ according to all of them. As a Raptor, it felt as though the very air carried those things as truths, as immutable facts of the world as clear as the ground under my feet. And still, the air is heavy with these ideas. I feel the rage and the hate and the insistence that I am wrong, horrid, evil, and deserving of death. But I deny this consensus; I reject it. My answer is no.

    And the feel of the air shifts around me in response.

    Negation is unclear, and unaccepted.

    They aren''t words. They aren''t feelings. They just¡­ are. I know that these concepts are being conveyed to me in the same way that I know what I''m looking at or listening to. The conversation is a qualia.

    Did the air change because I spoke? Was my own truth felt, pressed into the air the way I feel all these petty opinions about me? I bite and tear and swallow everything I can get my teeth around, and again I say ''no.''

    Negation is unclear, and unaccepted.

    No, damn it! Fuck you! Can you monsters even understand me?

    Emphasis: negation is unclear, which cannot be accepted.

    Okay, well, how''s this for clarity: leave. Leave! Leave us all the fuck alone, or I will eat you one by one until every last one of you is dead!

    Negation reciprocated. Displeasure reciprocated. Intent of war reciprocated. Discussion concluded.

    And somehow, in whatever way I''ve felt any of the rest of this, there is a subtle note of a much more complicated intent. A malicious, vindictive, personal message broadcast just to me. It feels like someone smiling at a funeral, it feels like an ant pleased by the pain it inflicts on a person, it feels like looking forward to a warm shower after a long day of hard work.

    The Angel tells me: may your god weep upon your corpse.

    How evocative. I hope you can understand my rejoinder: may your body taste as sweet as all the others.

    The Angels converge to tear me apart, and I tear them apart in turn. Time becomes impossible to judge, my thoughts empty but for the next movement in this whirlwind of violence, the delicate dance between pain and food and healing and pain again. Bullets start to strike me, occasionally at first but more regularly as the chaos moves on. It doesn''t matter. The only part of a wound that matters is how big it is, how much mass I need to waste to fix it before it bleeds even more. The bullets tend to go clean through me, leaving relatively small holes compared to the wide-scale damage being crushed by tendrils tends to inflict.

    Sometimes, the bullets end up lodged inside of me¡­ and then vanish like the food in my gut, removed from my flesh for the crime of not being part of the form I have chosen, the sovereign right I hold over every last cell of my body. The bullets don''t help me replenish my biomass at all, but it''s still interesting that I can eat them.

    And I can hardly blame the humans for shooting me. I''ve copied the Angel''s form inside a tide of Angels; how are they supposed to know? But I don''t really have a choice. With the Angel''s form as a baseline, replacing the tendrils with tail-mouths lets me barely, barely coordinate myself enough to eat just a little more than I lose. And as the fight goes on, I learn to make that margin of damage to intake wider, bit by precious bit.

    The most dangerous thing the Angel can do to me is grab: lock me down, crush my body, prevent me from moving and fighting at anywhere near my full capacity while its fellows swarm me. Its tendrils are designed for that and they''re better at it than my tails, which can only keep me healthy if they manage to bite off a chunk of flesh and swallow it without being damaged too much in the process. Nothing loses me as much biomass as getting grabbed and having a limb torn off of me, so that''s what I focus on, that''s what my mind obsesses over making happen as little as possible. It''s a nearly impossible task in the midst of a writhing pit of arms, but every successful dodge helps.

    But of course, I feel a tug. Something hooks around my limb, tries to squeeze, to hold tight, to keep me down! I do everything I can to yank the limb away, trying to slip out of its grasp in a panic, and every time I get a little better at it, my tails seeming a little harder to actually catch. I focus on it, I master it, because I have to or else I''ll die. Over and over, I think I''m dead but I somehow slip away, and with every failed attempt to kill the air weighs angrier and angrier around me.

    It''s only a matter of time before I feel that horrible obsession with separation press in, too, fighting and pushing against the power of the humans protecting my Task (and shooting me a lot, but that''s less important). The Angel''s real body is here, supporting its clones with a contesting power aura expanding not only its own domain of influence but its Queen''s. The Queen''s power obliterates any ammunition that so much as kisses the steadily shrinking edge of whatever superhero''s power is supporting the squad behind me, and suddenly the innumerable tide of Angel clones I felt like I was fighting off myself become much more focused and numerous without automatic weapon fire constantly chewing through their ranks.

    There''s a whole lot of battle going on around me that I didn''t have the luxury of noticing much, as it turns out. Angel clones as well as Raptors, Behemoths, and Wasps are attempting to flank the soldiers in force, though it doesn''t look like the building they''re holed up in has been breached yet. The sensible thing to do would probably be to retreat. To return to the area controlled by the human super and see if they''ll stop shooting me long enough to let me help them defend.

    But somehow, I know that the Angel would prefer me to do that. It wants a drawn-out, defensive battle where it can keep supplying near-limitless reinforcements directly on site while we slowly exhaust our bodies and our ammunition supply. It''s pissed at me for being stubborn enough to survive this long, sure, and it''s extra pissed at me for stealing Christine from it (no, wait. Rescuing. Not stealing.) but ultimately, no matter how much I feel like I''m slowly making ground, the current situation favors the Angel. I might be slowly regaining biomass reserve, but I don''t even know if the Angel needs a reserve, and if it does, well¡­ it''s presumably had a lot longer to prepare for this invasion than I have.

    Yes, this is logical. This is optimal. My Angel brain doesn''t have quite the same lack of self-preservation instinct as my Raptor brain, but I''ve never had all that much self-preservation instinct to begin with and at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the result. Gambling is a fool''s game, but if I''m forced to play it I''m going for whatever has the best odds.

    My gut says that''s to attack.

    I use up nearly all my accrued biomass at once, raising my size and weight as much as I can to get the reach and momentum to crawl over this horde of monsters as quickly as possible. I shift most of my tail-mouths back into tentacles; the Angel is already optimized for high speed over arbitrarily rough terrain, so no need to try fixing what isn''t broken. The feeling of Division came from the west, and just very slightly north. If I kill whichever body actually has the power, the aliens lose their free reinforcements and their ability to push back against the powers of human supers.

    But the Angel knows that, of course, which is why it''s going to be surrounded by countless clones. Fine by me. Now that I''m in the rhythm, I''m starting to think this is kind of a bad matchup for you, Angel. You make more, and more, and more, and I just burn it all as fuel for the fire. I roar a challenge, and though the alien hordes remain eerily silent I must have sent my intent to the Angel one way or another because I feel it accept.

    The clones swarm over me, climbing onto my limbs as I try to climb overtop of them. Their crystalline scales catch on my own, peeling them off of me, making me vulnerable, making me bleed. I devour chunks from as many as I can, but in the Angel''s zone of influence the wounds I inflict on my foes do not stick and I am subjected to a fraction of the frustration I know it feels fighting me. But I don''t need the wounds to stick, do I? As long as I can move forward, and I can eat just a little more than they can damage me, I can make progress.

    ¡­But progress towards what? I do actually have to kill at least one of these, ideally after figuring out which one that even is. My constellation-like network of eyes flick around independently from each other, trying to determine if any of the bodies are acting differently from each other, trying to keep their distance from me, doing anything that''s a little weirder than its fellows, but I don''t exactly know what counts as weird for a swarm of Angels in the first place. How can I tell which one of these fuckers is actually the real one!?

    Negative response, the air presses around me, except for one little spot nearby that insists otherwise.

    Affirmative response.

    What. Seriously? Just like that? I mean, it''s obviously gotta be a trap, right?

    Assertion is unclear.

    Y''know what? Fuck it. I have to start somewhere anyway. I rush for the Angel that felt affirmative and it rapidly retreats, clearly expecting me to do exactly that. I keep my eyes on a swivel, on constant lookout for whatever''s going to jump out and fuck me over while I take bites out of the aliens swarming me and toss them away. But I don''t see a trap. I just see that, behind me, the bullets shot by the humans make it a little further out for every step that the Angel retreats. Which means it''s the real one, right? It''s definitely the real one? Why would it tell me!?

    Query is unclear.

    Oh, shut the fuck up.

    Request is unclear.

    I am going to fucking eat you.

    Acknowledged; aggression reciprocated.

    Oh, you understand that one, huh? Well, be mad all you like. But can you back it up?

    ¡­Answer is unclear.

    Ha. Let''s find out. I thrust myself towards what I know is the true body, somehow or another, and the tide of Angels intercepts me harder than ever before. I can see now that the body truly is designed for movement across any surface¡ªeven copies of itself. They coordinate and interlock and form a living web of writhing flesh, crawling up me and wrapping around me and holding me down from every direction at once. I roar again, trying to break free as parts of me are carefully torn, ripped, and broken, the monsters carefully dealing enough damage to force me to heal without compromising their grip for even a moment.

    But that''s all I would need. Just a moment. Just a fucking moment, because my target is right there. Right on the outside of my cage. I refuse to fail this close to my goal! I''m not some impotent waste of space that can''t even take care of herself! It''s my job to take care of everyone else, and no disability, no apocalypse, and no goddamn Angel is going to stop me from doing that.

    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    I pump up the pressure in my hydraulic muscles, peeling open a hole, trying to push through, but this net can patch itself. Angels rush to fill any gaps the second they''re made, but I don''t have to get desperate. There''s only a little bit to push through. There''s urgency, but there''s no panic. Not in this mind. I just have to work, and wait, and¡ªnow.

    The moment I free the tip of a tendril I let my whole body shift, pressing as hard as I can into the ground, pulling as hard as I can on my opening, and shrinking all the way down to Anastasia''s size as I launch myself out of the gap. The Angel net collapses behind me as I grow again in midair, Wasp wings on my back directing my fall as a Behemoth blade and hydraulic heart bulge out from my chest. My wings snap together behind me and I drop like a cannonball, blade piercing through my target''s core and splitting open its brain. Off-center or not, I know exactly where it is.

    There''s a twitch, a tiny spasm as the monster breathes its last gasps. Elbow-deep into its guts, I twist my arm and the feeling of the Angel''s power vanishes from the world around me. The clones do not. They rage and wail and hate and despair, but the hard part is done. No more healing. No more reinforcements. Only food.

    They come at me and I fight my way through them, returning to a thrashing ball of tail-maws and hunger. Without the Angel''s power to back them up, they don''t have the durability to deal enough damage to me before I bite them somewhere fatal and swallow away the pain. And since every clone dead is a safer world for my Task, I continue to eat, moving back towards the humans as I do. Once I make it back into the range of the human super, the aliens don''t stand a chance, not the least of which is because the Army''s reinforcements seem to have arrived.

    Which is good. Great, even. But it doesn''t concern me. I''ve been hungry for far too long, and now the entire battlefield is filled with meat. Countless corpses of Angels and other aliens layer the ground around me, and in the absence of immediate threats it is essential that I eat. I nearly failed my Task because of an insufficient reserve of biomass, and that is not in any way acceptable. So I engorge myself, killing every alien that approaches while ignoring the stream of aliens that retreat and the increasingly loud sounds of human weapons because there''s more than enough of a feast here already. I''m already soaked with blood and gore from end to end, and my tail-maws don''t exactly lend themselves well to table etiquette as they devour chunks of corpses bite by bone-splintering bite.

    The first thing I pay attention to is the echo of the Queen''s lament, rippling through all of Illinois at the news of her Angel''s death. Her power retreats along with her front lines, shrinking away and ending its oppressive weight on my shoulders for the first time since she arrived. I had gotten so used to that part of my mind whispering of how I must be cut to pieces that it''s oddly uncomfortable to realize it''s gone.

    But still, I continue to eat. And eat. And eat and eat and eat and eat. Some humans start making noise nearby, but they stopped shooting me a while ago when I just ignored it so I suspect they''ll leave me alone if I ignore this, too.

    Something burns, and one of my limbs is vaporized in an instant. An attack! I immediately reorient myself towards its source, coiling my limbs and growing my scales into longer, sharper daggers. Above me is a glowing white figure, encased in radiant light. I know her face, I know her clothes. Agnus Dei, one of mankind''s strongest superheroes and greatest force multipliers, floats above me. The main things I know about her are that she can fly at supersonic speeds and shoot lasers. Not a good matchup for me; I''m not reasonably able to hit her with any of my attacks and she could easily fly outside my range and attack me with impunity. Unfortunately, she impedes my Task and I cannot retreat, so¡­ wait. Wait wait wait wait wait that''s Agnus fucking Dei, Max had a poster of her on his wall, that is not an enemy and not an impediment of any sort! We''re on the same side.

    Except we aren''t because she shot me.

    Except we are, she just shot me because I''m acting fucking insane, holy shit wait wait wait we have to negotiate here. I am friendly, I am on your side! Wait, no, humans talk with sound or whatever. Oh! Human! Right! I should look human, how do I do that again? Holy fuck what is going on what happened to me.

    I slowly, carefully lower my tentacles and start to shrink down, my mind slowly sputtering back into working order. Okay. Just went a little insane there for a bit. No big deal, nobody worry about that. Uhhh, fuck, I need a human body. I''m supposed to use Lia''s, right? Ugh. I hate Lia''s body. I hate it so much. Really any purely human form is painfully unoptimized, and¡ªokay brain, nope, none of that. Human is fine. It''s fine! I''ve been human for my entire life, for fuck''s sake!

    Also I''m negotiating with humans, and the human form is obviously optimized for that. Right? Right. That makes me feel better for some reason. Lia''s body it is.

    I let humanity take over my form, doing my best not to descend into a complete mindless panic as I shift my brain into something capable of experiencing that for some stupid-ass reason. My hands are raised in a surrendering pose as I carefully finish my shift into a full-blown, one-hundred percent human, with all its restrictions, limitations, and absolutely terrible cable management. Why is the circulatory system so jagged and tangled!? At least make it symmetrical or something.

    Wait shit I think people are talking to me.

    "U-um," I begin, and the superhero threatening me with a death beam tenses, ready and waiting to vaporize me into dust. I swallow, and keep talking. "Sorry about that. I''m good now."

    The world''s strongest superhero blinks placidly at me.

    "You''re¡­ ''good now?''" she asks. It''s kind of remarkable, looking at her this close up, to see how plain she is. Blonde hair, brown eyes, skin that''s probably less pale than it looks thanks to all the light constantly radiating out from her¡­ it''s boring, in a way. She looks to be in her late thirties or early forties, and while her body is in the sort of top form you''d expect from a soldier there isn''t really anything else exceptional about it. She just looks like she''s somebody''s mom. I guess she probably is.

    "I mean I''m, uh, lucid?" I try to clarify. "I just, I nearly died, and I was a little, um. Out of it."

    She twitches the arm she''s aiming at me, and scales bloom over my body in a panic, power rushing into my muscles¡­ and then I push it all away, flow back into human standard because no amount of shapeshifting would save me if this woman decides that I should die. I realize, suddenly, that I''m still covered head-to-toe in blood and gore. That''s probably not a good look.

    Agnus Dei says nothing. I guess she isn''t done testing me. Okay.

    "A-are my friends okay?" I ask her. "I came here with three other people. Um, Christine, she''s really tall. Anastasia, she''s just a kid, but she was in really bad shape. She has claws and super long hair? And uh, Emily, she''s my¡ª"

    Don''t say sister.

    "¡ªgirlfriend."

    Agnus Dei stares at me for a little while longer, while I try really hard not to grow any tentacles or eat any corpses.

    "...Your friends are alright," Agnus Dei answers, lowering her laser-aiming hand. Thank fuck! On both counts! "The little one had some pretty serious injuries, but as far as I know she''s expected to pull through."

    I let out a deep breath, a weight on my shoulders lifting off and flying out to the stars. I think I speak for both myself and Raptor brain when I say this: Task. Fucking. Complete.

    "Thank you," I tell her.

    She nods, but she doesn''t smile, descending slowly and watching me very, very carefully.

    "You and your friends were out here a very long time," she comments. "Long enough for most to die ten times over, even with powers."

    "I''ll, uh, take your word for it," I say, not really knowing how to respond to that.

    "Are you often¡­ not lucid?" she asks. "Have you had this problem before?"

    The radius of her power finally brushes against me as she gets close, feeling me out, pressing into me. It is contrarianism and sadism and rejection and taboo. My power flares up in defiance at the slightest touch of it, my hackles raising and strength pouring into me seemingly from nowhere.

    "I¡­ no ma''am," I manage to say while all of that is happening to me. "This is the first time, even after all the fighting we''ve had to do. I just, uh. I think I might have pushed myself too hard, I guess. I got the Angel, though."

    Her power''s touch recedes, and the odd bloom of might recedes with it. It didn''t feel like I was physically stronger, it felt like my power just got stronger somehow. But¡­ stronger at what? I guess it doesn''t matter. It''s gone now, and everything feels normal again.

    "You killed an Angel?" Agnus Dei asks, raising an eyebrow. "That''s very, very impressive, if you''re telling the truth."

    "Yeah, it was, uh. Well, it was these guys," I say, awkwardly gesturing at the corpse I was eating. "It had a cloning power. The clones didn''t also have powers, though, and I got the body that did."

    "Just now?" she asks.

    "Uh. In the fight just a bit ago, yeah."

    "...Which explains why the Queen condensed its power," she hums. "Well, well. If you''re an Angel or a Devil, you''re certainly a convincing one."

    I blink. I get I''m the one being interrogated here, but I think it''s worth giving a question a shot for a namedrop like that.

    "What''s a Devil, ma''am?"

    "A fallen Angel, of course," she answers. "All violence. No cunning. Prone to friendly fire. It''s what I was convinced you were until you started talking."

    Huh. Okay. Well, I''m glad she doesn''t think I''m one anymore?

    "You could still be an Angel, of course," she muses. "I don''t know of any Angels that can talk, but it''s best not to assume with those things. You could be, say, an illusion that speaks whatever words you read from my mind that would be most convincing."

    "Um," I say, trying to think of something really unconvincing to contradict that with. "I promise I''m not?"

    She chuckles, her feet finally touching the ground in front of me.

    "No, you''re not," the superhero agrees. "You''re a shapeshifter. Not exactly less dangerous, in the worst-case scenario. What''s your name, kid?"

    "Lia," I lie. "Lia Morgan."

    I''m not sure if lying is exactly wise, but it''s the name Emily would have given them and contradicting that would definitely be bad.

    "Is that what you normally look like?"

    I look down at myself, realizing rather suddenly that I am stark naked except for the gore. Because¡­ well, duh, of course I am. No way my skirt survived any of that. I instinctively remove some of my more sensitive bits, then consider that might be a bad idea and put them back, and then I grow some scales to hide them, and then I think that might be bad too so I get rid of them again. I stop looking at myself and focus back on Agnus.

    "...I guess?" I manage. "Sorry, it''s a little hard to, um. I''m a bit stressed right now. I just hid from, ran from, and/or fought aliens for four days straight and then I ate¡­ I don''t even know how many monster corpses in a weird fugue and I''m naked and covered in alien guts and now I''m talking to Agnus Dei and I think it''s all just a little bit much for me right now."

    Please Ms. Superhero I am an innocent, overwhelmed child! I am not going to kill and/or eat anyone that I haven''t already, pinky promise. Normally I''d be a little disgusted with myself for doing the meek and helpless routine, but god dammit this is a bit much for me right now. I killed a fucking Angel and ate it! Give me a break already!

    I killed an Angel.

    Oh, holy fuck I killed an Angel.

    That''s, uh. Good? Bad? It''s certainly insane, and generally considered to be one of the most impressive achievements a person can have beyond being part of a push to kill a Queen, since the number of times that''s happened can be counted on one hand. So like, y''know, objectively, from the perspective of humanity as a whole, definitely a good thing. From the perspective of my future? Possibly not so good.

    I was already doomed to a life in the military from the moment I got powers. That much was a given. But now, I''m special. I''m impressive. I''m noteworthy. Christine and Anastasia are probably in a similar boat, but me? They''re going to hold me tight and never, ever let go.

    Fuck. You idiot, Julietta, you didn''t have to do any of that! I mean, I guess it might have been the impetus for the aliens to start retreating, but Agnus fucking Dei is standing right there, the military was going to be fine. You could have just run away from all the grabby tentacle monsters, but no, you had to jump into a pit of them totally naked like some kind of fucked up fantasy porno. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

    "Ms. Morgan?"

    "Huh?" I blink, remembering that that''s supposed to be my name.

    "I asked you to follow me," Agnus Dei informs me in a tone that indicates she was not, in fact, actually asking.

    "O-oh, sorry, it''s just¡­ all hitting me, I guess," I mumble, moving to fol¡ªwait where''s my cane. Uh. Oh. Right. I don''t¡­ that''s not my body anymore. I take a step, and another, and it feels normal and natural and easy and nothing bad happens so I follow Agnus Dei, pretending I never had that thought at all. "I can''t believe we actually lived. I just¡­ what happens now?"

    "I''m not the one who decides that," she answers, and I guess that''s fair enough. She leads me towards the humans in silence. I mean the other humans. Oh boy that''s a Freudian slip that could fucking kill me if the military happened to be, I dunno, afraid I was an infiltrating Angel or something. Better add that to my long list of things to never ever say out loud, right underneath ''I like to run my thoughts on alien brains as a coping mechanism'' and ''I''m not actually Lia Morgan, but I promise I''m wearing her skin for really good reasons.''

    Okay, refocusing! As I approach the humans I feel that familiar power from the battlefield, the one that¡­ made people really accurate with guns or something, which seems like it''s far too oddly specific to actually be how the power works. But as for which of the dozens of soldiers moving around, knocking down houses, supervising emplacement setups, and countless other tasks actually has that power, I can only guess.

    "Get me Sainsbury in five," Agnus says into her headset. "New power pickup, specialty interview. Yes, again. And tell him to bring something for the girl to wear. What do you mean ''what do I mean,'' she''s naked. Yes, that one. No, it turns out she does talk, apparently she was just having a time of it after ripping her first wings. Yes, well, the angel is dead and I sure didn''t kill it. Don''t I know it; I''m sure Commander will just happen to find it best for the Army to snap her up. Four, now. Goodbye."

    Hmm. Well, I think I got most of that. It notably didn''t sound like formalized radio chatter; whoever Agnus was speaking to, it was probably someone she knew, on a private or mostly private line.

    "So, uh, is a ''specialty interview'' good or bad?" I ask her.

    "That depends on you," she answers.

    Hmm. I''m gonna go with ''bad'' then. Probably bad. Agnus and I stand around for a few more minutes before a man walks over to us carrying a hospital gown. He''s got a very different set of gear than every other soldier around, with an odd mix of light armor and professional dress that''s unlike any military uniform I''ve seen before. With the tactical vest and helmet, it feels like he should have the entire ensemble on, but his pants are more like slacks, his shoes definitely aren''t combat boots, and he''s not wearing any gloves at all.

    "Hmm," he says, holding out the hospital gown towards me at full arm¡¯s-length in a manner that implies he would really, really prefer not to make contact with me during the exchange. "You should have told me to bring a towel."

    "Spoken like someone who can''t scour himself clean with a thought!" the superheroine grins at him.

    "Yes."

    His words are clipped and almost emotionlessly professional. If he was a cartoon character I''d expect him to end every sentence by adjusting his glasses¡­ but since this is real life, he is unfortunately not wearing any. Still, I have to immediately give him a full perfect score on his first impression because the man''s eyes did not so much as stray below my chin even once for the entire interaction. He doesn''t even seem fazed. The man saw a teenage girl dressed in nothing but blood and immediately decided that he just stone-cold did not give a fuck.

    I shrug the medical smock on, and as soon as I''m done the man offers me a handkerchief from his pocket.

    "Do wipe your hands, at least," he instructs me, so I do, trying (and failing) to get all the alien blood off with a dry cloth. "I am Master Specialist Jeremiah Sainsbury, also known as Cross Country. I specialize in small-scale, long-range personnel transit operations. When you are ready, please take my hand and try to avoid using your power. It is possible that you will feel some discomfort; this is normal, do your best to ignore it."

    I nod, and take his hand after a couple more futile attempts at cleaning my palms. It''s only once I touch him that I finally feel his power; I guess his, like mine, works based on contact. He feels like an impossibility, an assault by a puzzle unsolvable, telling me, insisting to me, that one equals two. It scratches at my mind with its furious proclamation, and every instinct I have screams that it is wrong.

    His power tries to soak its way into me, and at first I instinctively push it out, the pressure of it far too much like the Queen and her Angels. I flinch, and scales grow up my arm, my right eye separating out into a miniature constellation of three alien orbs. But just as the changes flow up my arm, before I can start growing any tentacles or tail-maws or what have you, I force it all back to normal.

    "S-sorry," I stammer. "Sorry."

    The pair of superheroes frown at me, but they don''t say anything. Cross-Country simply tries to use his power on me again, so I hold my instincts back and let him. Suddenly, my vision doubles. I am, for an instant, standing in an impromptu military encampment in the middle of a suburb southeast of Chicago, but I am also in a concrete-walled box halfway between a waiting room and a jail cell. I feel my surprise twice over, doubled yet subtly different, before the me in the suburb ceases to be, the impossibility collapsed into a singular truth.

    "Wh-what?" I blink.

    "Some discomfort is normal," Cross-Country repeats. "You will wait in this room and you will not leave until you are given permission."

    I glance up at the corner of the room, where a security camera emphasizes the point quite clearly.

    "Understood," I nod. He nods back, and then vanishes, leaving me with the handkerchief.

    Well. Uh. There''s a table and a couple chairs. I guess I''ll sit down and wait. I plop my butt down, expecting to feel some relief from getting to sit after such a long day, but I''m glutted with biomass so my body isn''t the slightest bit sore or tired. I''m mentally exhausted, of course, but that''s been the case since this all started and I''m certainly not going to get any rest here, of all places.

    So I wait. It''s¡­ surprisingly difficult to just wait, actually. It feels wrong. I should be doing something. Eating something. Talking to someone. Braiding Anastasia''s hair. Practicing my shapeshifting. Anything. But I''m just supposed to wait, and the last thing I want to do is grow alien bits in the middle of what is probably a top-secret military compound of some sort. I want to, though. The walls between me and what I thought were safe and sane uses of my power have thoroughly broken down after¡­ well, everything that just happened. It''s taking all the self-control I have left to not swap my brain over to a Raptor''s for a bit just to be extra sure there aren''t any aliens gearing up to attack us.

    Although I guess¡­ why shouldn''t I? It''s not like shapeshifting my brain is a particularly visible transformation. And it would make everything so much easier to just shut off the anxiety and stress, declare a Task, and just¡­

    Wait. My Task is to wait until someone arrives or gives me permission to leave.

    So I wait.

    And I wait.

    And the next thing I know, someone has arrived. Two someones, even. Task complete.

    The pair of humans that walk in through the room''s only door are not dressed for war, although both of them are armed with a handgun. The smaller one walks in first, holding a clipboard with what I suspect are notes about me. The larger one holds nothing, but when it enters the room I feel a pressure that immediately reminds me of Cross-Country''s; it, too, is puzzle and impossibility and contradiction, but rather than insisting on that contradiction it searches for it, knowing it intimately and lovingly like a mother knows her child.

    The power doesn''t seem particularly strong or aggressive, settling comfortably on my shoulders like a blanket. It makes no attempt to penetrate my defenses, but I get the distinct impression it does not actually need to.

    Ah, right. Emily warned me of this. She thought it was important that I could say she never used powers without lying. That''s what this power is, isn''t it? A living lie detector. But how does it detect lies, exactly? How does it determine truth?

    "Well, let''s get the easy ones out of the way first, huh?" the human with the clipboard says, sitting down across from me as the lie detector takes a standing position behind it. "Are you Lia Morgan?"

    Well, fuck! The easy ones, it says! The easy ones! Jesus Christmas Christ, okay. Fuck!

    ¡­But I don''t let any of those internal thoughts show on my face. I calmly revert to Lia''s full, standard body, smile hesitantly at the woman interviewing me (or at least she looks like a woman. Why didn''t I notice that until now?) and in my best hesitant, fearful voice I answer her question.

    "Oh, geez. Uh, I''d like to confidently say yes, but honestly? After everything that happened I kind of don''t know anymore."

    All technically true, and the lie detector doesn''t react to any of it. Which might mean nothing, but it might mean everything.

    "Could you explain that a bit more?" the interrogator asks, and the game begins.

 12. Worse Than That, Were Also People

    I feel like it should go without saying that the military isn''t on my side, and I shouldn''t be giving them an inch.

    ''But Julietta,'' an idiot would say, ''isn''t the military the one bastion of defense humanity has against the alien threat? Aren''t they the greatest hope we have for a future? Shouldn''t we be doing all we can to help them however we can?'' And I assure you, hypothetical idiot, you don''t need to worry about that. I will, indeed, be helping the military save the world, because I won''t have a goddamn choice in the matter.

    I''m being drafted. That is, by definition, not something I get a say in. These people don''t know me, they don''t care to know me, and the only thing they see when they look my way is a fancy set of superpowers for them to use and abuse like any other weapon in their arsenal. If I want even a single ounce of basic respect and dignity, I have to fight for it. It''s exactly the same way my life has always been: I need to stand up for myself just enough to claw some decency out of life, but not so much that I overstep my usefulness. It''s a delicate balance to walk, especially since I''m planning to directly mislead somebody with a lie detector power and I doubt that''ll go a hundred percent smoothly.

    Fortunately, speaking technical truths is the easiest thing in the world to me. It''s pretty much just how I talk normally. If this interrogator wants to spend their time looking for contradictions, that''s fine by me. And if the power is a bit more nuanced than that, well¡­ I''ll do my best to figure it out on the fly. Here''s hoping, though.

    "It''s a genuine struggle for me to keep looking like this," I admit truthfully. "Just the act of being me at all feels close to impossible."

    Getting them to believe I''m Lia, I think, is the biggest hurdle. I can just give perfectly straight answers to most of the questions I''ll be likely to deal with today, but Lia is a technical lie that I need to sell as true enough to pass muster. For Emily''s sake, I''ll pull it off.

    And then that girl is gonna tell me everything.

    "That''s a concerning thing to hear," the interrogator says. "Generally speaking, people tend to report power usage as an explicit act of will, something they need to activate and use on purpose. Learning to use it normally isn''t difficult, but learning to control it usually isn''t necessary."

    Is that supposed to intimidate me into breaking? You literally said ''usually.'' ''Generally.'' ''Normally.'' The out here is obvious.

    "Well, it''s not like that for me," I say simply. Because it isn''t. "I find sticking as one particular thing for too long really difficult. Whenever I touch someone for the first time it''s nearly impossible for me to not transform into them on the spot. My power constantly wants to be used. Constantly."

    "Powers don''t have a will of their own," the interrogator insists, and that catches me off guard a little. That''s¡­ an odd thing to be so confident about, considering that as far as I know we have no idea what powers even are.

    "I guess you''d probably know more than me," I tell her, "but it doesn''t feel that way with mine."

    "Is that why you said you don''t know who you are anymore?" the interrogator asks.

    Hmm. How much should I mention about my brain? Probably not any more than I don''t have to. It''s the kind of thing that could make people suspicious about me.

    "I feel like I don''t have a body that''s mine anymore," I say, carefully not outright agreeing in case the lie detector would ping if I say ''yes, that is why'' on something that isn''t the core of the issue for me. Though it certainly is an issue. "Trying to look like myself is uncomfortable, but trying to stay in any body for more than like, a few hours tends to make me kinda restless."

    "And this makes you¡­ unsure if you are Lia Morgan," the interrogator prompts.

    "Well, you know. Normal forms of identification just don''t work for me anymore. I assume that''s why you have the super looming behind you while you ask me all this stuff. But it''s not like I''ve picked up any new memories from picking up new bodies, so presumably I''m the person I remember being, right?"

    "And that person is Lia Morgan," the interrogator insists.

    "That is the name I''ve been given," I confirm. "Over the course of my life, I have reluctantly accepted it."

    The past four days, after all, are part of my life.

    The interrogator taps a pen against her clipboard for a few moments.

    "...I get the impression that you consider yourself to be clever," she says flatly.

    "I tend to prefer it to thinking myself a fool," I agree.

    "Well you should reconsider," she says. "This is a serious matter, Ms. Morgan, and treating it flippantly will do you no favors. My colleague is not a polygraph test you can cheat by playing it cool. The truth will be uncovered here, one way or another."

    And yet you called me Ms. Morgan.

    "Ma''am, I assure you that I am being particular about my answers explicitly because I do not wish to inadvertently mislead you," I promise. "I have had a very difficult week. My whole life has been completely destroyed. I don''t want your ''colleague'' to mark me as a liar and an infiltrator because I happen to be suffering a personal identity crisis. That''s exactly the sort of bullshit I expect to fall into my lap at this point, and I''m going to act accordingly."

    She stares at me. I glower right back. I can do this all day, bitch. The woman shifts slightly in her seat, thinking for a moment. She''s preparing a change of tactics. Fine by me.

    "Is there a reason you haven''t asked about your family, Ms. Morgan?" the interrogator asks. Ah, a classic. Wouldn''t the real Lia be worried about all the people important to her? Fortunately, my disguise does me well here.

    "Because they''re assholes," I answer immediately, since from my understanding that could not be more true. I''m pretty sure the real Lia hated their asses, and she was a huge jerk herself. "Besides, as far as I know they weren''t in the incursion zone anyway. I was only there for Emily''s sister''s stupid, awful birthday party."

    It really was a horrible, horrible birthday party. I''ll miss that pimp cane though.

    "Emily being the same Emily that survived the incursion zone with you?"

    "Yep," I nod.

    "The three people that survived with you. What are their names?"

    I frown a little. Okay, we''re moving on to establishing basic facts?

    "Christine, Emily, and Anastasia," I answer.

    "Last names?"

    "Uh¡­ Emily''s last name is Hewitt. I dunno about the other two."

    "Were you previously acquainted with these three?"

    "Only Emily," I say. "We met the other two in the incursion zone."

    "What is your relationship with Emily?" the interrogator asks.

    Oh-ho. Alright. Get into character, Julietta.

    "She''s my¡­" I start, and then trail off with a scowl. "...I dunno anymore. She told Christine that we''re in an open relationship? And like, I sure as fuck don''t remember agreeing on anything like that but there wasn''t really time to get into it with the whole ''being in an incursion zone'' thing so I just let it slide to not break team dynamic. But honestly I don''t really know what we are right now."

    "Would you describe yourself as a lesbian?"

    "You can''t ask that," I snap, crossing my arms. "That''s none of your goddamn business."

    "It''s just a clarification. You implied that you and Emily were in a relationship," the interrogator says calmly.

    "And you can infer whatever the fuck you want from what I imply," I tell her. "Is this really relevant? Can we just skip to the part where you ask if I''m secretly going to undermine the United States Military from the inside or spy for another country or turn out to have been from outer fucking space? Because the answer to all of those questions is no. I killed an Angel like, less than an hour ago! I don''t know what else you want me to do to prove I''m on your side."

    That finally earns me a rather conspicuous glance at the lie detector super, and he gives the interrogator a subtle nod. Okay. Cool. We''re getting somewhere.

    "You killed an Angel," she says. "Let''s talk about that."

    And so we do. I have nothing to hide when it comes to that, beyond not mentioning what happens to my brain. We walk through the entire fight, I talk about how my power was so unusually effective against the power the Angel had, and I tell her what I remember from the start of our run until the kill. She presses a lot about what happened afterwards, where I wouldn''t respond to anyone, and I just tell her that I think I was in shock. Because, again, that is entirely true. I was definitely, positively, absolutely in shock. And if there was more than that going on, well, I have no way to know, do I?

    So it''s probably best not to think about it.

    "Well, Lia, I have to say it''s a miracle you''re still with us."

    "I''m aware of that, ma''am."

    "It seems like it''s even more of a miracle for the rest of them," she continues. "Anastasia is a child, Christine cannot use her abilities by your account, and Emily¡­ doesn''t have powers?"

    "That''s what she said," I confirm.

    "Do you know what happens to people without powers in an incursion zone?" the interrogator asks, as if I didn''t have to watch multiple people get pulped into goddamn meat cubes. I can''t keep a bit of vitriol out of my voice when I respond.

    "I witnessed it firsthand," I growl. "One of Emily''s foster brothers died when the Queen dropped. Emily thought that keeping in contact with me is what saved her. Neither of us were inclined to check, but once Christine and Anastasia were with us the Queen''s influence just seemed¡­ less? And Emily could move around a little."

    "Do you know why that is?" she asks.

    "No, not really," I answer. "I have a guess, though. Powers seem to resist powers, and since their powers work at range they could grant that resistance over that range, or something?"

    "You''re close," the interrogator admits, though she doesn''t actually explain anything. "The others reported that Emily was oddly insistent on repeating that she didn''t have powers, and that she seemed to have unnaturally good decision-making ability."

    "I dunno about ''unnaturally'' good," I shrug. "She''s good at telling people what to do, but honestly we just needed somebody to take charge and act like they knew what was going on. A bad but decisive plan is better than no plan, and all that. She was as terrified as the rest of us, if not more so, but she did what the situation required of her with what she had. That''s just who she is."

    "You seem to think highly of her," the interrogator says.

    "Yeah, I do," I confirm. "She can be a bit of an irritating bitch sometimes, and I don''t know where we stand right now, but I still care about her a lot."

    "Would you say you know her well?"

    Maybe not as well as I thought, but yeah. I nod.

    "You have to understand, we are¡­ suspicious about her claims of powerlessness," the interrogator says plainly. "The probability of a powerless civilian surviving inside a Queen''s domain isn''t just next to nothing; until your friend Emily, it was nothing. And hiding a power is a serious offense with major consequences."

    "Okay," I say.

    "Okay?"

    "Yeah, I don''t know what you want from me here. There''s a first time for everything," I shrug. "Don''t you guys have some fancy way to determine if someone has powers or not?"

    "Yes, but there are ways around it," the interrogator insists. "And if someone knew those ways, it would almost certainly mean they''ve had their power for quite a long time, or they''ve had contact with someone who taught them the method."

    "And you find that a lot more believable than the one-in-a-million shot," I finish for her.

    "There is a significant history of unregistered, powered individuals making it out of incursion zones and claiming every kind of miracle except the one that actually saved them, yes. If there''s anything you know, or anything that even stood out as a little odd, it could be very helpful."

    I cross my arms and frown, tapping my bicep with one finger as I think about the best way to respond to that.

    "...Y''know, for pretty much my whole life, I expected that I would never see boot camp until the day I died," I say. "My parents made sure of that."

    Technically not a lie, but how could she interpret that as referring to anything other than Lia''s combat exemption?

    "Your family has made more than their fair share of contributions to the cause," the interrogator concedes incorrectly.

    "But now that I have powers, that''s out the window," I continue. "I''m yours until the day I die, right? That''s just how it is. All those ''contributions'' are completely going to waste. I don''t like that. That doesn''t seem fair."

    "Unfortunately, we don''t have much control over who does and does not gain the power to fight our enemy," the interrogator says. "We have to simply accept that power when it comes to us. You are infinitely more valuable than any monetary contribution a person could make."

    "Well if that''s the case," I say, "I want those contributions to protect Emily instead. I don''t want her to ever have to go back to a place like that."

    "That''s not up to us," the interrogator says. "Mr. and Mrs. Morgan will determine what happens now that the benefit of their contributions has been voided."

    Damn. Alright. I''ll have to figure out how to convince them, then.

    "Okay," I say. "Well, I think that''s all I have to say about Emily."

    "I see," the interrogator says, lifting up her clipboard. "I suppose that''s just about all the questions I have for you, then."

    "So are we done here?" I ask.

    "No," she answers, "We are not. Specialist Bauer?"

    She turns to the super behind her, and he nods.

    "The entity sitting across from me has recently killed one of the entities we classify as ''Angels,''" the interrogator states.

    "True," the super answers.

    "The entity sitting across from me acquired their ability to alter their personal biology less than five days ago."

    "True," the super answers.

    "The entity sitting across from me began existence in the same hospital in which the piece of paper I am holding was written," the interrogator says, lifting what appears to be Lia''s birth certificate.

    "False," the super answers.

    "Oh, bull shit," I protest. "That is¡ª"

    She doesn''t care. She shuts me up with a sharp look and keeps talking.

    "The entity sitting across from me began existence on Earth."

    "True."

    "The entity sitting across from me did not begin existence inside the domain of an entity we classify as a ''Queen.''"

    The super pauses.

    "...False," he says.

    Wait. What? I run the double negative through my head again, just to confirm what he just said. Both the interrogator and the super seem as surprised as I am, clearly having expected a different answer. A tiny bit of fear creeps onto their features.

    "H-hey," I start, trying to regain even a sliver of control over this conversation. "Hold on for a¡ª"

    I choke, an overwhelming pressure from the super across from me invading my body, crushing my power down beneath my skin. My thoughts stutter as the constant awareness of myself forever streaming in the back of my mind shrinks away. What¡­ I¡­!

    "Be silent," the interrogator orders, sweat starting to form on her brow, but I can''t help but push back against the force crushing me, shoving it away and reasserting control over my body. My flesh writhes, a ripple of crystalline scales dancing across my skin like wheat in the wind, and the interrogator''s eyes go wide as she pulls out a gun and shoots me three times in the chest.

    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    I stagger back. It hurts, but not in a way that matters. The real damage comes from the bullets passing clean through my body and breaking the back of the chair behind me, causing me to collapse backwards onto the floor. My brain instinctively shifts to that of a Raptor''s, dousing my panic in cold calculation, and I make my decision immediately. I repair my wounds, return to a fully human form, put my hands above my head, and start rapidly apologizing.

    "Sorry, sorry, sorry!" I beg. "Don''t shoot, please, don''t shoot. I''m not¡­ I was just startled. I''m not fighting."

    The room goes silent, nobody moving for a solid five seconds before the interrogator speaks again.

    "You will stay right where you are," she orders, her voice shaking slightly. She''s¡­ afraid. She''s afraid of me. "You will not speak or move until I say so. Is that clear?"

    "I understand," I confirm. "I''m sorry."

    "The entity sitting in front of me," the interrogator says, "began existence more than seventeen years ago."

    "False."

    What? But¡­ I''m eighteen. I just had my birthday. Was I a year younger than I thought?

    "The entity sitting in front of me began existence more than ten years ago."

    "False."

    Okay, uh. Okay. I mean. I doubt I was eight years younger than I thought. The interrogator''s nervousness grows, and mine does too, albeit for an entirely different reason.

    "The entity sitting in front of me began existence more than one year ago."

    "False."

    No. No, no, no, no.

    "The entity sitting in front of me began existence more than three days ago."

    Please don''t say¡ª

    "True."

    Okay. Alright. What the fuck. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. This is insane, what does this mean? Do I not count as me anymore? I don''t count as having existed before my power? This is crazy, right? It''s according to¡­ to what, this random superpower? We don''t even know how powers work! What is this crap?

    "The entity sitting in front of me began existence at the same time it gained the ability to alter its biological makeup."

    "True."

    "Alright. Okay," the interrogator says, taking a couple deep breaths. "Shit."

    She motions to the super and they both leave the room, locking me in here alone. Fuck, fuck, fuck, what''s going to happen? Are they going to kill me? No, that''d be crazy, right? I made it clear that I intend to help them. I mean, I guess I was a little confrontational, but only to a degree that would be perfectly normal for Lia! And like, it''s not as though this is evidence that I''m secretly an Angel or some shit. They have way too much testimony and evidence that I''m not on the side of the aliens. It just means that they don''t have any way to verify my identity. Which I told them I was afraid of from the start!

    It''ll be fine. It''s going to be fine. I literally killed an Angel for them. If nothing else, I''m too valuable to just throw away. I have to be. I can''t have gotten through all that just to die because some stupid lie detector power thinks I''m four days old, right? Except apparently it''s not a lie detector power, is it? It''s something way more crazy, what the fuck was it even doing? Detecting objective truth? No. That''s absurd, right? If it was that insanely powerful they wouldn''t be sending that guy to interrogate teenagers, they''d be discovering all the secrets of the fucking universe like the fact that I''m apparently goddamn four days old! Oh shit. Am I panicking? I think I''m panicking. Stupid goddamn human brain, why did I start using this again? I let the Raptor brain take over, the fear washing itself away into a far more rational and manageable instinct.

    I only have to care about my task. And again, my only task now is to wait.

    And wait.

    And¡­ wait.

    A presence touches my own, snapping me back to myself. It strokes me softly, a gentle and safe power that promises nothing but joy if I would only let it inside. Of course, that just raises my hackles further, and I focus myself on keeping it out. It surrounds me anyway, enclosing me in a manner that surely isn''t a threat, how could it ever be a threat, no matter how clearly ready it is to burrow its way inside me at any moment. A knock on the door sounds out, and before I can answer the door opens. A hawkish human in an officer''s uniform enters without a word, a smile slightly parting its cherry-red lips. The lipstick is extra noticeable on its face because its skin is so pale, and combined with its sharp features I half expect to see vampire fangs the moment it opens its mouth.

    "So you''re the little wing ripper, then?" the human asks rhetorically, and nope. No fangs. That''s probably good. I definitely could have been convinced vampires were real, today. "You''ve been causing quite the fuss."

    "...I promise it''s not on purpose," I say, doing my absolute damnedest not to shapeshift any accidental alien parts. Wait, my brain isn''t human. Guh, I''m probably better off that way, at least for now.

    "That would be ''I promise it''s not on purpose, ma''am," the human corrects. The woman, I mean. She''s a woman. I knew that because it is obvious. "I''m told the intelligence folks couldn''t find a way to verify your identity. They said you could be anyone. You could even be one of the enemy."

    I just hang my head miserably, continuing to sit on the floor. Oh, huh. There are some bloody holes in the front of my hospital gown. When did¡­ oh right. I got shot earlier.

    I''ve been shot a lot today, actually. Like, a lot a lot.

    "Nothing to say to that?" the officer presses.

    "Huh?" I blink. Shit, focus. "Oh, uh. I¡­ don''t really know how I would prove anything, ma''am. You could let me talk to my parents, see if they recognize me?"

    I might be able to fool them, honestly. I certainly plan to try, since Emily''s plan revolves around it.

    "The ones you said were ''assholes?''" the officer deadpans.

    "Those are the ones, ma''am."

    "Mmm. Well, perhaps we''ll do that. I''m sure they''ll be notified of the situation, anyway. But ultimately, that wouldn''t be proof. Not when the best method of fact-finding we have insists that you are four days old."

    I nod glumly.

    "I¡­ I really don''t know why that happened, ma''am," I tell her. "I mean, I guess it''s tied to my power somehow, but I don''t know how or why."

    Seriously, it makes no sense. I got my power when this whole incursion thing started, and that was about four days ago. So that''s the time period in which I apparently ''started existing,'' but it''s obvious from everyone''s responses that this is not how powers are supposed to work. So it has to be specific to my power somehow, and my power is shapeshifting, but if shapeshifting is what causes that then I should be like¡­ a few hours old, at most. Right? I''m shapeshifting all the damn time!

    "Well, recruit," the officer says, "the good news is that we don''t have a minimum drafting age for powered individuals, and therefore I do not care. I''m not happy with what happened here, but don''t worry. We can figure you out."

    She snaps her fingers, and a young man opens the door from the outside, handing me shorts, socks, underthings, and a cotton shirt. I wordlessly take them, and he departs as the officer keeps talking.

    "I am First Lieutenant Marianne Locke," she says, "also known as Commander. My power is very simple: I can make you obey. But you''re going to be a very good recruit and never make me use it, aren''t you?"

    "Yes ma''am," I nod.

    "Good. That''s the answer I want to hear," she says. "You and the other two newly powered kids with you will be joining my training group, where you will be learning to control your abilities alongside the other people who gained powers due to the Chicago incursion. They will, in many ways, have a four-day head start on you. You will, in many ways, have a four-day head start on them. You will not allow either of these facts to hold you back or cause any problems."

    "I understand, ma''am," I nod.

    "Do you?" she asks. "You seem to be a lot more compliant than you were reported to be just a little while ago."

    I stare at her.

    "Getting shot tends to help clear my head, ma''am."

    Commander exhales through her nose, something that might almost be a smile twitching on her lips.

    "I suppose it did work twice today, but try not to make us waste any more bullets, recruit."

    "...Yes ma''am."

    She nods and heads for the door.

    "I will admit," she says, standing in the doorway, "you''re making this easier than I expected. I figured you''d want to complain. Perhaps press charges."

    "Would there be any point, ma''am?" I ask.

    "Ah, good. You are a smart girl. Get dressed and then come outside," she orders, and then she exits the room. I do as I''m told, getting some real clothes on¡­ minus shoes, which seems like a bit of an oversight since my shoe size is entirely arbitrary. They could have just given me whatever.

    Hesitantly, I give reverting my brain to human standard a try while I get dressed. Okay. Alright. This isn''t too bad. This is a normal and manageable amount of anxiety, given the circumstances. Honestly, I''m used to being stressed as hell, I should really be better at handling everything without the crutch of completely deleting some of my emotions. Kind of pathetic of me, to be honest.

    Exiting the room, I find Commander flanked by two more soldiers, waiting for me. She wordlessly turns and departs, so I follow, her entourage making up the rear to ensure I always have a few guns at my back (y''know, in case I need to clear my head).

    "Um, permission to ask a question, ma''am?" I prompt hesitantly.

    "Hmm. Granted."

    "Am I correct in getting the impression that being taken to train with the other new supers is a good sign, re: suspicions about my loyalties?"

    "Eh," Commander says, wiggling her hand in a so-so gesture without ever looking my way. "I wouldn''t go around expecting to get access to military secrets. Otherwise, though? What matters to me is how good you are at killing aliens, and you are about to literally be the top of your class, wing ripper. Stay in your lane and you''ll do just fine."

    Wing ripper. It''s a title given to Angel killers, though it''s also used to describe a superhero whose primary purpose in the field is direct Angel combat and assassination. It''s very prestigious, and almost certainly the last job I would ever want in the military. Maybe I shouldn''t look too good.

    "The interrogator seemed to think I was an alien, ma''am," I point out.

    "Did she? Well, you''ve actually fought aliens, recruit," Commander says. "About how likely would you say they are to calmly walk down the hall and hold a conversation?"

    Well, shit. What do I say? What answer is she looking for, here? Because the way the question is worded implies that Commander thinks the answer is ''not very likely,'' but honestly¡­ I could see it. Maybe. Kind of. The Angel I fought wasn''t exactly a conversationalist, but it definitely had emotion. As robotic as most of its responses were, I remember it¡­ cursing me. Not like, magically, but just in the sense that it was angry and it expressed that pretty complexly. I don''t know how I know any of this. I don''t know why I understand anything that it ''said.'' Having a Raptor brain might hook me into some sort of crazy hive mind, or something? Except not perfectly, I guess? I couldn''t understand the Angel all that well, and it seemed like it didn''t really understand me most of the time either. Was our communication mental? Or was it¡­ something else? I don''t have any idea.

    Doesn''t matter. The point here is that the alien can, at minimum, hate in creative ways, and I feel like that''s a pretty intrinsic aspect of personhood.

    But the question is: does Commander know that? Her question feels like it''s being asked with the implicit assumption that of course aliens don''t communicate. And without literally possessing an alien brain that automatically downloads Angel thoughts into it whenever they''re nearby, that would definitely be my assumption, too. They don''t do a lot of things I''d normally associate with personhood.

    But still, I don''t want to just up and say that aliens have no capacity to do this, because while I''d certainly be surprised to hear about one walking down the hall and holding a conversation, I don''t think it''s completely impossible. If she knows that, I risk being suspected of trying to cover my tracks if I make that claim. But I don''t want to say aliens do have the capacity to do this either, because if she doesn''t think aliens can talk she''s liable to be pretty uncomfortably interested in why I do.

    So I say nothing. The question feels rhetorical enough that I can probably get away with it. And sure enough, she doesn''t press me for an answer. Safe for now.

    I get led down a concrete hall and up a concrete staircase, eventually emerging on the ground floor of a dark gray building that looks almost like an office complex. Soon we make our way outside to the parking lot, and a bit of tension uncoils in my chest as I see Christine and Anastasia standing by an Army personnel transport truck. It''s the kind with the closed top and the internal seating on each wall, facing towards the center of the vehicle so everyone can enter and exit from the back. But who cares! They''re okay! They''re okay!

    "Lia!" Anastasia calls out, a smile lighting up her face as she immediately runs towards me. My whole body goes tense, a constellation of eyes blooming around my head so I can watch every soldier at once, terrified that Anastasia''s sudden movement might provoke them to stop her. But while a few immediately react to my change, the ones by Anastasia seem entirely content to let her run at me.

    Good. Okay. That''s very good. I kneel down and scoop Anastasia up into a hug when she reaches me, lifting her up off the ground and giving her a squeeze.

    "Ana!" I grin at her. "You''re alright!"

    "I''m so sorry I fell asleep, Lia! I-I didn''t mean to!"

    "What?" I gape at her. "Ana, no, you did great! You saved our lives so many times! You did nothing wrong, not a single thing."

    "But¡ª"

    "Ana," I cut her off. "Seriously, it''s okay. Look around. We did it. We made it. We won!"

    She blinks at that, and then the smile returns to her face in full.

    "We made it!" she whoops in agreement, raising her little arms to the sky and causing a cascade of her knee-length hair to flop all over my head.

    "We need to get your braids redone, huh?" I joke, removing a few errant strands that got into my mouth. "Now that we hopefully have a bit more time, I''ll teach you how to do them yourself, okay?"

    "Yeah, okay!"

    I smile wider, shifting her weight so I''m just carrying her with one arm. What an incredibly wonderful kid. She deserves so much better.

    "You just gonna stand there, Christine?" I call out to her. "Come on, get in on this hug, too."

    She blinks in surprise.

    "Uh¡­"

    Hmm. What would the real Lia say in a situation like this? Ah, I know.

    "Bitch, I killed an Angel for you!" I grin. "Get over here and accept my affection!"

    She blushes and walks on over, and I give her a one-armed hug. I still wouldn''t say I really like Christine, but am I glad she''s safe? Yes, absolutely. Still, she''s obviously not the most comfortable with the gesture, so I quickly release her.

    Y''know, I never really noticed it before, what with the constant mortal peril and perpetual sensory overload, but now that I''m a little more used to it, having a sense of touch makes hugs kind of¡­ nice? Huh. I always assumed people just did it as a social signaling thing. Like wedding rings or kissing, but like¡­ platonic. Something to appreciate because it''s a physical form of proof that you have a positive relationship with someone, which is always nice to be aware of.

    Weird. The more you know, I guess.

    "So, do either of you know where Emily is?" I ask.

    "She requested emancipation," Commander answers before either of them can. "Given her age and the death of her current foster parents, it''s likely to be granted if she can secure employment and housing for herself."

    Hmm. That shouldn''t be too hard for her; houses are cheap. More importantly, this seems to imply that they don''t have conclusive evidence of her having powers¡­ though I wouldn''t be surprised if they''re planning to keep her under surveillance, just in case.

    "I''d like to see her, if she''s still around," I tell Commander.

    "I''m sure you would," she answers. "Now load up."

    She indicates the back of the transport truck and I suppress an urge to scowl. Are we being forcibly separated and treated like shit because she''s suspicious, because it''s policy, or because she''s just an asshole? Pressing the matter further feels like it would be a bad idea. I''ll have to try and figure her out, and fast.

    Still, I help Anastasia get into the truck, holding her hair in my free hand so we don''t trip on it climbing up. We sit down next to each other, Commander sitting next to Christine and two armed soldiers taking the seats closest to the doors. The truck begins to move, and we start heading out to wherever the hell they take drafted superpowered kids.

    "Where are we?" Anastasia asks as I tease my way through her hair, combing it with my fingers and making sure she''s not sitting on it. "And where are we going?"

    "We''ll be taking you to Fort Moore for your training," Commander answers.

    Isn''t that in Georgia? Wow, I guess that teleporter guy isn''t called Cross Country for nothing.

    "That''s it?" Christine asks softly.

    "Hmm?" Commander prompts.

    "I mean¡­ just like that?" Christine says. "We¡­ we made it out of the incursion zone today. I haven''t taken my pills in days, we haven''t had any time to grieve, and everyone we know is¡­"

    She looks at Anastasia trailing off before saying ''dead.'' But I can feel in the tension of her neck that Anastasia very much knows what Christine was about to say anyway.

    "We tracked down your medical information." Commander answers. "You''ll find your prescriptions in your room when we get you on-site."

    "That''s¡­ not really my point," Christine mutters. "And I never gave you permission to do that."

    "Well you should probably get used to that, Recruit Baker, because we no longer need your permission," Commander says frankly. "You are a walking, talking weapon of mass destruction. Rare is the superhuman that can''t figure out some way or another to kill people with nothing but a flick of will. So yes, we take your medical history, your psych evals, your social media pages, and every other possible scrap of information we can find about you and we put it in a big file and anyone with enough stars or stripes on their shoulder can pull it out and read it any time they goddamn want."

    Christine goes white as a sheet.

    "But that''s¡­ that''s horrific! That''s a monstrous breach of privacy, I¡­ I can''t¡­ how could they¡­?"

    "Get used to it, Baker," Commander says. "You won''t have time to worry about it while you''re fighting monsters."

    "B-but I can''t¡ª"

    "You can," Commander snaps. "I promise you, we will make damn sure of that, one way or another."

    "No. No, no, no, no," Christine says, curling up into a ball. "That''s so fucked up. How could you do this?"

    "Me?" Commander says, raising an eyebrow. "Recruit, I can make anyone here do any damn thing in the world, and they''d thank me for it. You think I''m an exception to any of this? I''m telling you: you get used to it. You''ll have more important things to care about soon enough."

    "I think the point Christine was trying to make, ma''am, is that this is all a little sudden," I jump in, my voice even. "We''re a group of children that literally just got out of a severe, life-threatening situation. Do we not get even one day of rest?"

    "Feel free to sleep on the ride there," Commander says mercilessly. "It''ll be a few hours."

    "I see," I frown. "It''s probably best if I don''t do that, actually."

    "Oh?" Commander asks.

    "Well, I shapeshift in my sleep sometimes," I admit. No sense trying to keep that a secret, after all.

    Commander blinks, seeming genuinely surprised. Is¡­ is that really so weird?

    "...I''ll make note of that," she says simply, and we settle in for the drive.

    I spend most of the time teaching Anastasia how to braid her hair, but internally I keep going back and ruminating over that whole conversation. Christine is right: this is weird. Not the invasion of privacy stuff; sure, it''s absolutely fucked up, but not in any way I didn''t expect. The immediate shift to training, though? Not letting me see ''my'' parents? Not letting the others so much as visit the graves of their families? That''s extreme in a way I didn''t see coming.

    Because ultimately, it''s not just cruel. It''s impractical. Dangerously so. Commander was right, we are walking WMDs, but worse than that, we''re also people. Fickle, emotional, needy, irrational people. If we''re not already considered psychologically unstable, continuing to push us right after we get out of the worst crisis in our entire lives is a damn efficient way to get us there. And most confusingly of all, the military knows this.

    Yes, without a doubt, they do not care about us or our personal well-being. Sure. But they do care about winning wars, and wars have been won or lost by the morale of their soldiers since the dawn of fucking time. This is straight-up pre-Sun-Tzu shit, here. The military might not always be great at keeping morale high and ensuring unit cohesion and doing the bonds of brotherhood bullshit but they damn well know to try. They''re callous, not stupid. They know there''s no point in using us as living weapons if they''re just going to immediately break us.

    And the only exception I can think of to any of this is if they think we''re going to end up broken anyway. If they think we''re such a short-term commodity that they need us on the battlefield in shit condition now rather than fully prepared to win a year from now. If they''re, for example, a lot more desperate than the propaganda lets on. And the propaganda can''t even hide the fact that we''re losing.

    I don''t let any of these thoughts show on my face, just carefully guiding Anastasia''s little hands through the motions at the back of her head. But internally, my mind keeps churning away, burning through every option I can think of on how to survive the end of the world.

    I guess, perhaps, it might have been good we learned how to live in an incursion zone when we did.

 13. Pad Thai Does Not Taste Like Peanut Butter

    "You will be assigned a room with Christine," Commander informs me as the truck starts to slow. I turn to her in surprise.

    "...We get rooms?" I ask. I always imagined a single big bunk room where everyone would sleep on rows of cots. That''s how people sleep in the military movies.

    "You aren''t starting boot camp yet," Commander says. "You and the others here will be going through power training first. You need to be able to understand and control your abilities before we can allow you to train with unpowered recruits. At that point, sleeping accommodations will change, but until then a degree of privacy and comfort will be allowed."

    "Oh, alright," I nod at her. That makes sense. They can''t exactly put people through training designed to mentally break someone in half and obliterate their individuality if those people might cause everyone''s balls to explode with their mind or whatever. Or, well, I guess they can, they just have to teach us enough that they can claim it''s our fault instead of theirs when it happens. "Who is rooming with Anastasia?"

    "No one," Commander answers. "For legal reasons, we don''t room minors with adults, and minors under the age of thirteen do not room with anyone over that age. We have someone on-call to take care of her, if needed."

    I am both relieved and immensely disgusted that they have a fully developed policy about this. I refrain from commenting, however, since I doubt it would do anything but annoy her if I complained about it. I''d prefer to look after Anastasia myself, but I never really expected the military to allow it. I end up spending the rest of the drive in silence, but it doesn''t take long; before I know it, the truck parks and we''re finally getting directed to step outside.

    There''s a pretty simple building in front of us: boxy, two stories tall. Surrounding it on all sides is a thick, deciduous forest, a kaleidoscope of different trees intermingling to block off our view in every direction. They grow so close to the building that it would probably even be difficult to see from the air¡­ but that goes both ways, of course. I don''t have any way to tell where the hell we are. Though I suppose I was outright told we would be going to Fort Moore, and the muggy heat here at least seems like it could be Georgia. I don''t know why they''d lie to us about that, but it''s always nice to see supporting evidence anyway.

    Commander leads us inside, walks us through a few bland hallways, and finally drops Christine and me off at our room, instructing us that she''ll pick us up when the mess hall opens for dinner. I have to admit, I''m somewhat impressed by our living accommodations. I was expecting my new room to be a lot smaller and less comfortable-looking, but I guess the military likes to ease the superhumans into things at least a little. The quarters are pretty sizable for a dorm, with two beds on opposite ends of a room that has more than enough space to give us each our own desk and drawers. There''s even an attached bathroom and shower. I guess it makes sense; we''re a bunch of valuable assets that happen to also be equivalent to a bunch of walking armed warheads. Even if they want to get us up to speed as fast as possible, they at least need to treat us with kid gloves until they''re certain we won''t explode.

    "Well¡­ at least it''s not too cramped?" Christine says hesitantly, her head swiveling around like a nervous chicken as she looks at the room.

    "Yeah, it''s not too bad," I agree, motioning towards the two beds on either side of the room. "Do you have a preference for which end?"

    "Oh, um¡­ I''ll take that side, I guess," Christine says, pointing to the bed further from the door and closer to the bathroom. I nod, not really caring, and head over to flop down on the other one.

    "Hey, Lia?" she asks.

    Staring at the ceiling, I sigh a little at the name. I can''t help it, which is kind of pathetic. I get that I''m allowed to be upset over signing my whole life away to that name, but I should have more self-control than this.

    "Yeah?" I ask, trying to at least keep the discomfort out of my voice.

    "I think they have cameras in here," she says.

    I frown, glancing around. I don''t see anything, but that didn''t sound like a baselessly paranoid ''I think.'' It sounded more like a ''this is definitely true but I don''t know how to express myself confidently'' sort of ''I think.'' Hmm. Her power takes things apart and separates them into pieces¡­

    "Can you sense that kind of thing?" I ask her directly, sitting up.

    "I don''t know," she says, nervously tugging on her frizzy hair. "It''s weird."

    ¡­That''s not a very helpful answer.

    "Are there any cameras in the bathroom?" I ask her.

    She glances towards it, a thoughtful look on her face even though she''s just sort of looking at a closed door and a wall.

    "...Yes," she answers, much more conclusively, looking understandably disturbed. Because like, yeah, what the hell? Even setting aside how gross that is, isn''t it dangerous?

    "That''s kind of odd," I frown. "Wasn''t there some Angel that could attack people through pictures of itself?"

    Have they already screened us for memetic powers at the last facility? If so, how? And what about all the other kids that presumably showed up here the literal day they got powers in the first place? They could have something that makes them dangerous to record and not even know about it.

    "That''s what you''re concerned about?" Christine scowls. "They could be recording us naked."

    "Well, I don''t see any holes in the walls for the cameras to look through, so if there are cameras they''re probably using like¡­ millimeter wave scanning or something. Like the things they use to see through your clothes at airports."

    "Those are for 3D imaging," Christine says.

    "Sure, it might not be exactly that, but the point is that if it''s looking through the walls it probably doesn''t care about our clothes anyway."

    "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she mutters.

    "Not¡­ really," I admit. "But if whatever recording device in here always treats us as equally naked, hopefully it''ll help you not freak out in the shower. Which, by the way, we both desperately need. You wanna go first or should I?"

    "Eugh. Go for it," she says, waving me towards the bathroom. "I''ll definitely have to psyche myself up for that."

    Hmm. Yeah, that''s oddly relatable. Come to think of it, I kind of have to ask myself a pretty weird question.

    Whose body do I shower in?

    I could hypothetically shower as an alien, but that¡­ I just, I dunno, I wouldn''t even know how to do that? I sort of have a whole routine with washing myself, and¡­ hmm. I guess that routine wouldn''t entirely apply now either way. But still, with the cameras I''m worried the bigwigs will get suspicious of me if I keep turning into an Angel in private. So that, of course, means I should shower in a human body. And the obvious choice is Lia''s.

    I''ve walked around naked wearing her skin a dozen times now, so you''d think I would be less squeamish about this, but for some reason I feel like there''s a world of difference between ending up naked because you''re so pumped full of adrenaline you can''t even remember that clothes exist, and purposefully stripping down with the intention of carefully rubbing soap all over my entire body. It''s just. Y''know. Not necessarily weirder, but certainly a situation where I''m going to be forced to think about it a lot more.

    And¡­ I don''t want to think about it.

    I head into the bathroom anyway, resolving that if I''m going to be whiny and conflicted about this I should at least have the decency to do so privately. Especially since it isn''t actually that difficult of a choice: Lia''s body is not my body, but it''s the logical body to use for a lot of reasons. It''s the body that the real Lia would be the most inclined to use, for starters, and since there are apparently cameras watching me that could potentially matter a lot. But there''s also the fact that showering in anybody''s body other than my own is kind of creepy, and Lia is the only body I have that''s too dead to actually be offended by it. My only other human options right now are showering as Emily (very weird, since she''s my sister), Anastasia (extremely fucking weird, since she''s a child), or some combination of the three of them (which somehow feels way less creepy and significantly more creepy at the same time). There just aren''t any good options here.

    At the end of the day, the only non-problematic body to shower in is my own. And¡­ I physically can''t do that anymore. Lia''s body is the one I have to act like is mine. It''s the body I''ve stolen and assigned to that purpose. I need to suck it up and commit. It would be a little suspicious if I couldn''t act comfortable in what is supposedly my own skin. It becomes pretty clear that I''ve only made it as far as I have so far with some pretty severe compartmentalizing, because when I finally lock the door behind me and look in the mirror, the dysphoria hits me all at once.

    I''ve been in bathrooms before, obviously. The water pipes weren''t working in the incursion zone, but that just made bathrooms more valuable, as we could still go to the bathroom in the toilets and just drop the lid instead of flushing. If not for the prevalence of bottled water, toilets might have been our only source of it at all. So I''ve already struggled through the learning process of figuring out how normal people use the damn things: in my original body, just the simple act of dropping my own pants was a bit of a process. I had to sit down first and shimmy everything off, or drag everything down with one hand while the other leaned on my cane. Undressing is so easy now by comparison, so¡­ thoughtless. It''s a process that can be done in a single motion, combined with sitting down at the same time. It feels like cheating. It bothers me.

    Maybe that''s stupid. It feels stupid, in a lot of ways. Why am I complaining about something being easier, taking less work? I hated my old body, but it was mine, and I had mastered it. I had my way of doing things, and those things worked. I didn''t need help to go about my day, no matter what anyone thought. A lot of people in my position wouldn''t have been able to say the same, but I made it work. I put in the work, and I was strong for it.

    I never needed this. Lia isn''t better than me.

    Yet here I am, feeling inadequate because I can sit on a toilet a different way. It''s easy, concerningly so. It''s like Lia''s damn ghost still lives in her stolen brain, and it goes through her motions, uses her habits, and replaces every part of me it can with her. I walk like her now, I talk like her, and I even take a shit like her. I have to, or whoever''s watching those cameras is going to ask questions I don''t want anyone to answer.

    So¡­ I guess it''s time to shower. After a moment''s hesitation, I turn and lock the door behind me, something I don''t normally do when showering or using the bathroom because, for all my self-important bluster, it could be really dangerous for me if I end up slipping and people are unable to help me. Lia feels like the sort of person who would always lock the door, though, always valuing her privacy and being paranoid about other people respecting it. It''s also a reasonable thing to do for someone about to do weird shit in front of the mirror, and I''m certainly about to do that.

    I scowl at the mirror, and Lia scowls back. I have been going well out of my way to not pay attention to Lia''s body, but I''ve had the excuse of having plenty of more pressing concerns up until this point. It''s time to suck it up and get used to my new normal. I quickly strip off my clothes, piling them into a corner by the door, and take a good, long look at myself in the mirror.

    Jesus Christmas Christ, Lia is just¡­ objectively hot as hell. Like, that''s not really a thing I''ve ever cared much about, and of course I still don''t, but staring at myself like this really puts it front and center. I don''t know how a girl gets genetics this good, but I could easily see Lia on the front page of some sports website. Or a porn website, frankly, though I''ve only seen a couple of those back when I felt the need to confirm my lack of interest more conclusively.

    But that''s not really important. I already knew, at least secondhand, that Lia was hot and she owned it. I''m not really sure why my brain is suddenly catching on it now. My goal here is to check for important things, aspects of her body that are unlikely to come up but could out me as not being her if I don''t know about them. She has holes in both earlobes, her belly button, and exactly one nipple, all of which were presumably due to piercings. I obviously don''t have any jewelry to put there (and the weird feeling an experimental poke at that nipple produces makes me decide that I definitely don''t want any) but that''s unlikely to be an issue. I''m a shapeshifter, of course I lost ''my'' jewelry after four days of fighting. Not a big issue.

    The one major blemish I find on her skin is a fist-sized birthmark on the back of her thigh, though I find it oddly unsurprising when I discover it, like I had already known despite never seeing it before. Which¡­ I guess I did. My power has pretty intricate knowledge of her entire body, after all, and birthmarks are no exception. Still, the intellectual awareness of a patch of skin that has different coloration isn''t really the same as seeing it. My power doesn''t store biological information as pictures in my memory, it stores it as¡­ I don''t really know. Oddly contextless knowledge, I guess. It feels weird to think about, like I read a scientific paper about some animal I''ve never actually seen. I could ace an exam about Lia''s biological makeup if I really wanted to, but it takes a bit of mental energy to convert that raw knowledge into something that actually makes practical sense.

    It''s weird, because when I shapeshift, I feel like I know what''s happening to my body. I feel like every last detail of every last cell is positioned to my specifications. But if you zoomed out and asked me ''hey, does Lia have any birthmarks?'' I would have had to take a minute to think it over before now. I know it, but I don''t know it. I wonder what that implies.

    Then again, it''s entirely possible that the only reason this birthmark feels familiar is because I''m looking at it with Lia''s brain. And Lia, obviously, knew she had this. But I prefer to assume it''s weird power stuff rather than weird brain stuff, no matter how much the two clearly overlap.

    My investigations into my sister''s girlfriend''s naked body completed, I open the sliding door of the shower, preparing to get in. Immediately, my face drops into a scowl. Our shower back home had a fold-down seat mounted in the wall so I could use it without assistance, but this shower has no such thing. I imagine most showers don''t, since most people don''t need one. I actually have to take a moment to remind myself that I don''t need the seat anymore, because I can stand and walk safely without aid, but it still annoys me. Even ignoring the lack of basic fucking accessibility (that''s a joke, I''m not ignoring it, I will never ignore it), every shower should have a seat! Showers are supposed to be relaxing, who wouldn''t want to be able to sit down when they feel like it?

    Whatever. It''s not like I expect the ultimate organization of people-are-assets-to-be-spent to care about disabilities. Except, y''know, I don''t actually need the accommodations anymore, so they probably do have a room with a handicap bathroom that they just never would have thought to give to me. It''s fine. I''m fine. Everything is fucking fine.

    I finish my shower swiftly and efficiently, the shame of how easy it is like this bubbling inside me. I wrap my hair up in a towel¡ªanother thing that shouldn''t feel natural to do, since I used to be bald¡ªand wrap the rest of me in another towel so I can head out and raid the drawers for fresh clothes.

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    Christine is sitting on her bed when I emerge, looking vaguely miserable as always, though she lets out an ''eep'' noise and turns away blushing as I walk out of the shower. I fail to resist the urge to roll my eyes.

    "Christine, you''ve seen me naked dozens of times now, why are you embarrassed over a towel?"

    "I just¡­ I don''t want to be rude," she stammers.

    "Look as much as you want, Christine. It really doesn''t bother me."

    I''m used to being stared at. And it''s not my body anyway.

    "...It''s a little weird for me either way, Lia," she mutters, still not looking my way. "But that''s not¡­ sorry. What I mean to say is that I don''t think I''ve thanked you for saving my life yet. And, um, y''know. Thank you."

    "You''re welcome," I answer simply, rifling through the doors and finding a simple white T-shirt, shorts, and modest cotton underwear. Works for me. I drop the towel and start to put them on.

    "I get that I was just¡­ dead weight," she says quietly. "I couldn''t help you at all. But you saved me anyway, and¡­ well, you didn''t have to."

    I sigh. I need to think of something to boost this mopey girl''s self-esteem a little. Hmm. I have a few ideas I could try.

    "You weren''t dead weight," I tell her. "In fact, I think you might have been the only reason any of us survived."

    Christine snorts incredulously, not believing for a second that she was helpful. I suppose that, for all her flaws, she can at least maintain realistic self-assessment. It''s kind of nice, in its own way. Most useless people I have to deal with think they''re hot shit, so it''s pretty refreshing.

    "I''m not saying you were some expert combatant, Christine," I smirk at her, pulling the last of my clothes on. "But I mean it. I think you''re the reason we survived. I was wondering the entire time why the aliens didn''t press us as hard as we know they could have, and I feel like I finally have the last puzzle piece now."

    "You think I¡­ what, kept them away, somehow?" she asks, curious despite herself.

    "I think they kept themselves away, but it was because of you," I tell her. "That Angel didn''t try to kill you, Christine. It tried to capture you alive. If we assume that was their goal from the start, the way they spent most of their time penning us in and waiting for backup makes a lot more sense."

    Her eyes go wide.

    "Wait, what? Why would they want to capture me?"

    "Well, that I don''t know. The Angel¡­"

    I pause, trailing off for a moment as I briefly forget how to turn concepts into words. Words just¡­ don''t seem adequate, in regards to translating everything the Angel said to me. Too simple, too¡­ limited. But fuck that, that''s stupid. I''m great with words. I can get her to understand.

    ¡­But I probably shouldn''t. I definitely shouldn''t say, out loud, that I could ''hear'' the Angel rambling about how blessed and holy Christine was. Not in a room filled up to the tits in military surveillance tech. That''ll get my butt tossed into a black site faster than I can say ''OpSec.''

    "...It yanked you away from us, but it never hurt you," I say instead. "It was almost¡­ gentle. You didn''t seem injured at all when I took you back, and for most of the fight after it seemed like it was just trying to retrieve you from me."

    "But¡­ but why would they¡­"

    "I don''t know," I tell her, keeping my voice even to try to help her stay calm. "My guess is that it has something to do with your power. Remember how Anastasia said yours and the Queen''s felt similar?"

    "But that''s¡­ that''s terrifying!" she squeaks. "Why would they want me alive? Don''t aliens just kill people? What were they going to do to me?"

    "Eh," I shrug. "It doesn''t matter, right? I got you out of there. Now get yourself clean."

    She stares at me with a complicated expression, but eventually gives me a careful nod.

    "Alright, Lia," she says. "I guess you have a point. Really though, thanks for saving me."

    "Of course," I tell her. "I''d do it again."

    She snorts at that, finally getting up and grabbing fresh clothes to take into the bathroom with her.

    "Okay, hero," she says sarcastically. I blink.

    "What?"

    "It''s just¡­ that was so sappy. ''I''d do it again.''"

    "I mean it," I insist.

    "Eh," she shrugs. "You''ll get tired of me eventually."

    She steps into the bathroom and closes the door before I can respond, leaving me frowning at her. Damn, that girl has self-esteem issues. Joke''s on her, though: I''m already tired of her, it just doesn''t matter. I sigh, shifting my brain into a Raptor''s to do a quick check on the aliens, and¡­ oh, right. There aren''t any other aliens around anymore. We made it out. Hmm.

    ¡­What am I going to do to pass the time now?

    It''s¡­ a weird thought. It legitimately takes me a while to think of what I normally do when I''m alone, my mind oddly blank in the unexpected absence of immediate danger. I guess back home I''d probably listen to music or an audiobook or something. I obviously can''t do that here, though, since I don''t have any personal belongings. I guess the optimal use of my time would be¡­ to practice?

    I flex my hand, growing a set of crystal scales over it before making them vanish back into my skin just as quickly. Where does it come from, where does it go? How do powers work? Nobody knows. It''s like a little rhyme, and I feel like if my brain was currently human I might find that oddly funny. As-is, it''s just frustrating. How am I supposed to improve at something I don''t understand?

    I suppose it''s ostensibly the reason we''re here: to learn about powers. Though while I''m sure the military has important insights that I''m lacking, it''s pretty obvious that they''re as clueless to the true nature of powers as anybody. The aliens, though¡­ I wonder if they''ve figured it out? My guess would be no, since they mostly seemed to treat powers as something with religious significance? At least, I think they did. There was certainly a significant feeling of¡­ reverence, I suppose, to some higher power. Which is always a bad sign for this sort of thing. Historically, reverence and critical investigation tend to mix like oil and blood.

    ¡­Is that why the aliens are invading us? Some kind of holy war against our kind? Do they think we''re using powers in a way that offends their god? But humanity didn''t start getting superpowers until after the aliens blew up the moon, so they''re presumably the cause of our powers in the first place. Ugh, too many questions. I''ll have to interrogate the next Angel I meet before I kill them. As long as I make sure they can''t leave, they''ll tell me anything I ask.

    I scrunch my eyebrows together a bit, catching that thought before it flits away. They''ll tell me anything I ask? Why would I think that?

    I shift myself back to full human, pushing aside the sudden rush of existential terror the foreign thought brought. It felt so¡­ natural, so obvious. Why would I think that? Why would a Raptor think that? Raptors never tried to talk to me. Or¡­ maybe they did, and I just couldn''t understand? But¡­ Raptors can''t be people, can they? They certainly don''t act like people, not like that Angel did. That thing was emotional.

    I idly turn my arm into a tentacle and back a few times, letting crystals dance over my skin as I think. As far as I know, humanity doesn''t have any evidence that aliens are sapient, let alone capable of holding a conversation, at least kinda. Some of this stuff could therefore be important intel for the military, and as much as I don''t like or trust them I do want them to win the war so we don''t go fucking extinct. But how much can I tell them without being considered crazy or dangerous? It doesn''t feel worth the risk, so I''ll table it for now. Maybe if I become more trusted by the brass it''ll be safe.

    I continue playing with my power a little until Christine returns from the shower, dressed in clean clothes and generally not looking like a complete mess for once. Despite her reluctance to get in, she seems to be doing a lot better mood-wise now that she''s clean. So that''s good. All that''s really left for us to do is to wait for someone to pick us up and take us to the dining hall, which I hope comes sooner rather than later. I''m famished.

    ¡­Well. Kind of. My power isn''t screaming at me that I''ll die if I don''t eat anything, but I always have a bit of background awareness of the fact that I could eat more. And why shouldn''t I? The more reserves the better, right?

    "Uh, what are you doing?" Christine asks.

    "Huh?" I glance up at her. She flinches.

    "Your, uh. Your face."

    Hmm? Oh. I guess I''ve been using the Angel''s eyes for a little while. I shift back.

    "Sorry, just kind of got lost in thought," I admit. "Have a nice shower?"

    "...Better than I expected," she admits. "I forgot how nice warm water is."

    Huh. Is it? I was mostly trying to ignore how it felt. I guess that makes sense; it would be a little weird for people to put so much effort into heating water in their homes if they didn''t even like it that much.

    "That''s¡­ a weird expression on your face," Christine frowns. Shoot! What? What expression? I quickly force my face to not be making any expression in particular, and Christine snorts.

    "Never mind," she says. "It wasn''t bad or anything. You try really hard to not seem weird, but you are, aren''t you? You''re a complete dork that tries to eat entire jars of peanut butter."

    I blink.

    "I just¡­ I''d never tasted it before," I say defensively. "I didn''t know it was that good."

    "You''ve never had peanut butter?" Christine says incredulously. "Now I know you''re weird."

    "Wh¡ª! My mom wasn''t exactly the type to pack me homemade PBJs, alright!?" I snap at her. "Where was I gonna taste it, huh? Pad Thai?"

    I try to raise my voice to get her to back off, but she just raises an eyebrow.

    "...Pad Thai does not taste like peanut butter," she insists. "Not if it''s any good, anyway."

    "I know that!" I lie. Damn it, Christine, where was this spine when we were fighting for our lives!?

    A knock on the door saves me from further beratement, letting me quickly call out to invite them in. Commander''s smiling face greets us, as pale and sharp as always.

    "All freshened up?" she asks. "Wonderful."

    "Are there cameras in our room?" Christine asks her bluntly, finally turning away from me.

    "Not any of the kind you''d need to worry about," Commander answers pleasantly. "We just want to make sure everyone''s where they should be, and no one is somewhere they shouldn''t be. For your safety, you understand."

    "If you think that''s safety you may as well just toss me back in the incursion zone," Christine growls.

    "Don''t worry, dear," Commander smiles. "All in good time."

    She turns away and looks back at us, silently impressing on us to follow. I get up to follow, but Christine stays where she is, her arms crossed. Carefully, I put a hand on her shoulder and jerk my head towards Commander when she glances my way.

    "Come on," I tell her. "Let''s get some food that''s actually cooked for once, huh?"

    She sighs, and acquiesces, falling in step beside me. Commander gives me a slightly condescending smile, and we head out into the hall.

    "You realize that cooked food means it''s probably not going to have peanut butter, right?" Christine jabs at me.

    "...I also like cheese," I hedge. "People cook cheese."

    She chuckles, and I smile a bit at her. Good. This is good. It''s going to be hard keeping her mood up, but I feel like it''ll be important for helping her manage¡­ y''know, being drafted.

    Commander knocks on the door to the room next to us, causing a very groggy and very soggy Anastasia to answer. Her hair is so leaden with water that she seems to be struggling to move her head much, and it''s completely soaking her oversized t-shirt.

    "Ana!" I greet her, not sure whether to be concerned or to laugh. "Hey, do you need some help drying off?"

    "Lia!" Anastasia says, immediately brightening up. Oogh, that hurts my heart. Both how cute she is and how I have to lie to her. "I''m fine, I''ll just¡­ it''ll just dry on its own eventually."

    "Ana, you have so much hair it might mold before it all dries," I warn her. "You''ve gotta take care of it. Come on, I''ll help you towel it so it''s at least not dripping."

    I''m walking into her room before I even realize that might be a no-no, but Commander doesn''t stop me, just stepping in after me to keep me in her sight as I grab a towel from Anastasia''s bathroom.

    "I don''t even want all this hair," Anastasia grumbles.

    "I know hon, but you''re stuck with it," I sigh, quickly squeezing it all dry¡ªor at least dry enough¡ªbefore helping her put it up into a simple bun. "Was the shower nice, at least?"

    "Yeah!" she smiles. "I''m not all icky anymore!"

    "Thank goodness for municipal pipe systems, huh?" I smile. "No more bottled water sponge baths!"

    "No more being covered in alien guts," Anastasia agrees, sticking out her tongue and making a grossed-out face. I laugh, though out of the corner of my eye I keep watch on Commander, who stoically stares at us without saying a word. I wonder what she''s thinking. Maybe she just wants us to hurry the fuck up.

    "Well, let''s get dinner, yeah?" I say, finishing the wet-hair bun. It''s not great but it''ll have to do for now. "Time to figure out what kind of food they have in this fancy little black site."

    "Eh, it''s not five-star, but it could certainly be worse," Commander shrugs, leading us down the hallway again.

    "Quite the glowing review," Christine deadpans.

    Commander only responds with a thin smile, and soon enough the four of us make it to the cafeteria, full of a few soldiers and close to twenty clearly out-of-place randoms who are probably our fellow powered folk. It''s a bland little room, with thin, laminate tables and depressingly gray walls. It reminds me of the sort of room I''ve seen exploring abandoned public school buildings. Emily would always insist on dragging me along with Max''s urban spelunking sessions to slow everyone down and make it harder for people to do anything too stupid.

    A wave of numbness ripples through my body at that thought, the cold reminder that Max is dead and it''s my fault briefly shoving away every other emotion. I never even liked him all that much, but I still lived with him for three years and knew him very, very well. His death is a heavy thing to think about. Those stupid nighttime outings through abandoned pre-war buildings were always exhausting pains in the ass, but all of a sudden I find myself missing them, as little chunks of my life I''ll never get to have again.

    "Lia?" Anastasia asks, looking up at me, and I flinch. Shit, I just stopped walking all of a sudden. I shoot her a reassuring smile and head towards the short line. Most people already seem to be eating, and when we get served it looks like¡­ potatoes and soup? Huh, okay. We had a lot of cold soup over the past four days, so I can''t say I''m looking forward to it, but I liked the potatoes we found that were still fresh enough to eat. Gosh I''m hungry.

    "Is there a limit to how much you can give me?" I ask the lady plopping our food onto the trays.

    "Yes," she answers. "But you''re the new powered kids, aren''t you? They''ll probably approve you if you request extra provisions."

    "Approved," Commander says, shrugging. "I''ll do the paperwork tomorrow. Do all three of you need it?"

    "Anastasia and I definitely do. Uh, I''m not sure if Christine¡­"

    "I''m fine," she insists, looking at the food with obvious disgust as it is slapped onto her tray.

    Yeah, figures, but best I can tell Christine doesn''t actually need more calories than a normal person so there''s no real reason to try to fudge her some if she doesn''t want it. I happily thank the food lady as she plops a double serving onto my and Anastasia''s plates, and we head out to find somewhere to sit. Commander, notably, doesn''t grab any food. She''s just¡­ around. Shadowing us.

    I guess that''s fine. I take the opportunity to look at all the different powered people we''ll be apparently training with. A lot of them are also looking at us, clearly figuring out that we''re latecomers to the same train they''re stuck on, but most are focusing on their food or their own conversations. There''s already an interesting mix of little cliques, perhaps due to the fact that most of the powered people here seem to be around my age. Collections of teenage to early-twenties girls at one table, the same for boys at another, with only a few people who seem to be in their thirties or forties all hanging out at a third table together.

    There are a few interesting standouts, though. I can''t really tell the age of one guy because he''s seven feet tall and super jacked; with a body that fit he could be anywhere from eighteen to fifty and I won''t have a guess until I get a closer look at his face. There''s another guy in a wheelchair who looks to be at least seventy years old, way older than everyone else in the entire room.

    He doesn''t have any obvious injuries, so he probably just can''t walk on his own, and he''s also one of the few people sitting alone, which¡­ y''know, fuck that. Poor guy, we''re totally sitting at his table. I really like old people; they have cool ass stories that they''re always happy to tell and actually fucking get what it''s like to be constantly treated as an ugly burden by everyone around you.

    The worst part is that you can''t ever call anyone out on it, because unless they do something really egregious then ohhh nooo I''m just being overly sensitive, everyone gaslight Julietta into thinking she''s the asshole! I fucking hate people that¡ªwait. Is that¡­ no. No fucking way.

    "Peter!?" I blurt before my brain catches up with my mouth. Holy shit. Holy shit, that''s Peter, sitting at one of the superpower tables. My foster brother. He lived. He''s actually alive.

    That''s¡­ that''s really bad, actually.

    "Lia?" Peter gawks at me, his eyes bulging a little as he tries to figure out if I''m actually real.

    And that''s the problem, isn''t it? I''m not. And he''s one of the few people that could actually figure that out. We lived together for years, and he and Lia would always talk shit with each other when she came over. Fuck, fuck, fuck, god damn it, Peter is really fucking smart and he''s going to clock me immediately if I don''t respond to this in a perfectly Lia-esque way. I can''t fuck up this soon, I won''t! But what do I say? What''s something that Lia would say here that I never would!? This is ridiculous! How did that asshole even survive, he¡­

    Ah. I know what to say. I know exactly what to say.

    "Peter, you fucking cunt, you LEFT US TO DIE!"

    Somebody screams, and I realize I''m not looking through human eyes anymore.

 14. Am I Traumatized Or Something?

    Okay. Alright. This isn''t as bad as it could be.

    Everyone''s freaking out, but it''s not like I''ve gone full Angel. It''s fine. It''ll be fine. I unform the tentacles I''ve grown, reshape my face into human eyes, get rid of all the scales on my body, and generally make a show of being human and in control of myself. Unfortunately, as fast as I take care of things, I still feel a presence.

    It''s a feeling of unparalleled supremacy, a confidence in one''s superiority founded on the basis that it could not be physically possible for anything greater to exist. How can it be arrogance, when it really is always right? How can it be hubris, when even gods cannot punish it? A strange, bubbling feeling inside me roils at its touch, denying it, filling me with indignant strength. But just as quickly as the presence hits me, it is washed away by another.

    Commander''s power smashes into me, bludgeoning the foreign presence away and replacing it before burrowing inside me in moments. My body stiffens, tenses, shudders from head to toe with an intense, complex feeling unlike anything I''m used to. It feels good, shockingly pleasant in a way I''ve never felt from my body before. I barely notice dropping my food tray on the floor until it hits the ground with a loud clatter, startling me and everyone nearby¡­ except for Peter. Peter doesn''t even seem to notice, also enraptured by Commander''s power, perhaps even more intensely than I am. His entire body just twitches for a moment before it completely stops, a vacant smile blooming on his face.

    "Both of you, come here," Commander orders, and I want to obey her, I ache for it the way my stomach aches when I''m starving. Peter moves immediately, standing up and approaching Commander with that same blissful grin. And¡­ y''know, I see no reason not to also comply here, so I do.

    Aaaah holy fuck.

    A full-body bloom of¡­ of I don''t even know overwhelms my senses for a moment, intense and wonderful and completely out of nowhere. What the fuck just happened to me? What''s my body¡­ my body just produced a bunch of some kinda chemical from three different glands and released it into my bloodstream all at once.  What the fucking fuck, fuck you, no one enacts freakish unconscious changes to my body except me!

    "Sit down," Commander orders, and Peter immediately complies, sitting on the floor while his smile grows ever wider. I also comply, because I explicitly don''t want to cause a scene here, but when my brain tries to order my body to release more of whatever chemical that is I override it, refusing the feeling and the joy associated with it.

    This may not be my body in the sense that it''s the one I was born in, but it''s damn well my body in the sense that I fucking own it. I''m in control. No one else.

    Anastasia is staring at us, crouched low and looking like she''s ready to attack. Which¡­ would be really bad, so I risk glancing her way and giving her a subtle shake of my head. She sees it, thankfully, and calms down. I''m not confident Commander didn''t see it, though. She seems like the kind of woman who cultivates a good poker face.

    "Okay," Commander says evenly, though her voice is more than loud enough to project through the entire room. Damn, that woman has some pipes. "Is everyone finished? Yes? Good. Now then, allow me to introduce you all to Christine Baker, Anastasia Patrova, and of course, Lia Morgan. They will be joining all of you in your training. Lia, as you have seen, is a shapeshifter. Like all of you, she is struggling to fully master her abilities, so I expect you all to not attack her if she happens to startle you. Likewise, I will be sure to impress upon her the severity of threatening someone with a power. Consequently, this will not repeat itself. Am I clear?"

    No one answers her.

    "Good," she says, and then with a beckoning flick of her finger, I feel the yearning to follow her. I do so, though again I''m a bit slower than Peter. Which is¡­ hmm. Peter doesn''t seem in control of himself at all. I guess most people don''t have a weird enough relationship with the concept of feeling things to bypass the power-induced pleasure obsession? Lucky me, I guess. Commander leads both of us into a side room and glowers at us, the feeling of her power retreating away from us. Peter gasps, shuddering a little as he blinks himself back to something resembling control. I¡­ probably should have also tried to react somehow, but it''s too late now, I suppose.

    "Alright," Commander scowls. "I take it the two of you know each other?"

    "...He''s my girlfriend''s brother," I scowl. Not my brother. But I guess I never saw him that way. "He fucking ditched us while we were trying to escape the incursion zone together."

    "Hey man, you crashed the car," Peter says, rubbing his face like he''s trying to wake himself up. "Don''t blame me for what happened."

    Ah, but Lia would absolutely blame you for what happened, because you''re anyone other than her.

    "I only crashed because your fucking epileptic sister had to go and have an episode while I was trying to drive!"

    "Again: not my fault," Peter shrugs.

    "Andre''s dead," I snap. "Julietta''s dead. Max is dead, but you already fucking knew that, you¡ª"

    "You sure are pissed about the deaths of a bunch of people you never fucking liked," Peter cuts me off. "Look, asshole, if you wanna hear me apologize for not getting stuck in an incursion zone, it''s not happening. But hey, glad you survived! Super nice to see you again, you bitch!"

    "Well the feeling isn''t mutual," I snap. Hopefully if I''m just enough of a raging asshole to him, he''ll avoid me for a while. I kinda feel bad, but needs must.

    "Wow! Emily must have found a strap-on if you''re this butthurt," Peter says, grinning at me in a manner that indicates he hasn''t been put off in the slightest. Right. I forgot. It''s Peter.

    "Quiet," Commander snaps. "I didn''t bring you here to listen to you bicker. I brought you here to tell you that you are going to get over yourselves. You are fellow recruits now. Whatever happened is past. It is irrelevant. What matters is focusing on your abilities and the ways we teach you to use them. Is that clear?"

    "Sure," Peter shrugs.

    "Yes ma''am," I say firmly.

    Commander whacks Peter across the head with the back of her hand. He doesn''t even seem surprised.

    "What was that!?" she snaps.

    "Oh yeah, uh, yes ma''am," he says like he forgot, though his smile tells me he didn''t.

    "Good. Dismissed, both of you."

    Peter waves goodbye for no other reason than to annoy Commander further and walks out of the room. I wait a little bit before following him, trying to put some distance between us, but he just waits for me in return.

    "Man, I am going to have so many nice dreams about that," he sighs happily. "God, that power is so fucked up. I love it."

    "You''re a freak," I say flatly.

    "Oh come on, she basically shoots you with dope while puppetting you around on strings," Peter sighs dramatically. "I think I''m starting to get addicted, you know? Have some sympathy for me."

    "Well at least you''ve been having a good time while Emily and I were fighting for our lives," I growl.

    "Oh, don''t be a fuckin'' baby about it," Peter says, rolling his eyes. "You know me, you know I look out for number one. Hell, I''m surprised you didn''t follow. Emily''s really got you stuffed deep up her pussy, huh?"

    Jesus Christmas Christ thank you for that horrible mental image, Peter. Oh my god he was never this awful with me before. Is it because he thinks I''m Lia? Did he always treat Lia like this?

    "...Oh, uh, fuck. She''s not dead, is she?" Peter asks. "You didn''t mention her, so I thought she was okay, but you didn''t laugh or punch me or both, so¡­"

    "Oh, fuck off," I grumble. "Emily is fine. Or at least as fine as anyone can be after all that. I''m just not in a joking mood, Peter, okay? So just stay the fuck away from me."

    "Wellll, I guess I could," he says, grasping his chin between his thumb and forefinger as he stares at me like he''s judging whether a cow should be milked or slaughtered. "...But no promises."

    God, this piece of shit. He''s¡­ hmm. He''s definitely pissing me off on purpose, because Peter always does stuff like this on purpose. And he''s being so much more of an asshole than he ever was when I was in my real body, I feel like something is definitely up. The difference is way too stark for it to not be personal. He''s got some kind of beef with Lia, specifically.

    Unfortunately, that''s not very helpful information. I mean, this is Lia we''re talking about. He could be pissed at her for basically anything and it would probably be justified. Still, I don''t want to deal with it.

    "Hey, Peter?" I prompt him.

    "Yeah, sugartits?"

    "I have had a long fucking week," I tell him. "I dragged three people¡ªincluding your sister and a fucking child¡ªout of the incursion zone on my literal goddamn back, and I am exhausted. So yeah, I''m a little pissed at you. You left us behind. But more than that, you didn''t have to go through what we went through, and it fucked us up. I do not have the energy or the mental bandwidth to deal with your bullshit anymore, so I''m not going to be dealing with it. One way or another, I will not be listening to this for the next however long we''re stuck here. You got that, sugartits?"

    He gives me that considering stare again, but I just glower back at him until eventually he shrugs, loose and nonchalant.

    "Yeah, alright," he says. "At least for now. Truce?"

    He holds out his hand for me to shake. I sigh and take it.

    "Fine, whatever," I agree, giving him one firm shake before letting go. "I''m going to eat dinner now."

    "Have fun!" he beams, waving goodbye with a few drums of his fingers against the air. "I was pretty much done, so I''ll head back to my room."

    "Good for you," I grumble, and make my way back to the cafeteria. I spot the door to the room we were just in open when I make my way to the edge of the hall, Commander likely exiting to follow me from a distance. Joy.

    The accidental shapeshifting and blowing my top at Peter definitely lost me points with her, which is¡­ potentially quite bad. A heavily structured organization like the military inevitably runs off of nepotism; being liked and trusted by your superiors can quite literally be the difference between life and death. This goes double since we''re losing the war: who are you going to send on a likely suicide mission, the jerk you hate or your best friend? This isn''t some propaganda-filled movie full of burly men bursting with honor and brotherhood. The decisions in this war are made by real people, and real people are selfish, biased, and weak.

    I''m not above sucking up to my superiors. Far from it, in fact. It has basically been the core strategy for my entire life; parents are just another kind of shitty boss, after all.

    I reenter the cafeteria, a lot of people looking my way but most people just minding their own business, chatting and eating. So that''s good. Everybody here either just recently got superpowers or is specifically trained to handle people that did; my freaky shapeshifting probably isn''t enough to shock people for too long.

    Christine catches my eye and lifts her hand in a half-wave, beckoning me over to the otherwise-empty table she and Anastasia are sitting at. I nod and head their way, finding Anastasia chowing down on her meal with gusto while Christine mostly just spoons up broth from the soup without touching any of the solid food inside it. Hmm.

    "You''re really eating a lot there, Anastasia! Good job!" I tell her. She would often struggle to eat enough food in the incursion zone, so I want to make sure to praise her whenever she eats well.

    "Christine said I had to," Anastasia grumbles. "Even though she''s not eating anything yucky."

    "Adult prerogative," Christine says, pointing her spoon at the girl. "You''re not allowed to have an eating disorder until you''re older."

    I give Christine a sidelong glance at that comment, but she just shrugs and keeps spooning broth into her mouth. And¡­ y''know what, okay, it was kind of morbidly funny (the best kind, in my opinion) so I let myself give her an amused smile.

    "Thanks, Christine," I tell her honestly. Other people helping Anastasia eat is also always worthy of praise, I think, and Christine seems like she''s probably lacking a lot of it in her life. She gives me an awkward nod and gestures to the second tray of food beside her.

    "I, uh, also got you more to eat, since you dropped yours," she admits awkwardly.

    "Awesome," I smile, picking it up. "Actually, if you two are okay with it, I was hoping we could sit over there?"

    I gesture at the table with the guy in the wheelchair. Christine frowns for a bit, but shrugs, standing up with her tray. Anastasia just follows me without a word, and we make our way over.

    "Hey, is it alright if we sit here?" I ask the old guy.

    "Sure, sure!" he agrees, grinning brightly like I figured he would. Most old people are pretty lonely, in my experience. I sit down next to him and Anastasia sits on the other side of me, with Christine positioning herself with as much room around her as possible.

    The old guy looks remarkably happy for somebody sitting alone at the human weapon school lunch table, the deepest creases on his golden brown face all centered around the way a smile scrunches up your cheeks and eyes. His short hair is surprisingly resilient to balding, but it has that chaotic, black-white mix of strands that reminds me of the image you get from turning on antique TVs.

    His wheelchair, notably, also looks old and well-used. So it''s probably not related to his power, or some accident he got in while escaping the incursion zone. He''s been disabled since before then.

    "Thank you," I say with a smile. "I''m Lia. This is Anastasia, and that''s Christine."

    "Hello, sir!" Anastasia chirps. Christine merely nods.

    "Ah, hello there!" he nods at each of us in turn. "Anastasia, Lia, and Christine. Do you prefer Kris?"

    "Absolutely not," Christine says firmly.

    "Haha! Noted! Well, my name is Ed. It''s wonderful to meet you all."

    "It''s great to meet you too, Ed," I say, returning the pleasantries.

    "I go by Ana!" Anastasia speaks up.

    "Ana it is, then," Ed agrees. "So what brings you all over to sit with an old man like me?"

    "Old men are cool," I answer with a shrug. "Teenagers are dumbasses."

    "Oh? And how old are you?"

    Uh. Wait, shit, how old is Lia? I think she''s the same age as me, right? Like a couple months older, maybe? I meant to memorize the birthdate on her driver''s license but I never managed to get around to it in the incursion zone. And¡­ now I think Emily probably has it?

    "...Eighteen," I decide to go with. It''s my best guess.

    "So¡­ still a teenager yourself?" he prods.

    "I''m obviously an exception," I answer easily, spooning some of the soup into my mouth and woah hmm okay I can see why Christine is only eating the broth, this is a lot at once. I swap to the mashed potatoes for now, which are a lot easier on my palette.

    "Of course, obviously!" Ed laughs. "The only sane girl in a crazy world, eh?"

    "Something like that," I smile. "Though I personally think ''sanity'' is too nonspecific of a term."

    "I see, I see! You''re quite the confident one."

    "She killed an Angel this morning," Christine grunts. "She''s definitely earned the confidence."

    That actually drops Ed''s smile, his face quickly morphing into shock.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    "What?" he breathes.

    "Why do you think we were late showing up here?" Christine grumbles. "We were stuck in the fucking incursion zone this whole time. We barely made it out alive, and Lia dueled an Angel to do it."

    "Lia''s the strongest!" Anastasia agrees.

    "Uh," I manage. I was¡­ sort of keeping that on the down low, but I guess it was only a matter of time before it became public knowledge. I know killing an Angel is a big fucking deal. "...We never would have made it out without you, Ana. You''re super strong too, I just lucked out. The Angel''s power was really bad against mine. It even helped, in some ways."

    "Well that sounds like quite the story," Ed blinks.

    "Uh. Yeah," I agree. Change the subject change the subject change the subject! "I''d rather not talk about it right now, though."

    I stare down at my soup, frowning to myself. Man, that was a bit more of an intense reaction than I expected. Am I traumatized or something? I don''t feel traumatized. A lot of traumatized people probably don''t feel traumatized, though, so maybe I can''t accurately judge that.

    And like, I guess it makes sense? I was trapped in a dangerous place for days and in order to escape I had to kill someone. Someone who wanted to kill me, a freakish monster whose maddened words slowly started to make sense over the course of our fight to the death. I wonder which part of that is more likely to be fucking me up: the murder or the talking. I guess the talking is what makes the murder so bad; I wouldn''t be reacting this way to killing something that isn''t even a person, right? ¡­Hmm. I guess I don''t know. It''s not like I''ve ever killed an animal before either, barring the occasional bug.

    When did I even start thinking about the Angel that way? As a person. It just started feeling obvious to me the moment I first considered it. It shouldn''t really be that surprising; we''ve never been able to communicate with the aliens before, but while some experts believe they''re just a non-sapient, ant-like swarm intelligence, a lot of human experts also believe that they possess the complex thought we associate with personhood. Hell, it was the theory I subscribed to. It just makes more sense; the main justification for the common non-sapient theory is just the idea that a sapient would have at least tried to talk to us in some way, and I don''t really think that holds up to scrutiny. People just believe it because it''s way more comfortable thinking of our enemies as ravenous ants than as intelligent people who can be reasoned with and simply decided to unilaterally genocide us anyway.

    Except that I could have reasoned with them, maybe. I just didn''t try. Like, obviously it wouldn''t have worked, but¡­ I dunno. I still feel bad about it, in retrospect? I guess that''s kind of stupid because of like, the genocide they do, but still.

    I was a little busy focusing on staying alive to really investigate my apparent understanding of the alien''s¡­ I don''t know. Language equivalent? I wonder if I could learn more human languages if I copy brains from people who know them. Wait, that''s existentially terrifying actually. More importantly it''s off topic so let''s not think about it. The point is, this ability to communicate could be really important, but I missed my chance to cultivate it. Which was very stupid of me, because I trust my ability to talk myself out of situations a lot more than I trust my ability to fight my way out of them, and I am definitely going to find myself in many more ''situations'' very soon.

    "Lia?"

    I was a fool. Imagine if I could have talked with that thing. If I could have asked it what it wanted Christine for, if I could have worked something out. I know it''s a longshot. A huge longshot. But there''s little downside in asking, and it could potentially change everything, right? I guess it''s dangerous even if it succeeds, though. I have no idea how people would react if they learned I could do this, and frankly I doubt it would be good. Everyone already suspects I''m an alien, after all, and given all these foreign thoughts and the thing that truth-telling power said about me I''m starting to wonder if maybe¡ª

    "Hey, Lia?"

    I flinch, my tentacles snaking out towards whatever touched my shoulder, but when I face that way all I see is a concerned-looking Anastasia, seeming a lot more bothered by my expression than the crystal-scaled weapons I just coiled around her.

    "Are you okay?" she asks. "You weren''t responding."

    I swallow, my mind chugging with disorientation for a moment before I realize I should definitely not be threatening anybody with tentacles. I absorb them back into my body, reverting to human standard yet again.

    "S-sorry," I stammer. "Sorry, I was just¡­ a bit lost in thought."

    "You sound like you''ve had a long and exhausting week," someone says, and who the fuck¡ªoh, it''s Ed, I just met him. Like just now. Right. "I imagine you could use some rest."

    "Yeah," I agree. "Yeah, that would probably be good. Sorry for being kinda freaky. My power is kind of¡­ unconscious. A lot of the time."

    "Instinctive, perhaps," Ed smiles. "I imagine you had to get used to it very quickly. I don''t think there''s any shame in that. What we can do is part of who we are; what matters is not what skills you have, but how you use them."

    I blink. Okay. Thanks for the cereal box wisdom, old man. I nod like I''m actually thinking about it seriously, though. There''s no sense being rude.

    "You sound like Uncle Iroh!" Anastasia chirps. Woah! Is that a member of her family? I''ve never heard her talk about her family all that much, though, and definitely not with that much enthusiasm. Ed brightens immediately when he hears the name, though.

    "Oh-ho! We have someone cultured at the table! It''s an honor to be thought to have aged half as well as Iroh."

    "Who?" I ask.

    "A character from an old television show I watched when I was a teenager," Ed muses happily. "I think it turned fifty last year? I didn''t think anyone was still watching it!"

    "My grandma and I watch it together!" Anastasia says, bouncing slightly. "I think she wants to kiss Zuko."

    "Ah, don''t we all," Ed sighs. "Your grandmother sounds like a wonderful woman with excellent taste."

    "Yeah, she¡­" Anastasia starts before the realization visibly hits her face. "She was."

    Ugh, smooth. Though honestly we''re probably in a relatively safe place for Anastasia to start processing grief so I don''t see any need to interfere yet. I sip down some more broth, and Ed gives Anastasia an understanding smile.

    "...Who is your favorite character?" he asks, and after a moment, Anastasia tells him. They chatter away, dropping names and concepts I have no base of reference for, but it seems to slowly make her feel better as I munch on dinner. Neat. I''m glad my impression was spot on the money; Ed is a cool guy. With her real family dead, I''ve got to do my best to surround Anastasia with new people who will love her from every angle in a desperate attempt to counteract the inevitable child soldier war orphan trauma as much as possible. I could keep an eye on her all by myself, but the more people she has in her corner, the better.

    Anastasia doesn''t deserve this. In a just world, none of us would be here, but in an even remotely sane world, Anastasia especially wouldn''t be here. The girl has already participated in far more violence than is healthy for basically anyone, let alone a nine-year-old, and yet she''s still being forced to sacrifice any peace in her life for a chance to allow humanity to continue.

    Personally, I can''t help but wonder if humanity deserves to continue if it''s willing to do things like this to survive. But thoughts like that are what make supervillains, and I don''t really find that future any more appealing than being a soldier.

    "...Okay," Christine suddenly says. "I think I got it."

    Without a sound, her soup lifts up into the air and separates into its constituent parts. The broth jiggles slightly, floating above the bowl while still in the same shape it would be were it resting properly in that container. Every still-solid ingredient in that broth floats even further above it, still in basically the same configuration it was in while inside the soup, but now completely dry (if mushy) and, of course, levitating independently in a cloud about the size of Christine''s head.

    "Woah," I say, blink. "Good job Chr¡­ uh."

    I start to praise her for successfully using her power on purpose, but I trail off when she starts using her spoon to individually flick every pea out of her power''s range and onto her plate. Is¡­ is the thing that finally got her to use her power the fact that she''s a picky eater!?

    I glance down at my own soup, feeling vaguely weak and ashamed for avoiding the meat and vegetables thus far. It''s such a stupid thing to have a hangup about. I need to get over myself. I force myself to take a bite of the soup without straining out all the stuff I don''t want to eat, and do my best to suppress a shudder as the overwhelming mix of textures and flavors nearly makes me gag. I force it down anyway, and move on to the next bite. Ugh, being able to feel and taste is so weird. Mouths should just be for chewing and swallowing.

    Christine eventually finishes plucking her least favorite vegetables out of the air before re-forming the rest of the soup back into her bowl. My complicated feelings on eating aside, it''s definitely impressive, at least.

    "I''ll take those veggies if you don''t want them," Ed stage-whispers from across the table. Christine shrugs and passes him her tray, which he gladly takes and starts scooping the contents into his bowl. "Thanks! Peas make me gassy, but I still love ''em."

    "Ew!" Anastasia giggles.

    "It''s a natural function of the human body!" Ed protests. "Nothing ''ew'' about it! When you get to my age you just have to get used to these things."

    "But they''re stinky!"

    "If you think they smell bad, then how do you think I feel? The closest nose to my farts is always mine! Or¡­ well, at least I hope so¡­"

    Anastasia erupts into laughter as I do my best not to cringe at the potty humor. Damn if it gets the job done, though. Kids really eat that stuff up. I wonder if I was ever like that. I don''t really remember¡­ joking with anybody as a kid? But that might not mean anything, I don''t remember my childhood all that well in general.

    I mostly let Ed entertain Anastasia as I force down the rest of my food, eventually finishing my dinner well after everyone else cleaned their plates and just continued hanging around and chatting to be polite. Ugh, I''ll have to speed up when I eat tomorrow. I''m sure I''ll get used to all these sensations eventually. It''s just frustrating that I don''t like most of them. People keep saying this or that feels good, but nearly all of it is just different kinds of too much for me.

    It''s as alien to me as having tentacles. Maybe even moreso.

    "Sorry for taking so long," I apologize as I finish the last of my food and move to gather everyone else''s trays. It''s the least I can do for delaying them.

    "Huh?" Christine says, politely feigning ignorance. "Oh, thank you."

    "Of course," I say, cleaning up after everyone and taking the mostly empty trays to the drop point for them. Anastasia and Ed are still chatting when I return, so I just silently ruffle Anastasia''s hair and smile back at her when she gives me a big grin.

    "I should probably head back to my room and get some sleep," I say when there''s an appropriate break in the conversation.

    "Ah, yes, of course! No doubt you''re exhausted," Ed nods. "I suppose I should rest for the night as well. They really work these old bones."

    "You want me to wheel you anywhere, or are you good?" I ask him. I know better than to ever touch his wheelchair without permission, but I want to at least offer and figure out his preferences on that kind of thing.

    "Oh, they have somebody assigned to me," he says, waving me off. "I''ll flag him down and make him chauffeur me. Have a good night, Lia. It was wonderful to meet you."

    "Of course, and likewise," I nod at him. "You ready to head back to our rooms, Anastasia?"

    She squirms a little bit.

    "I don''t¡­ really want to be alone," she says quietly.

    "I''m happy to keep an eye on her if you need to rest," Ed offers. Which¡­ ha. Hahaha. Hahahahahahahahaha. Ed seems like a really nice guy and he hasn''t given me any red flags so far, but there is no way in hell I am leaving Anastasia alone with a man I barely know, ever. I give him a polite smile that hopefully isn''t a little too wide for a human.

    "I''m sure we can convince someone to let you hang out in our room, at least until it''s time for you to go to bed," I assure Anastasia. "Come on."

    She nods in agreement, clinging tightly onto my arm as she gets up and for the whole walk back to our dorm. Christine follows behind us with her usual awkward expression, not seeming to know what to do other than follow me. Which I guess is fair; as far as I know, the secret military compound doesn''t really have much in the way of entertainment.

    As we leave, a few of the soldiers that were also hanging out in the dining room surreptitiously get up and just happen to start walking in the same direction as us. I guess not having Commander stalking us personally doesn''t mean we don''t have people watching us. Are the cameras not enough for these guys? Sheesh.

    "So, you really like that show you and Mr. Ed were talking about, huh?" I ask Anastasia.

    "Yeah!" she agrees. "But Ed''s not a mister because he''s not a horse."

    I blink.

    "What?" I ask.

    "Mister Ed is a horse!" Anastasia says. "But Ed''s not a horse so he''s not a mister!"

    "Okay?" I manage. "Is that another cartoon?"

    "No, my grandma says it''s a show her grandma watched. It''s even older than cartoons!"

    Is that how that works? Eh, who cares, it''s all ancient history. The important thing here is learning more about Anastasia.

    "You''ve mentioned cartoons a few times. Did you and your grandma watch them a lot?"

    She shrinks a little at that, like I expected she would. I am fully cognizant that this conversation is liable to make her cry, but¡­ well, I think she probably needs a good cry after watching her family get murdered and having to fight aliens for four days. It''s healthy, or so I hear. I only recently obtained working tear ducts so I can''t really comment.

    "Yeah," Anastasia nods. "Two or three times a week. It was fun. We liked watching them together. My mom and my grandpa would make dinner and my grandma and my sister and my brother and I would all play board games or the game where you have to kill the person pretending to be Hitler and grandma won that a lot because nobody could ever tell if she was lying. But after dinner we''d always watch cartoons. She liked lots of them and she promised she''d only show me the best ones and she did! They were really good."

    A pause.

    "Dinner was good too. My dad didn''t help with dinner or watch cartoons but he helped clean things and repair things for grandma and grandpa. And he was really funny."

    "Mmm," I hum, encouraging her to say more.

    "My big sister was mean sometimes. She didn''t want me around her friends and she didn''t like playing board games very much. But she''s really smart and even though mom made her help me with my homework she was still really good at it. And when mom and dad weren''t home she would let me stay up late with her and watch scary movies and I got to sit on her lap on the couch and eat popcorn while my brother sat in the other chair."

    It''s all such simple little things, isn''t it? Anastasia¡¯s family all sounds so nice, so¡­ idyllic. Almost unbelievably so. I''m sure there were problems and arguments and issues all over the place. People are just like that. But that''s not what you remember as a kid, is it? Especially not once your family is gone.

    I''m glad Anastasia at least got to make all these memories with them before they left her. Even as they bring her tears, I think it''s a good thing. I don''t really have memories like that, so I''m a little jealous.

    No one overtly stops us when I lead Anastasia into the room I share with Christine, and I continue to listen as Anastasia talks about her large, lively family. I sit down on my bed and pull her onto my lap, which she allows without any resistance. Then, as she speaks, I pull apart the simple bun I put her hair up in and start giving her a nicer braid for sleeping in. She leans into the touch, tears streaming down her face even as she continues to talk. I lose myself in her words and the task.

    It feels nice to have a task.

    "...Elmira?"

    I blink, realizing with a start that Anastasia has twisted around a bit to look at me and is staring with a shell-shocked expression. Like she''s¡­ looking at a ghost. What? I¡­

    My hands are pale. Oh. I shapeshifted unconsciously again. I''ve been idly taking on some of Anastasia''s features as I listen to her, ending up as a sort of hybrid Anastasia-Lia that more or less looks like what Anastasia will probably look like in six or seven years.

    So. Y''know. I probably look like her dead sister.

    "O-oh gosh!" I stammer, quickly shifting back to normal. "I''m sorry, Ana, I didn''t mean to¡ª"

    "No!" she shouts, cutting me off. "Go back."

    I freeze.

    "...What?"

    "Go back," Anastasia begs. "Look like her again. Please."

    I glance over to Christine, who is over on her bed and firmly, awkwardly ignoring both of us with all of her strength. I glance back to Anastasia.

    "You want me to¡­?"

    "Please," she begs again.

    I¡­ I don''t know how to feel about this. This doesn''t strike me as the healthiest response, but I can''t think of a good reason to tell her no. So I do as she asks, shifting back into the form I was in before. Anastasia immediately wraps her arms around me and squeezes me tight, sobbing into my chest. I stay stiff, not knowing what to do. She must end up crying for ten minutes before she finally calms down, after I work up the courage to loosen up and start softly patting her head. Once she''s composed herself a little, she says something so softly that I don''t understand a word of it at first.

    "What was that, Ana?" I ask her.

    "A family shares blood," she repeats. "That''s true, isn''t it?"

    "I¡­"

    "And you copied mine. So you''re family."

    I stare at her a bit, then gently push her head back so I can look at her face. She seems to struggle to look at mine, despite asking to see it. I''ve never really felt at home in any of my foster families, but still¡­ in honor of what they tried to create, and what they really did create for some of my foster siblings, I have to disagree.

    "I think family is a lot more than just that," I tell her. "It''s broader, and much more complicated. All sorts of people can be your family, if you want them to be."

    "Then you''re definitely family," she whispers. "You and Christine and Emily. You''re my big sisters. You''re not allowed to say no."

    "...Alright then," I smile at her. "We''re family."

    What''s yet another, after all?

    "Okay," she says quietly, squeezing me tight enough to hurt. "I''ll protect you this time. I''ll keep you safe. You''re not going to fall apart."

    I wrap my arms around her and hug her back.

    "If I do," I say, "I''ll just put myself back together again."

    "No," she insists. "Never."

    I take a deep breath and extract myself from the hug just enough to stare at her again.

    "Yes, Anastasia," I say. "Almost certainly. You are so strong, and you are incredible, and I trust you more than anyone to watch my back. But you are nine years old. It is my job to protect you. Always. No matter what. It''s my responsibility. If I have to fall apart to save you from even a single scratch, I''ll do it a thousand times."

    "No!" Anastasia snaps. "That''s not fair!"

    "Adult prerogative," Christine calls out from her bed. "You''re not allowed to have a martyr complex until you''re older."

    "Wh¡­ but¡­!" Anastasia stammers. "That''s not fair!!!"

    "Sorry, not allowed to be a hypocrite until you''re older either," Christine shrugs.

    "Being an adult is stupid!!!" Anastasia protests.

    "Yeah kid, it really is," Christine agrees. "But that one''s not just for adults, at least. You can be stupid, too!"

    Thanks Christine very cool.

    "NO!" Anastasia snaps predictably. "You''re stupid! Why is that a reason!? What does being nine have to do with anything!? You''re allowed to save me but I''m not allowed to save you? I did save you! I saved you all a whole bunch! I''m strong! I fought and I got hurt and I had to do it because you couldn''t do it by yourselves! I''m not going to stop! I won''t! You can''t make me!"

    "You''re right," I tell her, putting a firm hand on her head to try and signal her to be a little quieter. "You''re strong. I can''t make you stop. But look at me, Anastasia."

    Hesitantly, she does. She meets my eyes.

    "Being a child doesn''t make you weak," I tell her. "It makes you important. So important that I could never think of not saving you, even for a moment. It''s just what any self-respecting adult has to do. As long as I can see the danger, as long as I can move, I will always step in front of you to take it. I''m not going to stop either, Anastasia. You can''t make me."

    Her face quivers, her tiny hands curled into fists to try and stay strong.

    "But¡­ but I don''t want you to get hurt for me," she says softly. "You already get hurt for me a lot. It''s not fair."

    I hug her, holding her head tight into my shoulder.

    "Sorry, Ana," I tell her. "Christine already told you. Being a hypocrite is an adult prerogative."

    "That''s not fair," she says again. "I don''t even know what a per-ogger-tim is."

    "But you know ''hypocrite,'' huh?" I say with a smile. "What are cartoons teaching kids these days?"

    "Honor and wisdom!" she answers firmly, and I laugh, squeezing her tight.

    "Well, my honorable little sister, I''m afraid I need to go to bed. This day has been far too long already. Are you going to be alright heading back to your room?"

    She visibly hesitates for a moment, but then nods.

    "I''ll be strong," she promises.

    "Okay," I nod. "Let us know if you need anything though, alright?"

    "I will," she promises, and then she heads out, leaving me with a heavy batch of emotional exhaustion to match the physical.

    "...She latched on fast, huh?" Christine comments.

    "Hmm?" I ask.

    "Well, it''s just. Y''know, it''s been four days. And she already insists we''re sisters?"

    I sigh, pulling my top off so I can fish the bra out of the shirt and go to bed without it. Christine flinches, though she doesn''t look away this time.

    "She watched her family get murdered in front of her," I say. "She''s desperate and in need. If she told me that we were her mothers I would have agreed to it."

    "I guess that''s fair," Christine concedes, a blush on her cheeks. "Still, I don''t really feel like we''re qualified to raise a child."

    "Well, we still have to try," I say, scooting in under the covers. "Because everybody else here wants to raise a child soldier instead."

    She doesn''t seem to have a response to that, and though the lights in the room are still on I have no trouble immediately falling asleep.

 15. The Entire US Military

    It''s dark. The air around me is hot and wet, muggy beyond just the already-thick Georgia air. It clings to me, pressing with a tangible pressure, stagnant and unmoving. There isn''t even the slightest of breezes, not even the barely perceptible movement of indoor air. There are no vents, no openings, no way for the air to get in or out.

    No way for me to, either.

    I struggle, trying to move, trying to look around for light, but my body is an incomprehensible mass of discordant flesh. I realize that my blindness may in fact be due to the fact that I don''t have any eyes, so I make some. I make countless. But there''s still nothing. It''s still dark. Of course I had no eyes. They don''t do anything, after all.

    Where am I? Why can''t I move?

    Oh. I don''t have very many muscles, either. I shift and shape myself, fighting against the clay of my flesh, struggling more than I ever have before with forcing myself into Lia''s body. I don''t think I get it quite right, parts of me squirming uncomfortably and refusing to change. But eventually, shuddering and sweating, I struggle to my feet, the ground warm and soft underneath them.

    Where am I?

    I struggle my way forward, my legs heavy and my steps unsteady. Staggering, I catch my weight on a nearby wall, its surface hard and smooth. I feel my way forward by leaning on it, using it in place of a cane until I suddenly reach the end of it, cutting my thumb on the corner. It hurts, but only until I reshape the torn flesh, making it no different from before.

    Seriously, what''s going on? Where am I?

    I remember yesterday. I remember fighting an Angel, I remember getting interrogated, I remember getting carted off and drafted, I remember falling asleep in my new bed. Did I get kidnapped? How? Why? By who? Maybe someone''s power went haywire and caused this somehow, but I don''t feel anyone else''s power around me. It''s just me.

    "Hello?" I try to call out, my voice a wet croak. There''s no response. So I carefully keep staggering forwards, carefully finding another wall that isn''t quite so sharp. The next one I touch feels like the floor: warm and pliable. Like flesh. That strikes me as probably not normal.

    Where the fuck am I?

    I pick up the pace, following the wall as best I can. But I can tell that it keeps curving inwards, keeps turning me right over and over until I touch the hard wall a second time. Just to make sure, I make my way to the edge and carefully run my thumb over it again. Just feeling for¡­ yep. Something wet, about where I expected it. Blood. It''s the same spot I cut myself the first time.

    This is a fairly small room, and I didn''t find any exits. Shit. I need to find a way out of here. I can''t let myself get stuck, I have too many things I need to do. I need to get out, I need to get out, I need to get out, I¡ª

    I gasp as my eyes shoot open, and this time there''s light. I''m in my bed, or at least the bed I was recently assigned. I''m also a disturbing mess of tumor-like growths that seem to be trying to grow more limbs out of my limbs. It''s uncomfortable, so I force myself back into Lia''s body. It''s frustrating, but not difficult like it was in¡­ my dream, I guess? Hmm.

    I force myself out of bed, doing a quick stretch based on someone else''s habits for a moment before I catch myself and scowl. Right. I should look into this. I''ll probably be more comfortable showering at night than in the morning (I''ll probably be working up a sweat here at the military training camp), so I just toss some clothes on and step out of my room, leaving Christine to sleep.

    It''s about four-thirty in the morning. If this was boot camp, that''d probably be around the time we''d be expected to wake up anyway, but breakfast here isn''t until six a.m. and our classes apparently don''t start until seven. Which means I expect someone will be wondering why I''m up and about sooner rather than later.

    "...Recruit Morgan," an armed, uniformed man addresses me as I turn a corner.

    Perfect.

    "Hello," I say, stopping and giving him a polite nod. "Question for you. Does anyone here have a power that affects dreams?"

    Better safe than sorry, right? No way I''m going back to bed without asking.

    "Ah," he hums. "Odd dreams, huh? No, there''s no one here with a power like that, but it''s very normal for people with new powers to have unusually confusing or vivid dreams. It doesn''t mean anything."

    I blink.

    "...People with new powers having weird dreams is a notable trend and you don''t think it means anything?" I ask incredulously.

    He gives me a flat look.

    "It doesn''t mean anything bad is happening to you," he clarifies. "Maybe it means something else but that''s for the eggheads to figure out. All you have to care about is that you''ll probably get weird dreams every other day or so for a while, which usually peter out in a couple months to a year."

    Hmm. An unexpectedly detailed answer.

    "Do you have powers?" I venture.

    "Yup," he answers. "Now head back to your room, alright? You''ve got time for a bit more rest."

    And I''m oh-so-sure he wouldn''t want to have to insist.

    "Mind walking me there?" I ask. "This is all kind of a lot, and it¡¯d be nice to ask some questions to someone with experience."

    "Sure, this all isn''t easy," he agrees amicably, matching my step as I turn to walk back to my room. "What''s up?"

    "The dreams you get," I ask. "Are they like¡­ floating in a void, falling slowly, looking at something weird?"

    "Yep," he nods.

    "Is there like, a weird presence there? Watching you?"

    He gives me an odd look.

    "...Sometimes," he admits. "Not usually."

    "Are the weird power dreams ever about anything else?" I ask.

    "Nah, that''s the gist of them."

    I nod, frowning. For some reason, I suspected as much. This dream felt different, substantially so. It felt more real, and it certainly didn''t involve any apparent communication with a higher being or whatever the fuck that dream I had a few days ago was. Anastasia, Christine, and I all remembered having similar power dreams, but this was nothing like that. It was almost completely the opposite, even: claustrophobic, heavy, and personal. I was so certain that no one was there other than me.

    No more time to push for details, though. We''re at the entrance to my room.

    "Well, thank you," I tell him. "It definitely makes me feel better to know other people have dreams like this."

    "No problem, newbie. All us powered folk have been there. You get back to sleep, alright? They''re gonna work your ass off today."

    "Will do," I nod, fully expecting to stay awake, and I head back into my room to think. I''ve ruled out the possibility that the dream was caused by someone on the base, or at least someone on the base that the soldiers here know about. That leaves the possibility that there''s someone on the base we don''t know about, the possibility that I have two kinds of power dreams (which is apparently abnormal) and the possibility that it was just a weirdly lucid normal-ass dream.

    I don''t want to assume it''s the latter, because discounting either of the former possibilities is potentially dangerous, but at the same time I know it''s very likely the latter so it''s probably not worth being too paranoid about it. I''ll just mentally file it under ''potential disasters to look into further if additional portents are beheld'' and move on, I guess.

    I hop back in bed, not really feeling like sleeping but not wanting to move around too much and wake Christine up early. With nothing to do, I just play around with my shapeshifting until the alarms in our rooms automatically go off and scare the ever-loving shit out of me, causing me to shift into a combat form and rip my shorts. I awkwardly shift back and put on new clothes while Christine blearily wakes up.

    Or¡­ doesn''t wake up, I guess. She just curls the pillow around her head and keeps trying to sleep. Oh boy. I walk over and poke the pillow.

    "Breakfast time," I tell her.

    "Mrrghlerg," she answers eloquently. Oh boy, she''s gonna be one of these. While I certainly have nothing against a bit of healthy sleeping in, we''re on the military''s schedule now and they''re a bit prickly about those. I have to get her used to getting up. If she was one of my siblings I''d probably recruit someone to just yank her out of bed, but I''m alone with her and¡­ uh. Huh, right. I guess I could just do it myself now. But it doesn''t matter, because Christine and I don''t have the kind of relationship where that would be appropriate. She''s clearly a person who likes privacy and doesn''t like being touched; yanking her covers away or anything like that would be a recipe for resentment and distrust, and therefore obviously unacceptable.

    But I still need her ass out of bed.

    For better or worse, Christine, Anastasia, and I will be considered something of a unit. Even to the other new powered folk who don''t know what we did or why we were here late, we still arrived together late and sat together mostly alone and didn''t really talk to anyone outside of the big scene I accidentally caused, which is incidentally another thing that will alienate us. The instructors and soldiers, conversely, do know what we accomplished, and they of all people are well aware that anyone who kills hundreds of aliens keeping their companions alive isn''t just going to up and abandon them now. Nothing forges loyalty like overcoming adversity together, and there''s no way that the military believes that any of us are as loyal to them as we are to each other.

    And naturally, the military is absolutely right about this. I don''t expect that to be a huge issue for them, and I don''t expect things to come to a head over it, but yeah. If they fuck with Christine or Anastasia, there will be a toll to pay with me. And if they fuck with Christine or myself, Anastasia might legitimately just kill somebody. And yes, it is very nice and sweet and we''re such a horrific little found family and it''s so romantic that it''s us against the world and blah blah blah but I need to be very clear that this is not a good thing.

    We are a trio of traumatized teenagers. They are the entire motherfucking United States military. That is not a battle we can win.

    So how do we stop the idiot bigwigs from fucking around and forcing us to find out? Simple. We match what they want with what we want. We prove that we aren''t just three traumatized teenagers; we''re an effective team that supports each other and basically comes ready-made out of the box to do exactly what they want us to do: kill aliens. If these guys are as desperate for potential firepower as I suspect they are, they''ll be overjoyed to be presented with new supers that already have experience working together in combat as long as those new supers obey them. And since that''s something we have to do anyway because of the whole draft thing, I want to make sure our bosses are really happy with us, to minimize the chances that they try to take Anastasia away.

    To do that, I have to regain their trust. And to do that, I have to show that I''m a positive influence on other future soldiers around me. See, human trust is fundamentally based on two factors, each more or less equally weighted: first impression and usefulness. First impressions are important because people are, on a whole, really bad at changing their minds, and fucking terrible at nuance. People instinctively want to slot others into generalized ''good'' and ''bad'' bins wherever physically possible, because life is complex and humans are simple.

    A big example of this is a thing called the halo effect: effectively, a positive impression that a human has about someone in one area causes them to be more likely to have a positive impression about that person in completely unrelated areas. The famous example of this is appearance: attractive individuals are literally statistically more likely to be assumed to be good people by total strangers. People straight up don''t even think about it, there''s just something instinctively wired in the human brain that looks at a hot guy and instantly assumes he''s more intelligent than an ugly woman without a single conscious decision being made. Trust me, as a lifelong hideous fuck I have quite a bit of personal experience with this fact.

    Anyway, returning to the main point, I think it''s fair to say that this all-important first impression ended up, if we are being generous, rather mixed. Most people saw me as a monster to take down, and when it turned out I wasn''t that they remained so suspicious of it that I was shoved into a secret interrogation black site and pretty directly accused of being an alien spy. Even if people don''t believe I''m an alien spy¡ªand I suspect most of the military won''t, because as far as I know there has been no such thing in three decades of constant war¡ªthat bad first impression is still going to color their opinion on me. They''re going to assume I''m a potential problem case. They''re going to treat me as an issue to be solved, and I will absolutely under no circumstances stand for that shit.

    So I need the other fifty percent, as always. I need to be useful. So goddamn useful that they have no choice but to trust me, because they''d rather expose themselves to a potential leak than have to handle all the problems I''m solving for them without me.

    Think about it. In a professional situation, who makes you happier to see on shift: the person you can shoot the shit with, or the person who gets so much shit done that your job becomes way easier as a result? The most powerful person in a social situation is always going to be whoever the most people like, and the way you get superiors to like you is to become essential to them in ways they needed, wanted, but never had to ask you for.

    So that''s what I''ll do, and it starts with making sure Christine gets out of bed on time. God knows she''ll need a little help to shape up into a soldier.

    "Come on, Christine. We gotta get up."

    "Can I not just rest a little after nearly dying a dozen times?" she groans.

    "Nope, sorry," I answer bluntly. "End of the world and all that. You want any help getting up?"

    I offer her a hand, and she glowers at it for a while like it slapped her mother, but eventually one of her arms snakes its way out from under the covers and clasps it. I smile and pull her up into a sitting position, where she stretches and yawns.

    "It''s criminal," she mutters. "What''s the point of saving the world if it''s just going to be run by fascists?"

    "The not dying part, I imagine," I say. "You want me to step out while you get dressed?"

    "...Uh, yeah," she mutters. "Thanks."

    "No problem," I nod. "I''ll be right outside."

    I head out of the room and lean on the wall just outside our door to wait. I could spend the time waking up Anastasia or just going to eat by myself, but it''s better to wait here; Christine is a lot less likely to just curl back up in bed if she knows that I''m waiting on her, after all. And sure enough she''s staggering out of the room about five minutes later.

    "Alright! Let''s pick up Anastasia then, yeah?" I smile at her. She grumbles various unintelligible things that I''m pretty sure include the words ''morning people'' and at least seven swears, but at least she follows me.

    I knock on Anastasia''s door and call out to her, and I''m suddenly startled as I feel the radius of her power expand out from the room and brush up against me. I''m not really sure what to do other than mentally poke at it a little, but once I do it retreats away, and after a bit of shuffling Anastasia opens the door with a smile.

    "Lia!" she greets me.

    "Hey, Ana," I smile at her. "Breakfast time."

    "Yeah, okay!" she nods. "But¡­ then we have to go to school, right?"

    "Well, it''s cool school," I tell her. "It''s a school for superpowers, after all."

    "Hmm. Well, if you say so," she frowns, clearly not buying it.

    "Look, it''ll probably be boring," I admit, "but I think we''ve earned a bit of boring, right? We can just sit around and learn stuff without anybody trying to attack us."

    Probably, anyway. Still, the idea seems to cheer her up at least a little bit, so we head off to eat breakfast. Ed unfortunately doesn''t seem to be there when we arrive, and Peter is so I just grab us the empty table furthest away from him. I''m still not entirely sure how to handle him and don''t particularly want to deal with it this early in the morning. Thankfully, he seems happy to just keep chatting with the people around him and leaving us alone. We manage to get through the meal without incident.

    By following the other newly powered people, we make our way to the classroom, though that turns out to be something that ends up as an incident. A minor one, definitely, but still.

    "Not you three," the person I assume to be the instructor snaps at us when we enter. "You need remedial. Head to the room next door."

    I feel everyone''s eyes on us at once, yet more unwanted attention that signals us as other to the main group. Unfortunate, but what can you do? I drag Anastasia and Christine into the next room as instructed, where we see a grumpy-looking military woman with short brown hair that''s turning a little gray. Judging by the fully-armed guy next to her, she either doesn''t have powers or simply doesn''t share Commander''s confidence in holding her own against us by herself. Prudent, I suppose. The room is relatively small and set up with a projector, three desks, and not much else. The desks are already heavy with papers that we will presumably need to memorize. Joy of joys.

    "All three of you sit down," she orders. "You do not speak a word in this classroom unless I prompt you to speak, do you understand me? You''re four days behind and you are going to learn every last bit of it today, or you will wish you had."

    Pfft. Okay, lady. Christine immediately opens her mouth to say something, because of course she does, but I clap my hand over it and raise my eyebrow at her until she swallows whatever comment she was about to make. Then I head for my seat. A very slight twitch of the instructor''s lips indicates that I have already earned myself some brownie points. Score.

    "At least you had the decency to show up on time to class, if not to training as a whole," the woman grunts. Bitch, I was busy. Angels don''t kill themselves. "Let''s begin."

    The next couple of hours are supremely boring. Our instructor outlines a lot of things we''ve already been told, like what our schedule will be like for the foreseeable future, with educational classes in the morning and more practical power classes in the afternoon. Even accounting for our four-day delay, she expects us to be up to standard in six weeks or less, which seems like a really short amount of time to master a gosh dang superpower, but what do I know? Most of the time is spent with her just establishing common-sense guidelines, like ''don''t use your powers on people'' and ''ideally, don''t use your powers outside of structured classes at all.'' That one is less of a hard rule, though, which is nice since my power doesn''t really ever turn off. Eventually, though, we start actually getting into some interesting stuff.

    "Alright, let''s talk terms," the woman snaps. "There are a lot of different ways people classify and understand powers, but the three of you only need to know one way: the military relevancy standard. Essentially, your powers are simply not important except in areas where they cannot be replaced with standardized hardware. If your power, for example, allows you to attack targets at range, but in a way that doesn''t exceed the range or firepower of a standard-issue rifle? We don''t give a fuck, because when you''re in the field you''re going to have a rifle, so your power isn''t worth shit."

    The projector suddenly flashes to a new slide, showing seven words in big letters, the first letter of each capitalized in extra-big: Strike, Transit, Recon, Artillery, Tactical, Armor, and Sapper. STRATAS.

    "But let''s say your power isn''t ass. Let''s say you can attack things with it, and while the range is equal or less than a standard firearm, the destructive potential exceeds a spray of bullets, or ideally even standard explosives. If that''s the case, the power is given a Strike rating. Artillery ratings, conversely, are for offensive abilities that exceed the range of standard firearms and either the accuracy or the destructive potential of competing options like sniping weapons, mortars, or the like."

    She slaps the wall the projection is displayed on for some reason.

    "The less brain-dead among you may notice that these terms match the sort of language we already use, and that''s explicitly because we want to match what your power can do with what it provides to a military engagement. Strike powers go in strike teams. Artillery powers work alongside artillery teams, and so on. You don''t need to think about where you believe your power to be the most useful; as we learn about your abilities here, your ratings will be assigned to you on a scale of zero or higher in each category, zero meaning your power can''t accomplish that goal, one meaning that it can but not in a way that''s relevant, and anything above that being a relative heuristic representation of your capacity to affect a battle. The scale generally goes up to ten, and two to four is fairly standard."

    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    She walks in front of the projection, swapping sides so she can point to the other words. She smacks one.

    "Transit means you can redeploy yourself or, ideally, other troops more quickly than normal. This is almost always going to be your most important rating if you''re capable of it to a high degree."

    Smack.

    "Recon powers gather information, either through literal reconnaissance or, more commonly, through esoteric bullshit. Many, if not most powers feed you information in some way or another. It''s how useful that information is to anyone other than you that determines your Recon score."

    Smack.

    "We already talked about Artillery, so next we have Tactical powers. They are loosely categorized as any ability that focuses around supporting, empowering, or otherwise increasing the tactical value of any troops under its aegis, commonly through resonance effects but ideally through other means as well. These abilities tend to be both rare and dangerous, and in the hands or tentacles or what have you of Angels, they almost always denote essential targets to take down in order to win an engagement."

    Hmm. What''s a ''resonance effect?'' Sounds important. I assume she''ll probably explain later.

    Smack.

    "Armor is all about the forces that must be committed against you to bring you down. If you''re abnormally durable, the aliens are going to need to commit more resources towards killing you in order to succeed, and that provides value even if you''re not a huge threat on your own."

    Smack.

    "Finally, you have Sapper powers if you can work like a sapper. These are abilities geared towards preparing a battlefield, a defensive position, or otherwise supporting troops via preparation rather than direct combat."

    She steps away from the projection screen, presumably having finished beating the shit out of it.

    "The important thing to note about these values is that they are heuristics; they will increase and decrease as your abilities are reassessed through experience. Likewise, they are assigned to opposing Angels in order to quickly convey relevant information to allies in the field. Your allies will need to know if an Angel could be ranked Artillery 1, for example, and they''ll definitely need to know about any values higher than that. As powered individuals yourselves, though, there are two more major attributes that you''ll also need to be aware of: odd-op and are-dee."

    What and what? Oh, there she goes, she swapped the slide. It''s spelled "ODoP" and "RD." Acronyms.

    "RD is the big one," she continues. "It stands for Range-Density, and while it often functions as a general numerical measure of your power, it''s technically a measurement of how many standard troops you can safely protect inside your domain against a specific opposing level of power. Which, of course, leads us to domains: the only universal attribute of all supernormal abilities."

    I adjust myself in my seat a little, actually getting kind of interested now. A universal attribute of powers, huh? Is it that thing Anastasia and I ''feel'' about other powers, or is it something else?

    "All of you have a domain," the instructor tells us. "Your domain, in essence, is the space in which you can use your power. I hear you three have actual combat experience, so you might already be aware of your ranges. Everyone''s domain is sized differently by default, but it''s possible to alter that size however you wish, potentially using your powers at dramatically longer ranges than you''re currently used to."

    Huh. That''s interesting. My power only affects me, though. What would extra range even do? Let me shapeshift into bigger things? I can already turn into Behemoths so that doesn''t make any sense. But¡­ hmm. I can only feel other powers and gain new forms when I physically come into contact with the power radius or form in question. With this ''domain'' thing, maybe I could gain the ability to shapeshift into someone just by looking at them. That could be handy.

    "The downside to this, of course, is that powers do not play nice with their own kind," the instructor continues. "When domains overlap with each other, they will generally fight each other for control. A domain that is in control can smother other domains in overlapping areas, weakening or outright removing their ability to function. We call the capacity of a domain to beat out other domains its ''density,'' because it seems to scale with a domain''s current volume: the larger you make your domain, the worse its ability to establish control, and vice-versa. This is extremely important, because the protection of an unsmothered domain is the only known defense against paranormal abilities, period."

    I see. I see! Oh my god, I get what was going on now. The constant pressure from the Queen was its domain trying to press into mine so it could smother and kill me. But it couldn''t, because the Queen''s domain was stretched all over the entire greater Chicago area, so it was incredibly thin and I could keep its influence out. Andre and Lia, conversely, had no such protection, so the extremely low ''density'' of the Queen''s power didn''t matter when there was no domain to protect them at all.

    I must have been instinctively extending my domain to cover things that I touch, which makes sense, because how could my power scan the biological data of a person if it wasn''t encompassing them in its area of effect? If I had just figured that out and learned to expand my domain back then, I could have potentially saved them. Damn it.

    "One of the most important things about your RD score," the instructor continues, ignorant of internal chastisement. "Is that the starting value you''re working with can be improved dramatically with training, effort, and experience. The RD score is our way of codifying your overall domain strength, which is essential for both offensive and defensive purposes. A large part of what you will be doing at this camp is maximizing your RD score as much as possible."

    The next slide swaps over, showing a diagram of a blue stick figure standing in the center of a large blue circle, black stick figures all around them.

    "It''s rarer for powers to not be able to pop the skull of anyone in their radius, or something similarly lethal, than to be harmless," the instructor says. "And since power domains are the only defense against power domains, your number one priority in any engagement will almost always be to encompass and provide resistance to allied forces against enemy powers. A high RD score is essential for this, but it is also essential for offensive operations that don''t have you protecting assets. It is possible that you may be deployed exclusively with other powered individuals in order to mount an assault on Angels. This is where your ODoP score comes in."

    The next slide swaps over, showing a scale from zero to three, labeled as ''less penetration'' to ''more penetration.''

    "Recruit Morgan!" the instructor snaps, and it takes me a split second to remember that Morgan is Lia''s last name and she is talking to me.

    "Ma''am?" I prompt.

    "I hear you''re already a wing ripper. What was it like, using your powers in the midst of things?"

    I blink.

    "Uh¡­ more or less the same as it usually is?" I hedge. "My power works by changing me, so I''m not sure if it''s affected by this stuff, bar my scanning ability. I scanned a copy of the Angel rather than the real thing to take its form. Making clones was its power."

    "Alright," the instructor nods. "If your ability isn''t affected by the presence of other domains, we call that ODoP zero. That means your Optimal Degree of Penetration is none: regardless of how dominant your domain is, your ability still works normally because it doesn''t rely on dominance at all. These abilities are extremely rare, and for obvious reasons they make you quite dangerous in power-on-power combat. Ideal for wing ripping, really. Your sensory ability is more likely to be in the area of ODoP one; this means you can be matching an opponent equally in domain strength but still be capable of using your ability. It goes up from there: ODoP two means you need to have double the RD of your target for your ability to work normally, three means you need triple, and so on. Abilities hardly ever get ODoP scores higher than three, and if they did it would make them nearly useless in power-on-power combat."

    Hmm. I think I get it. I guess it sounds like my powers aren''t affected by this much, but I distinctly remember Anastasia having trouble with this against the Angel. Its power was preventing her from hurting it with her own, at least from a distance.

    ¡­It was Emily who told her to wait for the Angel to get closer before attacking, wasn''t it?

    Yeah, I remember that. It was. She was talking about feeling the radius of the Angel''s power as a bubble and having Anastasia use hers to pop it, or something. She was basically talking about this ODoP and RD stuff: by waiting for the Angel to come closer before attacking, Anastasia wasn''t stretching her range as much and therefore had a ''denser'' domain. Her power was still weaker than normal while fighting the Angel''s, but it became strong enough to do severe damage anyway. This is just¡­ codifying that stuff, explaining it. It all makes a lot of sense when I think about it that way.

    And of course, if I wasn''t already convinced that Emily has powers, I definitely would be now. But how does she hide them? People with powers can feel other powers. Even if they don''t have Anastasia''s or my sensitivity to the weird little feelings those powers give off, they can presumably still tell when their domain is overlapping with another. To hide powers you''d have to, well, hide your domain. Is that possible? It would presumably be an important military skill if it is, but the instructor doesn''t mention anything like that.

    I wonder if it''s being withheld from me specifically, because they know they''d never be able to find me if I could hide my powers. Without my domain acting as an identifying feature, I could just slip away and become anyone. Not that I''d consider doing so if I could, of course; Anastasia is still stuck here, after all. But they don''t know that.

    The class eventually ends, leaving me with a lot to think about. I share my thoughts on how our experiences with using powers in the incursion zone line up with what we''ve been taught, which seems to help Anastasia understand a lot of it. Christine stays pretty quiet, though.

    "Do you think you were struggling to use your power in the Queen''s domain because you have a high ODoP or something?" I ask her. Cuz, y''know, I''ll feel really bad for all the mental shit I gave her if she was literally actually unable to use her powers most of the time and we just didn''t know why.

    "¡­Maybe," Christine hedges. "It''s a little easier now, but I don''t know if that''s because of that op-op shit or if it''s just¡­"

    She trails off. Hmm.

    "ODoP," I correct, in lieu of anything better to say. "Not op-op."

    "Sure, yeah," she shrugs. "Sorry, it''s just¡­ I dunno. I have an executive function disorder. I can''t just do things simply because I want to like normal people. If I''m not drugged up the ass on prescribed amphetamines I basically can''t function, and I was both off my meds and either in the middle of or on the edge of a panic attack that whole time. I probably wouldn''t have even been able to feed myself if you and Emily weren''t constantly pushing me to. I was¡­ basically not even a person."

    She curls up a little in her seat, clearly uncomfortable with telling us all of this, or at least worried about it. Hmm. I mean, it definitely would have been good to know back when our lives were in danger, I guess. An actual medical condition explains it, and while I haven''t really heard of an ''executive function disorder'' before I certainly don''t have any reason to think she''s just making it up.

    "Huh. Thanks for telling us," I say, not really sure how else to respond. "Is the military supplying your pills, then?"

    "Yeah, I finally got to start them again today," she nods, seeming slightly relieved by my answer for some reason. "They don''t just fix everything automatically, though. Even on my pills, it''s always a problem. Sometimes my brain lets me do things normally, but most of the time it doesn''t and I just kind of¡­ well. You know what I do."

    Nothing.

    "What''s that like, if you don''t mind me asking?" I prod. It''s the kind of question that I know would be annoying as hell from a stranger, but I saved her life a gazillion times so I can probably ask it without upsetting her.

    "Well, it''s just¡­ I dunno. I know what I should be doing, and I even know how to do it, but I just¡­ don''t. I can''t really describe why because it doesn''t really feel like there''s a why most of the time. Like, maybe I can''t do something because it''s causing me to panic somehow, and even if that doesn''t make sense I can say alright, I can''t do this because I''m panicking. But a lot of the time there''s just no reason at all. I''ll try to get out the ingredients to make a sandwich, and I know where they all are, and I know how to make the sandwich, but I just¡­ my body doesn''t move. It refuses to make the sandwich. It won''t let me start any of the steps, and trying to willpower through it does nothing but make me anxious. My mind just blanks in between the ''how do I do this'' and the ''okay, then do it'' steps."

    Jesus Christmas Christ, that sounds horrific. I''m not sure what to say. I''ve gotten some shitty comments from people before where they say shit like ''oh man, it must feel like you''re trapped inside your body'' when I used to talk about all the assistive mechanisms I used to move around and stuff, which always pissed me off. Like holy shit just because I do everything a little slower than you doesn''t mean I''m trapped, I can still do it. I can still determine my own life. But having a problem with the brain that says ''no, today you can''t?'' Having something that steals that control? That''s fucked up. That''s terrifying.

    But of course I don''t say that. ''That''s fucked up and terrifying'' is probably the exact same thing that went through the heads of the assholes who said that dumb shit to me. So in the same vein, I say what I wished those jerks would have said instead.

    "That sounds like a lot to deal with. Let me know if there''s anything I can do to make things easier for you," I say. "If you ever want help, and there''s a way I can help you, just ask."

    I get a small smile from her at that.

    "Thanks," she mutters.

    "Of course," I say amicably, while internally I''m trying to figure out what this means for my plans. Because like, damn, that shit sucks, both in general but also in the very specific issue of ''the military probably doesn''t accept many excuses from their human weapons.''

    It''s the end of the world, after all. Nobody is going to give a shit why Christine is failing to do things, they''re only going to care that she is, and no matter how many reasonable excuses she gives backed by diagnoses and doctors, it''s still going to reflect poorly on me if I can''t find some way to ensure she can follow orders. And it''s going to be awful for Christine too, because the classic military response to less-than-obedient recruits is to break them hard enough that the brand-new trauma supersedes whatever problems were previously present.

    I¡­ don''t really know how to solve this problem, though. If it''s a medical disorder, I guess it''s not necessarily ''solvable'' in the traditional sense anyway. That''s¡­ really frustrating. I guess I feel a little better about Christine''s problems now that I understand it''s more than just her being flaky and unreliable, but at the end of the day she is still flaky and unreliable. Even when people had the basic decency not to blame me for my mobility issues (and isn''t basic decency always a rare treat), they still had to plan around them. How do I plan around ''might randomly be incapable of doing important things,'' though? I can''t. I just have to accept that any given plan involving Christine has a random chance of failing for no reason. Which¡­ well, is infuriating, frankly.

    I''m trying to keep us all alive, after all. Not being in the middle of the warzone doesn''t mean we aren''t suffering the risks of war. Problems during training could absolutely get us killed down the line, be they a failure to learn or even just a failure to make proper connections. I won''t let Christine drag me down with her.

    But I can''t let her struggle through it alone, either. No matter how frustrating it is, abandoning her wouldn''t be right.

    I keep thinking about it until lunchtime is over, at which point we once again follow the other powered people (keeping as far away from Peter as possible) to wherever it is we''re supposed to go. They lead us outside to a wide courtyard behind the building, nestled in the forest. There isn''t much to speak of here: just a grassy field in the middle of a bunch of trees. Commander herself is waiting for us there, along with half a dozen other soldiers. The other trainees start lining up in something vaguely resembling rows, so we do the same. I end up with Anastasia on one side of me and this comically tall girl with brilliant red hair in a braid and a shotgun spray of freckles all over her neck and face. Seriously, she''s huge. Probably something like six foot five. I guess there''s also a seven-foot-tall guy among the trainees too, but still!

    Gosh, she has a lot of freckles. Actually, it''s weirdly difficult to look away from her face for some reason. I wonder if that''s her power.

    "Alright recruits, you know the drill," Commander shouts. "You''re all working on the same thing as yesterday. Morgan, Patrova, Baker! To me."

    Alright, yeah, I was about to say. I certainly hope I''m not doing what I did yesterday. Christine, Anastasia, and I head over to Commander while the six other soldiers fan out to supervise whatever the heck everyone else is doing.

    "Hello, recruits," Commander says, flashing us a mirthless smile. "I trust you learned a lot in your class this morning?"

    "Yes ma''am," I answer her.

    "Good. I expect you three to be caught up by tomorrow," she orders. "I''m sure our little wing ripper is at least twice as smart as the average soldier, hmm?"

    "Yes ma''am," I repeat.

    "Oooh, confident, I like that," she smirks. "So. After lunch, practice is for practical experience. You three obviously have quite a bit of practical experience. So today, you''re going to show me what you know and what you need to improve on. Morgan, based on what you''ve been taught so far, what do you think you need to improve on most?"

    Hmm. Well, the instructor said that our primary duty was going to be protecting other units from powers, right? But I can only do that if I can touch others, which is¡­ obviously not enough.

    "Increasing my domain''s radius, ma''am," I answer. "I''ve never done it before. My power has always been touch-only."

    "Good. Next. Patrova?"

    She goes down the line, assigning the other two individual instructors from among the other soldiers here, all of whom apparently have powers. I, of course, end up stuck with Commander herself. Her power washes over me, enveloping me with its promises of bliss, pressing against me like the tide.

    "Domain movement is simple," she tells me bluntly. "Your domain will naturally react to pressure. Simply pay attention to it, and learn to do it consciously."

    Her power presses against me even harder, threatening to crush and overwhelm me. My only options are to let it through or give it ground, so I give ground, letting her power dance across my skin but refusing it access to my brain. I''ve done this before, haven''t I? She''s right. In the fight with the first Angel, there was a feeling like this. I just did it on instinct. But how do I do the reverse, and make my domain larger?

    Hmm. I guess it''s called a domain, after all. What even is a domain, if not the insistence that some space is owned? I take a deep breath, hold that power in my mind, and push, the certainty that the world around me is mine at the forefront of my thoughts. My superpower is mine. Therefore, it obeys me. And I insist that everything¡ªevery last goddamn thing¡ªis mine as well, so long as I can reach it.

    So reach it, I do. My power expands. Commander seems to feel it, and so she pulls herself back and lets me grow unabated. My area of influence explodes out around me, stretching thin, and without warning a thousand sensations assault my mind at once, enough to tear it in half and leave me spasming on the floor.

    The more it expands, the weaker my domain becomes, allowing everyone else in the class to easily block my power from affecting them without even a smidge of effort. But that doesn''t help me even the slightest bit from the uncountable breadth of life that doesn''t have powers. And I forgot, didn''t I? I spent so long in an area where every living animal had been wiped out by the queen, then all my time after that in tightly controlled indoor spaces, that I forgot how much life there is in the world, and how my power reacts to life.

    Insects, arachnids, worms, grass, fungi¡­ even in the tiny space I manage to push my domain out to, I''m assaulted by countless minuscule examples of life, and my power makes a template for every last one of them, each fighting for domination of my consciousness and my body.

    None of them lose. I vomit, feeling tiny, insectoid legs of a half-dozen different species start growing out of my arms and legs in place of body hair. Grass grows from my scalp, mycelium extends into the ground from anywhere my skin touches it, and tiny wings erupt from my cheeks and face like buzzing scales. And all the while, each and every part of each and every change is cataloged, analyzed, and filed into my brain at a level of detail far beyond anything I''ve ever wanted to know. Moments later, I feel Commander''s domain crushing mine once again, smothering it back down to a more manageable size, but it''s already too late. The changes are still happening, my body shifting, unshifting, and reshifting a seemingly endless array of useless possibilities.

    ¡­Or, well. No possibility is truly useless. They''re certainly useless on my humanoid form, but there''s potential to these designs if I lose enough mass. These chitin structures don''t scale up well, but I can always simply scale myself down. ¡­Am I screaming?

    Whatever. I feel Commander''s domain press down on me even harder, trying to take over the influence I have over my own skin, but since I''m making myself smaller I can shrink my domain to match¡ªraising its density and strength, just like I was taught¡ªto keep her out.

    "Help me with her!" Commander shouts, and more pressure crashes into me, working with her to smother my abilities down further, forcing me to shrink my mass and domain size even faster. I want to test the upper limit of my ability to gain and lose mass; a lot of what I''ve just learned could come in handy if I''m able to make myself as small as a bug. And the possibilities of that! Infiltration, escape, spying, or just the simple joy of being able to fly! I mean, I''d obviously have to completely change my body plan and remove any form of complex central nervous system, but¡ª

    Oh fuck, that''s why I''m screaming, huh?

    Whatever currently passes for my lungs coughs and heaves for air, my self-awareness and self-preservation finally shunting itself back into the conscious part of my brain after it had been forced out by everything else. My body is¡­ incomprehensible. A transient state between human child and insect that I''d been using to test how much of my body I didn''t actually need to survive. I''ve reduced myself to nothing but a head and half a limbless torso, everything below my ribcage completely removed and sealed up, various tiny plant and bug bits sticking out from my body randomly as I messed around with them during my work.

    This was me. I did this to myself. I can''t vomit again without a stomach, but I give it my best shot, my throat constricting and trying to pull up acid that no longer exists.

    I could make it exist. I could make it stronger. Stronger acid is probably better, right?

    "Answer me, trainee," someone barks. "Nod, or blink three times, or say something."

    Can I say anything? I inhale again, cough again, shape my lungs and throat a bit more normally, and finally manage to choke something out.

    "...I''m okay," I croak. "I''m lucid."

    Commander is kneeling over me, glaring with an intensely aggressive, yet at least slightly concerned expression on her face. How touching.

    "We''re taking you to medical," she says.

    "No," I choke out without thinking about it. "I''m fine."

    "You''re fine?" she snaps. "Do you have any idea what you''ve just done to yourself, recruit?"

    "Yes," I hiss, because I in fact know exactly what the fuck I just did to myself, to a frankly absurd level of detail. That''s why I had a seizure. "I got overwhelmed and lost focus. ¡­Ma''am. But I''m perfectly fine."

    She''s unconvinced, because of course she''s unconvinced; I look like a mutant dead baby. I have to get myself back to normal, or¡­ shit. My clothes are all splayed out on the floor, I''m wearing nothing but a dress-sized t-shirt now. Eh, whatever, I can just not regrow any genitals or breasts until I have my clothes back on, it''s not really a big deal.

    And I need to prove it''s not a big deal. I can''t allow a fuckup like this to be how my first day in practical training is remembered.

    So I start to shift back to normal. I regrow a full body, albeit child-sized and lacking a few essential orifices for now. I get to my feet, ignoring the stares from literally everyone as I collect my clothes, tossing my shirt off with the rest of them so I can fix my bra properly when I grow back into it. And grow I do; my acceleration back to full adult height gives me a flash of vertigo, that deeply ingrained panic within me insisting I''ve fucked up, stood up too fast, and now I''m about to collapse into a life alert situation. I shove those instincts aside. They''re useful to the real me, but I''m not her anymore.

    May as well discard them, because now I can stand just fine. I will not fall.

    So I don''t. I fix my bra as best I can without actually having regrown Lia''s breasts yet, then pull my underwear on, ignoring everyone''s stares. I''m fine. I have to be fine, because I''m better than the sort of weakling who wouldn''t be. I finish dressing myself in full view of everyone here, my body not matching any particular person I''ve copied so much as settling as a vague, mostly sexless mix between them.

    Now fully clothed, I let out a huff of air as I push my body back to Lia''s template, filling out my outfit and re-opening the frustratingly sensitive holes in my body that, frankly, I was just as happy without.

    "...May we continue?" I ask flatly, wishing I could glower at the many eyes still not minding their own damn business but knowing I have to refrain from seeming emotional. To prove I am in control, I must control myself.

    "No, trainee, you may not," Commander snaps back. "You''re going to medical like I fucking said you were. You two, escort her."

    Commander points at two of the soldiers that have just been hanging around, likely contributors to the other domains forcing mine down earlier. I grit my teeth, wanting to argue more, but I swallow the urge. Authority has been established. I can''t step on that any further without consequences, so as painful as it is, I swallow it all down.

    "...Yes, ma''am," I nod to Commander. "Apologies."

    Seething and doing everything I can to hide it, I follow the soldiers towards the least necessary medical checkup of all time, my mind screaming at itself over my weakness. It''s fine. It will be fine.

    I''ll plan around this. I always find a way.

 16. Psychology for Idiot Babies 101

    Despite my objections, I allow myself to be escorted away from our power training class and silently guided back to the building and through the halls until I end up in a medical room. A nurse escorts me to a room almost immediately, taking careful extractions of my blood with gloved hands to ensure we don''t make skin contact.

    ¡­Though I guess I don''t need her to make skin contact to steal her template anymore. As exceptionally uncomfortable and overwhelming as the process of absorbing information on a dozen different organisms at once was, it still¡­ y''know, worked. The information is churning in my mind, clawing at the inside of my brain and demanding to be made useful. It''s a bit disturbing, but also empowering, and¡­ weirdly pleasant? I''m still pissed off, though, extremely frustrated that my first day of so-called ''power training'' has resulted in me not being allowed to train my goddamn power. It''s not like they can stop me from expanding my domain, though. I could steal templates from the medical staff here, gloves or no. And it could be useful, but¡­ no. No. Just let that thought pass by and put it in a box.

    I''m aware, consciously, that repressing all my emotions and frustrations isn''t a healthy coping mechanism. That''s like, Psychology for Idiot Babies 101. But there''s a difference between unhealthy suppression of the self and having the basic decency to not follow every stupid whim, right? If I know I''m pissed, I know that I should be compartmentalizing, at least temporarily. It''s perfectly fine to hide annoyance, ride it out, and come back to the situation with a clearer head. That is the healthy response. Interacting with people is about doing what you should be doing, not what you want to be doing.

    The nurse leaves after stabbing me a bit for science, and in the fifteen minutes between then and when she finally comes back, I manage to calm myself down a little.

    "Your blood is quite normal," the nurse comments, sitting down in front of a computer in the room.

    "I''m not sure what you expected," I tell her honestly. "If you want abnormal blood, I can make that too."

    "That won''t be necessary," she chuckles. "At least not today. The doctor wants to give you a few MRIs, though. Is that alright?"

    Huh. Do they have all that advanced medical equipment in this building? I guess they really want to keep the new supers separated from everyone else, even in an emergency.

    "My consent is largely irrelevant, so feel free," I say, letting the comment slip out before I can stop it. Shit! Okay, maybe I haven''t fully calmed down.

    "Ms. Morgan, your consent is extremely relevant," the nurse insists, swiveling her chair to face me and giving me a serious look.

    Aw, she really believes that. How cute.

    "I consent, then," I say firmly, looking her in the eyes. I have to double down on seriousness since I let the cynicism slip out earlier. If she doesn''t believe my consent is valid, she might not accept it, and that would be annoying even though she would be completely correct and definitely doing the right thing.

    I''m pretty sure that refusing consent would work, to be clear. I believe that she cares about it and I believe that she''ll support me on the subject of not taking an MRI today if I refuse. But then, oh whoops! My refusal to participate in a brain scan goes on my permanent record! But surely that''s fine, right? It would only be a red flag if they thought I might be an alien or something. Oh wait.

    So yeah, this MRI is happening. And besides, I''m pretty sure that my brain won''t have anything weird in it as long as I don''t shapeshift during the scan.

    MRIs, it turns out, are very uncomfortable. They warn me that it might make my body feel really warm, and I might even feel like I''m peeing myself, but I won''t be. Which¡­ I''m not really sure how to react to, so I just nod. I don''t have any idea what peeing myself actually feels like, and¡­ I''m surprised to learn that it is apparently expected that I would know? Do normal people often pee themselves!? The doctor just said that like it''s no big deal.

    You learn something new every day, I guess.

    They scan me normally for a bit (it absolutely feels like a flush of warmth inside my body, which is very strange, uncomfortable, and hard to tune out) but then they ask me to shapeshift into other forms during the scans, and¡­ I''m not really sure how to handle that. For obvious reasons I don''t want to give myself an alien brain while I shapeshift, or ideally change my brain at all. So I do my best to very, very carefully shift into Emily''s body, but with Lia''s brain. Everything else to template.

    "Huh," the doctor says, and walks over to pull me out of the machine.

    "Is that a good ''huh'' or a bad ''huh?''" I ask.

    "The contrast disappeared when you shifted," she says. "So just a ''huh,'' I guess. I''m going to give you more."

    "Oh, um, alright."

    Huh. I guess ''everything to template'' means I can shapeshift blood contaminants straight out of my body somehow. It¡­ honestly kind of makes sense, but it still feels a bit odd. How does that work? Where does the contrast go? I mean, I guess any crystals I grow just sort of un-grow themselves whenever I want, too. My power is so weird. I am once again flushed with an uncomfortable heat, and the doctor heads back to what I assume are the MRI controls.

    "Alright, we''re going to try again and see how consistent this is," she says.

    Uh. Hmm. That means I have to decide how consistent I want this to be. Now that I know what''s happening, I''m pretty sure I can keep the contrast in my blood more or less the same way I can keep Lia''s brain in Emily''s body. I can feel it inside me, now that I''m looking for substances in my blood that don''t match my prior templates.

    It''s kind of interesting, actually. My power doesn''t tell me what any particular chemical in the great red slurry of my arteries is, but I can absolutely tell how many different chemicals make up that slurry, and each of them has its own distinct¡­ I don''t know. Feel? They have an individual, indescribable chemical qualia, I guess. Now that I can identify this MRI contrast, I can shift it out of my body at will. I could probably do the same to any of the other chemicals in my blood, which could potentially be useful but seems kind of stupid to experiment with blindly.

    Definitely gonna experiment with it later anyway, though. All the safe ways I can think of to pull it off would require me to tell people about it and maybe consult with experts on hormones or whatever and I think I''d rather just trial-and-error through it on my own, partly because I don''t want to tell people about my minute control over my endocrine any more than I want them to know about my ability to replace my own brain, and partly because holy shit, I can replace my own fucking brain, so I doubt this is going to be any more capable of killing me than that.

    So I guess that answers my question, huh?

    I slowly remove the contrast from my system as I move through the MRI machine, fast enough to make it obviously abnormal but not so fast that it''s instant. I want to give the impression that my power is ''healing'' it off particularly quickly. Of course, there''s the slight problem that I didn''t do this the first time I got sent through this horribly uncomfortable machine, but the one saving grace I have is that I was in Lia''s body at the time. To keep things consistent, I just have to not mess with the contrast while I''m in Lia''s body, and flush it from my system whenever I''m not. Hopefully, it''ll be taken as ''evidence'' that Lia''s body is my real one.

    I let the doctor try to get a few more MRIs on me, trying to look similarly confused and annoyed whenever she mentions the contrast disappearing. Soon enough I''m out of the stupid MRI machine, but I apparently have something even worse lined up immediately afterwards.

    I''ve been assigned a personal therapist.

    And unlike the MRI, no one even acts like I have an option not to see them. I have an assigned time after power training class where I am required to see the therapist who lives on-site, and that''s just in my schedule now, I guess. The soldier they sent to escort me and break the news tries to assure me that everyone with powers has to see a therapist, but I''m not stupid. I can do math. I ask if my therapist is the only therapist on-site and they say there''s one other. My schedule says that I''m supposed to see this therapist every day. It''s literally not possible for two therapists to host a session for every powered person on base every day¡ªit''s not even possible for them to host a session for every newly powered person every other day. I''m being singled out, treated as fragile. The thought burns.

    But perhaps more importantly, this therapist could completely blow my cover.

    Even in the hypothetical reality where I do need significant amounts of therapy, it doesn''t matter, because I can''t take advantage of it. This is an Army-hired therapist for fuck''s sake. I can''t talk about the vast majority of my life without admitting I''m not really who I say I am. This is worse than useless to me. This is a threat.

    So I enter the office I''m directed to, declining to shake hands with the man who meets me inside. My therapist looks to be in his low thirties, with small, round glasses and a bald spot already encroaching on his otherwise-youthful features. He retracts his hand without any sign of offense or probing questions, simply sitting in one of the two comfy lounge chairs that flank either side of a low, glass table. I take the other one, since I am obviously supposed to.

    And then I stare at him, projecting as stone-cold of a poker face as I can manage.

    "Well, let''s see¡­ Lia Morgan, right?" he smiles at me, being very much not right. "I''m Dr. Henry Morrison. I''d like to start today by just going over a few things, discussing confidentiality and other¡­"

    I tune him out a bit, mostly autopiloting as I agree to all the basic bullshit I have to agree to. It''s more important to figure out my strategy here. The safest option, by far, is to belligerently deny speaking to the therapist at all. Anything that I say can and will be used against me, and even if I try to maneuver this guy into a story to convince him that I''m the real Lia, I''m not actually Lia, and I''m not a perfect liar either. Eventually I''ll slip up, and this guy''s whole job is to catch that.

    Unfortunately, I''m not sure refusing to speak is an option. I''m already viewed with so much suspicion that refusing to speak to a therapist would be another red flag on a record that already has too many of them. I need to reverse that downward slide and create a rapport here. Having bad therapy marks could be pretty terrible for my future, but good therapy marks could be the sigh of relief the upper brass has been hoping for.

    Because like, come on. Nobody wants for it to turn out that I''m an alien spy. Nobody wants the new wing-ripper to be insane. Everyone''s bias is on my side here. I just have to give them something to believe in.

    So. I need to be a normal girl with normal problems. I need to commiserate with the therapist like I''m supposed to, but it has to be about things that aren''t too worrying. I can do that. That''s pretty normal conversation tactics.

    "...So, that''s pretty much it," the therapist finally finishes. "With all that in mind, is there anything you want to talk about in the time we have remaining?"

    "...I''m not really sure," I say hesitantly. "A lot has happened in my life recently."

    "I can only imagine," he smiles.

    God, what do I say? All my problems are kind of fucked up, actually. I can''t whine about getting kicked out of power training class for trying to train my power, although I absolutely want to. I definitely can''t talk about any of the things that actually scare me about that power, either. Should I talk about my worries with Anastasia? That would be pretty humanizing, but if he tries to reassure me she''ll be safe in the fucking Army I might blow up on him. Oh, I know. I can talk about Christine.

    "...I''m a little worried about my roommate," I admit.

    "Your roommate?" he repeats with apparent surprise.

    "Yeah, Christine," I nod. "She doesn''t exactly have a soldier''s disposition. She has a lot of issues that make it difficult for her to, y''know, fight aliens. But she''s going to have to, and I just¡­ I''m not sure how to help her with that."

    "Hmm. What do you mean?"

    "Uh. Not really sure how else to put it. When we were out in the incursion zone, she literally couldn''t fight to save her own life. It''s only now that we''re out of the incursion zone that I''ve seen her actually experiment with her abilities a little, but even then she spends a lot of her time complaining about how we''re being treated rather than just¡­ learning to manage it, you know?"

    "Hmm. What do you mean by that? ''Learning to manage it?''"

    That stops me a little short.

    "...Is there more than one thing that could mean?" I ask.

    "Mmm, I try not to assume," the therapist shrugs. "It caught my attention, is all. You don''t have to elaborate if you don''t want to."

    Hmm. Do I not want to? Nah, this should be fine. Unless Peter specifically hears this¡ªwhich is exceedingly unlikely¡ªI think it counts as a believably Lia-ish philosophy. She was, if nothing else, a woman of action.

    "In life, you will never stop having problems," I explain. "It sucks, but it''s reality. You either develop the ability to handle those problems, or you don''t."

    "I see. And what happens if you don''t?"

    "You become a burden on others," I answer. "The problems don''t go away, after all. They just compound until they bleed out into other people''s lives and force them to solve things for you, whether because they empathize and want to help or more likely because your problems are just in everyone else''s way."

    "That sounds like an easy thing to resent," the therapist comments. "Other people''s problems being in your way, I mean."

    Ha. You think you can trip me up with that?

    "I think anyone who resents people for letting their problems spill over doesn''t really understand those people," I answer. "I mean, resentment is generally about being treated unfairly, right? It''s about saying ''hey, what the fuck, I have problems too. How come I don''t get as much help as that person who is barely even doing anything?'' There''s a component of envy to it, but the reality is that there''s nothing enviable about those people. Not being able to solve your own problems doesn''t mean you get waited on hand and foot. It means your life is completely, utterly miserable. It''s a horrible existence."

    Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

    "Why do you say that?"

    I laugh.

    "Because other people can never solve all your problems, obviously!" I answer. "Not unless you''re lucky enough to be born with the wealth of a queen and the servants to match. Any problem that gets bad enough for people to reach out and try to help you with only gets help to the point that those people can go back to ignoring it, because they all have their own shit to deal with. You''re living a life where you have a closet bursting at the seams with issues. You can''t hide them all in there so they keep spilling out on the floor, and you just have to sit there and watch as everyone else keeps cleaning that floor for you, and usually hating you for it! Not to mention, of course, that you still have all the problems in the closet. It''s awful. I wouldn''t wish it on my worst enemy. There is no greater hell than being unable to fix your own life."

    "Huh," the therapist says, "could you give me a moment to think about all that?"

    "Uh, sure, I guess," I frown. He goes quiet for a while, leaving me to fidget and shift a bit while he thinks of an answer.

    "It sounds to me like you''ve developed this view from a lot of personal experience," he eventually comments.

    "Doesn''t everybody develop all their views from personal experience?" I counter blandly, not wanting to get into any conversation about a past I''m not safely able to talk about.

    He laughs like it''s a joke.

    "I suppose overall," Dr. Morrison agrees. "Still, I mention it because it seems important to you. Rather than resentment, it sounds like the emotion you feel might be closer to pity?"

    I let out a sigh through my nose.

    "That would just be patronizing," I disagree. "If you''re talking about how I feel towards Christine specifically, I guess I''d describe it as obligation."

    "Oh?" he asks. "And why''s that?"

    "Because no matter how much it doesn''t solve the underlying issues, someone still needs to clean the floors," I answer. "Maybe if I do that enough she''ll find the time to clean some of the closet."

    "Hmm. I like the metaphor," he smiles. "I think my job in all this is to open the closet, look around, and help set a plan on where to start cleaning. Because you''re right: ultimately, everyone has to clean that closet themselves. I think you''re underestimating how valuable help and assistance is to that process, though."

    "That''s fine," I shrug. "I''ll keep doing it either way, even if it feels like a waste of time. It would be nice if I could just clean the damn closet though, you know? Just¡­ fix people."

    "Do you consider Christine to be broken?" Dr. Morrison asks.

    I roll my eyes.

    "Not like that," I insist. "I say I wish I could fix people, but I don''t know what that would even look like because no one has ever been fixed. Everyone is broken. I don''t think there has been a single human in all of history that wasn''t fucked up, some way or another."

    "Including yourself?" he asks.

    "...Is that not implicitly obvious?" I scowl.

    "Well, if you don''t mind me asking, I''m curious about how you consider yourself, in your words, ''fucked up.''"

    I smile at him the way I smiled at the couples that came by looking for kids to adopt.

    "Maybe I just work too hard," I answer.

    After a bit more talking about nothing, ''therapy'' is finally over. I make my way to the mess hall to grab whatever scraps of dinner are still left (since my therapy time apparently cuts into my dinner time), and opt to eat most of it on the way back to my room rather than grabbing a table. My room, after all, is the only place I''m not constantly being stalked by soldiers. At least the wall cameras have the decency to stay out of sight, you know? Way more polite. I make my way inside and, to my pleasant surprise, find Anastasia and Christine sitting on Christine''s bed. Upon seeing me, though, Anastasia immediately gets up and sprints over.

    "Lia!" she greets me happily, running over and squeezing me into a hug. Her domain engulfs mine, being much larger, though it doesn''t try to fight me for dominance, instead just flowing around mine like water around a rock, snug but discrete. I realize, belatedly, that she has a fist-sized glob of blood following her, though my power tells me through our touch that whatever injury she must have sustained to summon it is long gone, already healed off. She must have kept the blood with her for a while.

    "Hey, Lia," Christine greets me as well. "Are you doing okay?"

    Christine also has something weird, I realize. She''s holding a Rubik''s Cube for some reason.

    "Yeah, I''m fine," I tell them. "I was fine the whole time."

    "Uh, you didn''t sound fine," Christine frowns.

    "You screamed like you were dying!" Anastasia says, though I can''t tell how worried about it she was since she''s currently staring up at me with a big grin thanks to the hug. I squeeze her a little tighter.

    "Sorry about that," I say. "It was a bit overwhelming, and kind of painful. But I''m fine."

    The worst that could have happened was removing my own brain, after all, and I''d probably just walk that off. Probably. I mean, it''s possible I could have died, but eh. I bet I was just panicking.

    "Painful isn''t okay!" Anastasia insists.

    I boop her nose and smoosh it around a little with my finger.

    "You, of all people, don''t get to tell me that," I grouse. "What''s all that blood floating behind you?"

    "The trainer guy said I should see how long I can control it," Anastasia answers, breaking away from the hug and the just punishment of my nose boop. "To see how long until it co-a-glue-ates."

    "Coagulates," I correct. "It means to thicken into a more solid mass, like clumps of old gravy."

    "Eww!" Anastasia giggles. "But yeah! I''ve dropped the ball a couple times from getting distracted but so far I''ve been able to pick it back up! Isn''t that neat?"

    "It is," I agree. The less she has to hurt herself, the better. "Good job, Ana."

    Christine suddenly makes a surprised noise, and I look over to her and see that her Rubik''s Cube has exploded. ¡­In a good way, I think.  It''s now floating in pieces over her hands, while she stares at it in apparent shock.

    "Oh god! Okay. Back at the first step," she mutters to herself.

    "I''m guessing you got assigned a training exercise, too?" I ask her.

    "Huh? Oh, um, yeah. They want to know if I can manipulate the orientation of the parts in the exploded view. Just like¡­ with my mind, or something. I genuinely have no idea if I can."

    "I guess taking apart a Rubik''s Cube would be the easiest way to solve it, if you don''t know how to do it the normal way," I hum. "Could be useful for a lot of stuff."

    "I guess," Christine mutters.

    "Honestly, Christine, I''m kind of surprised you''re practicing on your own time," I admit.

    "I mean, it''s not like I want to," she scowls. "There just isn''t anything else to do."

    Hah. That''s fair. I wonder if that''s on purpose? Stick a bunch of people with new powers in a place where they can''t do anything other than use those powers, and they''ll start training themselves out of boredom.

    ¡°This feels impossible,¡± Christine scowls. ¡°I can''t do it.¡±

    Wow, giving up already? I am truly shocked.

    "Come on, you got this," I try to encourage her.

    "N-no, I think this isn''t a me problem, I think my power¡­ literally might not do this?" she frowns. "Like¡­ hmm."

    She reaches out with her hands, shifting the orientation of the outer pieces of the cube using her fingers. As she rotates them in the air, they keep their new positions, and after lining up all the colors she causes the cube to collapse back together, now fully solved.

    "I can do that," she says. "Which is¡­ actually kind of cool, I guess. I wish I had my Gunpla. But the trainer said that since I''m already using telekinesis to take everything apart and hold it in place, I should also be able to use telekinesis to rotate things, rather than just using my hand. But I don''t think I can? I dunno, it''s hard to tell why I can''t do something on any particular day, but I think it''s a limitation of my power somehow."

    "Huh," I say. "That is kind of weird. Your power is clearly capable of fine manipulation of objects, so why wouldn''t it be able to rotate it?"

    "Yeah," Christine frowns. "I agree it''s sound logic, but that''s just the impression I get. Powers are weird, I guess."

    "Very weird," I agree. "I started to grow bug legs instead of body hair for a bit back there."

    Christine gives me this look.

    "...I didn''t need to know that," she says. "I was too far away to see what was happening to you, but now I have to see it in my mind forever."

    "I can show you if I want," I grin, holding up my arm and wiggling my fingers. "Just a million little bug legs."

    She immediately looks away.

    "Please don''t," she says emphatically, so I don''t, contenting myself with a little chuckle. Man, teasing people is kind of fun. I can''t remember the last time I was close enough with someone that I could just do it without being worried it would cross a line. It''s weird.

    "Ugh," Christine mutters. "Most people I know would kill for your power, and you use it to turn your hair into bug legs. I''ve half a mind to be offended."

    "Hey, I don''t usually do that!" I protest. "It just kind of happened. When I expanded my domain for the first time I ended up getting templates for a ton of living things all at the same time, and I just¡­ instinctively tried to turn into all of them at once, I think? I don''t know. Some parts are clear, but other parts are pretty fuzzy. It was¡­ overwhelming."

    "Yeah, fair," Christine sighs. "I guess I picked up on that from all the screaming. Hopefully you''ll be able to get a handle on it tomorrow?"

    "I could try to get a handle on it now," I muse. "There are probably bugs in the walls and whatnot that my power could pick up on. And you guys are training your powers, so I don''t want to be left behind."

    "Uhh, are you sure that''s a good idea?" Christine asks.

    It''s better than doing nothing. It''s better than being afraid of what will happen. It''s better than being a failure.

    "I don''t see why it wouldn''t be," I say.

    "There are way more animals outside than inside," Anastasia agrees. "It''ll probably be easier!"

    "Yeah, exactly Ana," I smile at her. "Look, I''ve gotta get used to it sometime."

    "...Just don''t turn into whatever giant spider is probably living in our walls, okay?" Christine begs.

    "I promise," I nod. "If I turn into a spider, it will be totally normal-sized."

    Then I close my eyes and prepare to expand my domain while she sits there sputtering. Okay. I got into trouble last time by doing this way too fast and ending up with too many different insects and other critters all crowding my brain at the same time. So this time, I''m going to learn my lesson and do this slowly. I do my best to encapsulate that feeling I had when I was pushing back against Commander''s domain, feeling my power as a part of me that can, in fact, be felt. Carefully, I nudge it outwards, increasing the radius bit by bit, and when I inevitably touch something with it other than Anastasia and Christine, I stop.

    It is, in fact, a spider. I feel the urge to try out its form, but with a shiver I push it down and just focus on understanding the template and its potential uses. Like the aliens, spiders have hydraulic musculature, but it''s dramatically less powerful and efficient, not scaling up to the sizes I mainly care about.

    That''s the main problem with most of its body, really: it''s only optimized for its size, and its size is unlikely to be particularly relevant to me most of the time. I can''t reasonably implement the majority of its body into other forms. With one obvious exception, of course: the spinnerets.

    ¡­Not that those are without problems, of course. Again, I can''t just take a body part and increase its size like I''m scaling an image on a computer. It completely destroys the structural integrity, and I think it might ruin the specific mechanism used to weave the silk. But maybe if I put a huge number of them close enough together I could make something that effectively functions as a scaled-up spinneret?

    I''ll look into it later. For now, I have the template. Let''s keep going.

    I repeat the process a few more times, carefully expanding my range and stopping whenever I hit something new so I can take the time to process it without my whole body freaking out. This happens over and over, all with little bugs I have no real use for, until I''m suddenly overwhelmed by something unexpected.

    My domain brushes up against one of the soldiers outside.

    The information floods into my head in a storm, my power happily gobbling up the first example of human male physiology I''ve gotten so far. It''s¡­ I mean, it''s not that different from the human bodies I have access to so far, but I really could have gone without the exact anatomy of a penis being burned into my brain forever. I resist the instinctive transformation even more firmly this time, and though my body insists on copying some of the objectively superior muscle definition for a while (he is a soldier, after all, whereas Lia is just some teenage girl) I shove myself back to ''normal'' with great discomfort. Ugh. This is getting more and more difficult to do. I hate being in Lia''s body.

    I open my eyes, resolving to take a break, only to find that Anastasia isn''t in the room anymore, and Christine is in bed. Huh. I never stopped feeling Anastasia, but I guess she just went to her room after my domain became large enough to reach into it a bit. Expanding things out to this size is a bit exhausting in some weird, ephemeral way. I feel almost lightheaded, my mind crowded with the constant position and biological status of everything in my range, barring Christine and Anastasia themselves, whom my domain can''t even try to scan with how stretched thin it currently is. Instead I only feel their own domains, Christine''s pulled tight against her body while she sleeps whereas Anastasia''s still radiates out from her a good six feet in every direction.

    I start to shrink my domain back down, but as I pull away from Anastasia her power''s radius suddenly expands, as if trying to catch me and stop me from leaving. She reaches towards me, tendrils of presence questing out from the edge of her domain like fingers looking for a hand to hold. My domain usually conforms to the contours of my body or expands into a perfect sphere, so I''m not sure I can reciprocate, but I give it my best shot, threading myself into an awkward interlace of our powers and giving her a light squeeze. She pulls away, and I finish retreating my domain to its usual size.

    I still need to take a shower.

    Stifling a desire to groan, I quietly make my way to the bathroom and strip down, glowering at the angry reflection of someone else''s face in the mirror. The glower nearly turns into a full-on growl, and my face starts to shift into something else. I don''t know what, just anything but this! I twist between every face I already have and every combination thereof, I grow scales over my entire body, then suck them away and replace them with alien skin. I grow and remove tentacles, I twist my organs between their alien and human counterparts. But in the end, I have nothing to settle on. Nothing that''s actually me. Lia is nothing but a mask, and she''s chafing hard enough that the welts are starting to bleed.

    Lia. Lia Morgan. Ms. Morgan. Recruit Morgan. It''s all I fucking hear!

    "Julietta," I whisper at the wall, knowing I probably shouldn''t. Julietta is dead. I don''t get to be her anymore. Not where anyone can see, and I am always being watched.

    "Julietta!" I growl again. Where were all those wretched, scarred lumps on my face again? It''s not as though I ever enjoyed looking at myself, but now there''s nothing else I''d rather see. I start inflaming the tissue of my face, building masses of flesh in an attempt to copy my old mess of a body, but it''s not the same. It''s not even close. Even if I knew how to make the scar tissue right, I never looked at myself enough to remember what my face even was.

    In a fit of unexpected impulse, I almost, almost punch the mirror, barely aborting the motion before making contact. Holding that pose, I stare at myself again, at my aborted mess of a face, at the way Lia''s goddamn chest sways uncomfortably while I lean over. I shift it away, replacing it with the chest of the man I copied earlier, but for some reason that just makes me feel even worse so I grow them back, making them smaller instead. Fuck this. Fuck my body. Fuck today.

    Be honest with yourself, Julietta. Even if you could turn back into your old body, you''d just hate that too. You can become literally anything, but there isn''t anything that you want to be. There is no body that you genuinely strive for, wish for, or desire. Why would there be? There''s nothing¡ªnot a single damn thing¡ªthat could make you look in the mirror and actually feel happy.

    I let crystal scales bloom back over my skin one more time, tentacles twisting out from my back and the Angel''s eyes blooming across my face. Underneath it all, Lia''s body is still there, still defining my shape, but a sharp layer of inhumanity lies between her and the rest of the world, twisting her beauty into something unmistakably alien.

    Then I take a deep breath, return to Lia''s template, and step into the shower, letting frigid water pound against my skin for the next ten minutes as I wash myself off. Christine was right. Hot water is a lot more pleasant, at least by comparison. In some ways I wonder if that makes cold water the better option; I think I''d prefer to spend as little time alone in the bathroom as possible, and the discomfort is a good motivator to be quick and stay focused.

    I could also just shower using an alien''s brain, though. I doubt my Raptor brain would have felt compelled to yell at a piece of fucking glass. I hardly used an alien brain at all today, come to think of it. Maybe that''s why I was so miserable. I''m suffering from fearlessness withdrawals. I''m addicted to alien biology. That''s all it is. An addiction. A simple habit to break.

    I go to bed and dream of falling slowly through an ever-shifting void. It feels like anything is possible, but unlike Anastasia the sensation doesn''t remind me of hope. Though the presence surrounding me does its best to reassure me, the uncertainty is still a little terrifying.

 17. Anything That Would Make You More Comfortable

    "Is it just me," I scowl at my assigned therapist, "or am I the only person who has had to see you every day this week?"

    And what a week it has been. I wake up every morning as some horrific abomination that nearly gives Christine a panic attack, eat as much as I can get away with, do my best to stay conscious through our lessons about military superpower use, eat as much as I can again, practice getting a handle on my domain, have mandatory therapy, and then eat one more time before passing out and doing it all over.

    I wouldn''t say it''s boring, outside of some of the lecture classes. Even then it''s neat to see how vast numbers of wildly different abilities are slotted into the highly stratified and standardized structure of the military. Reading between the lines a little, it seems like there are three basic categories of powered troops: specialists, attackers, and domain cows. Specialists are people with very powerful and useful abilities that provide more value to the Army off the battlefield than on it, like Cross Country or that truth-determiner guy. Attackers are people with offensive abilities potent enough to do serious damage to the enemy, especially Angels. And domain cows are everyone else: people with abilities that simply aren''t as good as the basic utility inherent to just having a domain, protecting mundane troops and ordinance from supernatural bullshit that would otherwise obliterate or nullify them. Because, and who would have seen this coming, guns and bombs are pretty damn good for fighting a war with.

    The military does not care if you can shoot fire from your hands. That does not make you special. Shut the fuck up and spend your life protecting an entire squad of soldiers with flamethrowers, or whatever weapon would be more useful than that. Queens tend to have abilities that let them no-sell a lot of human ordinance, but without that protection the Aliens are still flesh and blood, just like us. Shoot them with enough bullets and they die without a fuss. The same goes for anyone with powers, really. The military''s main strategy has therefore not been to form superhero death squads to fight the aliens (although that is definitely something they do sometimes) but instead to take advantage of powers in order to negate the effects that render standard military hardware ineffective. That''s pretty much all domain, no actual power use at all. A so-called superhero''s job, nine times out of ten, is to just stand around like an idiot and exist, fed and fattened up for the useful effects they passively produce and nothing else. Thus: domain cows.

    Despite my less-than-complementary name for them, I wouldn''t mind being a domain cow. Cows are well-fed and they don''t have to do much. In war, that''s not a bad gig. Unfortunately, I''m already a wing ripper¡ªan Angel killer, something only a bare fraction of the strongest superheroes can claim. Even if I wasn''t suspected of lying about who and what I am, even if I didn''t have a power that makes me perfect for infiltration and next to impossible to kill, every eye would be on me for my deeds alone, trying to learn everything there is to know about me.

    It feels¡­ unwarranted. Unearned. I beat an Angel as an amateur because that Angel''s power helped make mine stronger, and I somehow managed to piss the Angel off so much that it refused to retreat in spite of that. That''s not indicative of my skill; hell, I barely even remember half the fight. I don''t particularly like the attention, and I certainly don''t think I deserve it. But who''s going to listen to me on the matter? I''m only the person who actually did all the stuff everyone is so worked up about; my opinion obviously doesn''t matter.

    "My other patients have a large head start on you, and nowhere near as much recent trauma. I try to schedule based on need."

    Huh? Oh, right. I had asked a question.

    "You think I need more therapy than everyone else?" I scowl. "What about Christine and Anastasia?"

    "Well, I''d probably be putting them on a similar schedule if they were my patients, but my colleague is the one handling both of them," Dr. Morrison smiles. "And yes, I feel like being trapped alone in a war zone with no training, watching numerous people die in front of you, and feeling responsible for the survivors may have had a disproportionately large impact on your life for the amount of time that passed."

    "I''m not going to say it was fun, but I feel like you''re making it a bigger thing than it really was," I frown.

    "You say that, but in all six of our sessions so far, you have gone out of your way to avoid speaking about anything that happened. That strikes me as a ''big thing.''"

    I suppress a scowl, though focusing on schooling my expression ends up making me lose focus on Lia''s form, briefly replacing her face with the doctor''s and her hair with blades of grass before I force it all back into place. To my extreme irritation, keeping Lia''s form hasn''t gotten easier with time, it has only gotten harder. I''m messing up more often and everyone seems to be noticing. Not that many people outside of Christine and Anastasia bother to talk to me much, but I get a lot of weird looks.

    "Is there something in particular you wanted to know?" I ask him.

    "Well, why you don''t seem to want to talk about it would be a start," he answers.

    "...It''s not like I''m avoiding it," I insist. "I''m just not the sort of person that talks much at all unless other people prompt me."

    "Mmm. I have noticed that about you," Dr. Morrison agrees. "But you seem to have a lot to say when you are prompted, so¡­ take this as a prompt. Talk about those four days."

    "That''s¡­ a little open-ended," I mutter.

    "Start at the beginning, then."

    The beginning? The part where ''I'' crash the car and get nearly everyone killed? Yeah, I don''t want to talk about the beginning. So I''ll interpret it a little more conveniently than that.

    "When I first got my powers? I¡­ basically had no idea what was going on. We had just gotten into a car accident so I wasn''t all there. Emily kinda took charge at that point, since she barely even got a scratch from the crash."

    "Who was driving the car when it crashed?" the therapist asks.

    This time I don''t suppress my scowl.

    "...Me," I lie. Note to self: pretend to be traumatized about cars because I don''t actually know how to drive one. That could get me found out.

    "That''s a heavy burden in an emergency."

    "Yep, and I fucked it up. Anyway, the really scary shit didn''t happen until Emily''s brother got exploded by the Queen and then the rest of us got attacked by a Behemoth. I kind of¡­ got impaled by its leg, but then my power activated and I turned into a Behemoth and killed the other one. Then eventually we ran into Christine, fought off an Angel, ran into Anastasia, fought off a ton of Raptors, and holed up in various houses, stealing bottled water and nonperishables from people''s cupboards. Sleeping in their beds. Being creepy little scavengers. You know."

    "How did you make it out?" he asks.

    "Well, we were slowly trying to make it towards the edge of the zone, and eventually the sound of combat got close and Emily made the call for us to book it in that direction. So everybody got on my back and I ran for it. The Angel tried to stop us, Anastasia passed out from blood loss fighting it off, and¡­ well, y''know. Shit happened."

    I shrug, trying to ignore my intense urge to shift myself a Raptor brain for the rest of this conversation. I succeed, but my arms briefly shrink into Raptor forelegs until I force them back.

    "I see," my therapist says. "Not to change the subject, but just¡­ something I''ve been meaning to bring up. Correct me if I''m misreading something, but you seem to use your power to fidget a lot. Such as when you''re nervous?"

    Uuugh. I doubt I can get away with lying about this. ''Oh no sir, I''m just very diligently training extra hard whenever you say something that upsets me!'' Yeah, not gonna fly.

    "...Yeah, I guess I do," I sigh. "Apologies. I''m trying to control it better but it''s¡­ difficult. I keep using it subconsciously."

    "Do you want to use it?" he asks.

    "What? No," I spit out immediately, but to my own surprise I realize that''s a lie the moment I say it. "...Maybe? I¡­ give me a moment."

    "Of course," he says, annoying me because why did he say anything at all, I just asked to think I don''t need his words mucking it up. Everyone just likes making sure they''re the last person to talk I guess. What was I¡­ right. Do I want to use my powers?

    "I¡­ enjoy using my powers, I think?" I say slowly, frowning as a wave of crystals grows out of and back into my skin. "I don''t know. It''s complicated. I guess what you said about using my powers to fidget is pretty accurate. I feel like¡­ a background urge to change myself pretty much all the time, and unless I''m sufficiently engaged with something else I have to focus on not doing that in order to¡­ well, not do it. I''m uncomfortable until I make a change. Little changes help a little, big changes help a lot. It feels good, but not in like a pleasurable way, just in a¡­ relieving way, I guess?"

    I drum my fingers across my thigh, trying to maintain Lia''s body while I think about it. It''s¡­ straining. Frustrating. I feel like I''m getting actively more irritated the more I do it. I keep doing it anyway.

    "So I guess you could say I want to use my powers in that regard," I continue, "but at the same time, I really don''t like the fact that I''m using them all the time. I should be able to hold that back when it isn''t socially appropriate, which is¡­ y''know, most of the time."

    "I see," he says. "Well, we can certainly work together on self-control if you like, but I want to say that while you are in my office, I want you to be as comfortable as possible. If there''s any social situation where it is appropriate to use your ability for personal peace of mind, it is here. Though, er, do try not to damage the furniture."

    I snort.

    "The main thing I''m worried about damaging is my clothes," I say. "I feel like no matter how comfortable you want to make me, you probably wouldn''t want a teenage girl naked in your office."

    Or at least I damn well hope you wouldn''t.

    "Er, yes, that''s correct, that would not be appropriate," he confirms. "But considering that this topic is about your comfort¡­ would nudity make you more comfortable, Ms. Morgan?"

    I blink. Uh. Would it? I mean, it would be a lot easier to take forms that deviated from the human baseline that way. I could be a Behemoth or a Wasp or an Angel. I might be able to make a Raptor body that doesn''t break my clothes, but that''s about it, and¡­ I kind of¡­ want to? Like. I don''t know. It wouldn''t exactly be comfortable being a Behemoth in this tiny room, but¡­ it would be nice to have the option, I guess?

    "It''s¡­ I¡­ hmm. I guess it''s weirdly restrictive, yeah. Wearing clothes, I mean. I was¡­ well, by necessity, I was naked or at least half naked a lot in the incursion zone. And I''m not¡­ I''m not an exhibitionist or anything like that. I don''t want people to see me naked, but the idea doesn''t upset me at all, for some reason? And it makes it easier to take more forms."

    Why am I telling him any of this? He''s going to think I''m crazy. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Bring it back, Julietta.

    "Well, I''m afraid I do need you to keep your clothes on," my therapist says, "but outside of that, if there''s anything that would make you more comfortable, I want you to do it."

    Hnng. I don''t like how tempting that is.

    "No," I tell him.

    "No?" he asks.

    "No," I confirm.

    "Why not?" he asks.

    Because I don''t trust you. Because it''s embarrassing. Because I don''t like the way people look at me when I change. Because I''m terrified that everything I do here will be reported to some trigger-happy militant bigwig who wants to make sure that the next time I get repeatedly shot by my own government, it''ll actually stick.

    "I don''t want to slack off on my training," I smile at him.

    We chat a little more, but it''s not long before our time is up and I''m heading back to my dorm, ready to unwind with the comically miniscule amount of free time we get at the end of each day. I''d better enjoy it while I can, since even that will be gone once boot camp starts.

    ¡­Not that I have much to do with the time, of course. We have no phones, no computers, no books, and no personal belongings. There is no communication with the outside world at all, at least not without paperwork and supervision. I kind of want to call Emily, but¡­ well, supervision would make it difficult to say anything I want to say to her.

    It''s not a big deal, though. I smile and nod at everyone I meet on the way back to my room, trying desperately to seem less weird and scary, but honestly I''m happy enough to just have some alone time. Christine will be there, of course, but she generally keeps to herself¡­ though when I finally make it back to my room, I find that she is, in fact, not in it. Huh. Well, I doubt she can get into too much trouble on the base, and it''s nice to have the space to myself. I''ve been meaning to get a better look at some of the faces that keep showing up on my skull.

    I head to the bathroom and flip the bird at Lia''s reflection to make myself feel better, then start cycling through various alterations I can make to said face, adjusting the skeletal structure, fat distribution, and feature placement by a little bit at a time. Adjustments to my body outside the ''templates'' I pick up with my power are obviously possible for me; that''s how I combine different aspects of templates together, after all. Manual changes to a form outside of shoving two templates together and making scale or attachment adjustments is something I haven''t experimented too much with yet, though. The face seems like a good place to start getting a handle on that.

    I have a second reason to do this, too: the human body has never exactly been a source of interesting aesthetics to me, between wanting to avoid thinking about my own body and not having any particular incentive to think about anyone else''s. I''ve never paid much attention to the theory behind what makes someone attractive, but I figure it''s worth trial-and-erroring out, now that I have the time. Being able to look exactly as attractive as best fits the situation is a useful trick to have for social engagements.

    Plus, it feels like a thing Lia would do: stare vainly in the mirror, using incomprehensible eldritch power to airbrush out what few imperfections her face hid behind its silver spoon. Obviously, any particular opinions on attractiveness are filtered through whatever weird quantum state my brain is in that allows its cellular structure to get completely replaced without altering my memories, but other than being bisexual I don''t have any reason to believe her preferences differ all that much from the norm.

    ¡­And yeah, she is definitely bisexual. Or I guess she was, and now I am? Unwillingly, of course, but I guess it''s not like anybody gets to choose. I don''t actually know if I''m feeling this way because of her brain, of course, that''s just a theory of mine, so it''s possible that this is how my sexuality would have worked if my body hadn''t been completely fucked before puberty. Hell, it''s possible that these weird, sudden urges are the result of that severe hormonal fucking getting instantly and dramatically reversed; I could be misinterpreting what would otherwise be normal aesthetic appreciation for sexual desire simply because I don''t have any fucking idea what the difference is. It''s impossible to know for certain why I feel any particular way about anything right now, so I''m just sort of blaming it on Lia as an excuse not to think about it, which I think is fair because fuck Lia. Regardless, I don''t like attraction. It''s distracting and difficult to catch myself focusing on. I wanna go back to not ever having to worry about it.

    I guess I want that about a lot of things in my life, come to think of it. A shame, that.

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    An unexpected knock on my door breaks me out of my thoughts, and I quickly shift my body back to Lia standard before heading to answer the door. I''m not really sure who I expected the person to be, but it definitely isn''t the super tall girl I keep struggling not to stare at in power training class. Her name is Maria, her power has something to do with summoning a little fairy? I don''t actually know the details, since when the actual power training starts I''m usually pretty distracted by all the stuff swarming inside my domain.

    She looks close to my age, maybe a little bit older, with a long red braid and an absolutely delightful freckle pattern that my power keeps trying to put on my face whenever my skin is pale enough for them to be visible. She''s got a bit of a stocky build, with wide shoulders, thick limbs, and an overall rectangular frame that makes her look like a giant. And yet, there''s an ethereal quality to her that I can''t quite define, an entrancing sort of¡ªokay, okay holy shit brain, calm the fuck down. I get it, she''s pretty, Jesus Christmas Christ! I leave you alone for two seconds and you''re already slobbering over her, god damn.

    "Maria?" I greet her with a question. Now that my eyes aren''t gearing up for a grueling hike down from her face to her tits, I manage to pick up on the fact that she seems kind of upset. She''s breathing hard, too. Did she run here?

    "Lia! Hey, um, I need¡­ you''re Christine''s roommate, right?"

    "Yes?" I confirm. Oh, damn it, is this what I think it is?

    "She''s¡­ she''s kind of in a bad way, and Ana told me to come get you, so¡­"

    "Ana did?" I ask, already stepping out to follow before I even say the words. Shit, is Christine having another breakdown? Is Anastasia caught in it? I hope it''s not bad. Why the fuck did Maria leave her there alone instead of having Anastasia come get me!? At least she shares my urgency, immediately running to lead me in the right direction.

    "I don''t really get what''s going on, but Christine locked herself in a bathroom stall and she''s freaking out. I didn''t want to leave Ana alone with her but she insisted you could help," Maria huffs.

    "Yeah, I can help," I huff. It''s what I do.

    We run for a while before Maria ducks into a women''s restroom, and I follow her just in time to hear the tail end of Anastasia speaking.

    "¡ªhurting yourself. Please?" she begs.

    Oh great, that''s always a fun one to walk in on. A nine-year-old trying to talk a grown-ass woman out of self-harm. I find Anastasia staring at a locked bathroom stall, Christine''s feet barely visible under the door¡­ which shakes slightly as Christine slams something into it. Probably her head.

    "I deserve it. I deserve it!" she snaps back, obviously in the throes of panic as she continues to hit herself on the other side of the door. Damn it, it''s a bad one. Definitely the worst I''ve seen from her, and she''s had a few nasty panic attacks in our room together. My heart beats a mile a minute, and I am furious at her for not only having this happen again but also for doing it in front of Anastasia and making the poor girl have to deal with it. How can you possibly be less capable of basic human functioning than a goddamn child!? I want to scream my head off, berate her, pound some decency and sense into her skull.

    ¡­But of course I don''t do any of those things, because that would be abusive, insane, and ultimately do nothing but make every part of the situation dramatically worse. So I instead exercise this novel little concept called ''self-control'' that I think more people should learn about and speak calmly but firmly at the door.

    "Christine," I say. "I need you to stop hurting yourself."

    "No, no no no," she whines incoherently. "Go away, Lia. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Please."

    "I will not do that," I say, and she slams her head into the door again. It''s not loud enough to cause much of a commotion, but it''s loud enough to cause a bruise. "Christine, open the door."

    She doesn''t answer. I only hear a thump again.

    "Christine, under normal circumstances I would honor your request to be left alone, but you are committing self-harm," I say evenly. "If you don''t open the door, I''ll force my way in. Do you understand?"

    There''s no answer, but no striking sound either.

    "Do you understand?" I repeat.

    "I''ll stop," Christine says quietly. "I''ll stop. Don''t come in."

    Hmm. Well, that wasn''t one of the two options, but I guess it''s reasonable. She wants to feel like she has control over the situation and she doesn''t want to be seen. I guess as long as I don''t hear any more banging, the important part is taken care of. Although¡­ I guess she might be self-harming in other ways. I mentally brace myself as I swap over to Raptor olfactory receptors, trying to sniff for any sign of blood. ¡­There''s a little bit, but it''s only in line with something like a small scrape. That''s¡­ probably fine. I wait a little while in the quiet, giving her some time to center herself a bit before I speak up again.

    "Did you eat dinner today?" I ask.

    A pause.

    "...No," she responds.

    "What about lunch?"

    "No."

    Yeah, that figures. No wonder her anxiety attack is so bad. I turn to Maria and Anastasia.

    "Hey, could you two head to the mess hall and grab a dinner to go?" I ask. "Ana has the extra ration privileges. If we''re not here, we''ll be back in our room."

    "Uh, yeah, of course," Maria nods, holding out a hand towards Anastasia. "Would you come with me, Ana?"

    "...Is Christine going to be alright?" Anastasia asks quietly, both hands fiddling nervously with her hair. The girl looks ragged, haunted by the sight of one of the only adults in her life that she cares about doing stuff like this to herself. My anger at Christine flares up again, but I push it right back down.

    "She''s going to be fine," I promise. "I''ve got this. Thank you for sending someone to get me, Ana."

    And I mean it. No matter how much I don''t want to be here, that was a good job on her part. She made the right choice. It''s not her responsibility to deal with this sort of thing. It''s fucking Christine''s. But of course, lacking that, I will take the responsibility on myself. Anastasia shouldn''t need to worry about it.

    "Let''s go, Ana," Maria presses her gently, and I shoot her a thankful smile, which she returns before running off with the kid. At least Maria is getting her out now. And now I''m alone with the mentally unstable lady with the power to disassemble buildings! This is dramatically preferable, somehow.

    "This is normally the part where I''d put on a song you like, or pull up a movie you''re really into," I say casually, "but I guess we don''t have that kind of stuff here."

    She doesn''t respond. Not a terrible sign, all things considered. Reminding her of the fact that we''re basically in jail was mostly just a prod to try and get her to talk, but it''s fine if it doesn''t work as long as it doesn''t make her start hurting herself again. Let''s try something more direct. A casual ''what happened'' maybe? No, probably not forceful enough. But ''tell me what happened'' is probably too forceful.

    "Will you tell me what happened?" I settle on. The details of what words are used and their exact inflections are so important, sometimes. I''m not really sure this particular collection of undertones is right for Christine in this situation, but the idea is to phrase it so that the request for information is structured as a way for her to help me rather than an order or just a question. As someone that''s currently obsessed with her own self-perception as a fuckup who deserves to suffer, she might latch onto a way to be useful to someone. She also might not. It''s all a gamble, since for all we''ve been through I''m still getting to know her.

    "...Nothing happened," she mutters. "Nothing fucking had to happen. I''m just like this."

    "Yeah?" I prompt. She''s talking, and I need to keep her talking. It''s something to focus on other than the panic.

    "I wanted to be a¡­ a fucking engineer, can you believe it?" she says, a laugh escaping her lips that drips with despair. "Like working with robots or something. I thought I could just go to college, learn a good trade, get out of this war shit that way, you know? People in schools for stuff like that don''t have to go through bootcamp."

    "Sure," I allow. The military always needs engineers.

    "I never even got to the engineering courses," she sobs. "I could barely even get out of bed to go to fucking math class. I was failing everything before we even had our first round of tests. I just couldn''t do it. It''s not that I''m stupid, I just¡­ I just can''t do things, Lia. I can''t. I''m so fucking worthless."

    Yeah. Maybe. Outside of the superpowers and the general universal worth that one must assume all people have in order to possess a halfway not-fucked-up moral system, you don''t really have much going for you, Christine. I will certainly not be the person who lies to you to try to make you feel better about it, and right now you probably aren''t capable of believing anything anyone says about you unless it''s cruel anyway.

    ...Perhaps that''s all a little too harsh, as fueled by my current irritation as it is. I have met all kinds of people who are actually awful, nothing like the problems I''m dealing with here. The worst Christine does, after all, is occasionally require other people to take care of her in high-stress situations. It''s exhausting, and it''s annoying, but it''s not evil. She''s not trying to hurt anyone (even if she happens to be doing so anyway) and her terrifyingly intense anxiety problems are probably the fault of chemical imbalances in her brain, severe trauma when growing up, or both. I am well aware that for all intents and purposes, she''s handicapped just like I was, and she''s certainly having just as bad of a time as everyone else in this situation, if not more. I''m just struggling to give her the benefit of the doubt here because she''s pissing me off.

    I want to like Christine. Really, I do. We''ve been through a lot together, and Anastasia considers her part of our little family, since we all lost our old one together. But she just¡­ rrgh, she''s just so frustrating! My entire life has been about working what was left of my ass off ever since it melted away. I was tossed into a home with nine other children, none of whom knew me or gave a shit about me, and with two ''parents'' who outsourced every aspect of raising us to the older kids while getting fat off of government money. They didn''t give a fuck that I was disabled, so I had to just suck it up and act like I wasn''t.

    Obviously, that was impossible for most things. I couldn''t just stop needing a cane, I couldn''t suddenly start having feeling in my limbs that would let me know when I was bleeding. God, I got yelled at for bleeding on so much shit just because I couldn''t feel my own injuries. Which is obviously fucked up and awful in retrospect, but at the time it felt like it was just¡­ all my fault. I was younger than Anastasia, what else was I supposed to think? All I cared about was the fact that the adults and older kids were yelling at me and I felt like a fucked up monster. Then later I got older and realized that no, the people screaming at the child for things that weren''t her fault were the monsters, but they still taught me a valuable lesson: you either solve your own problems, or end up hated when you become everyone else''s.

    So I got really damn good at solving problems.

    Sure, I fight for dignity and acceptance where I can get it. People mad at me for being slow? Well, they''re assholes, and it''s worth letting them and everyone else know it. But that sort of thing only goes so far. Every human¡ªabled, disabled, adult, child¡ªwill only accept so much of a burden from others. Exceed that threshold, and they will find a socially acceptable way to boot your ass and let the door hit you on the way out. Is that awful? Yes. Is that unfair? Yes. Should the world be better than that? Yes.

    Too bad. It''s how things go. I learned to adapt. Christine didn''t, though, and she has thereby become my problem, and I¡­ I don''t know. There is part of me that says I resent her for it, but I don''t think that''s accurate (and I definitely don''t want it to be accurate, considering how much of a hypocrite it would make me). I think that I just¡­ struggle to respect her. She failed not just at the things I succeeded at, but at things I am fundamentally proud of succeeding at and value quite highly in a person. I consider myself strong because of my self-reliance. Therefore, I consider Christine weak.

    It''s the sort of thought that immediately raises my hackles a little, because obviously if I said that out loud to another person they''d tell me that''s a little messed up and uncalled for. It''s an overly simplistic system of judgment, almost childishly so. But just because I know that, it doesn''t mean I can just wave my hand and make the feelings go away. Especially not when she''s sitting in a bathroom, giving herself a concussion, traumatizing Anastasia, and generally ruining my goddamn night.

    And yet, regardless of my feelings, regardless of how angry I am and how much I wish this was literally anyone else''s problem, I know what I have to do. I value morality more than I value strength, and there is only one correct course of action here.

    "I don''t care how worthless you think you are," I tell her firmly. "I''m not going to stop helping you."

    "You should," she mutters.

    Yeah. Maybe.

    "But I''m not."

    "Why?" she groans. "I don''t deserve it."

    "Fortunate for you, then, that life has never been about what we deserve," I answer. "It''s definitely going to be difficult for you to learn to handle your struggles, but this is a legitimate opportunity to do so. You are, objectively, quite the opposite of worthless in the eyes of the government. The Army will force you to overcome your issues, to some extent. And for all I don''t agree with how they run things, I think you could benefit from taking advantage of it. You want to do better, don''t you?"

    "It''s not happening," she insists miserably. "It''s never going to get better. I''m just a fuckup."

    "What you are is spiraling because you haven''t eaten today," I correct. "Will you come back to the room with me? Get some food? Maybe tell me about that robot show you like?"

    "...Which one?"

    "Any of ''em," I say. "What about that one you were talking about at lunch the other day? Gundam Axis or something?"

    "Oh. There''s not much more to say about that one. It never finished; Japan was destroyed partway through the production of its second season."

    "Right, yeah," I say, sheepishly scratching the back of my head. "Wait, I thought Axis was a movie?"

    "No, that''s Twilight Axis," she answers. Ah, of course. Obviously. "Axis takes place between double-oh eighty three and Zeta, and mostly follows Haman Karn as she manipulates a child and backstabs her way up the political ladder to become the girlboss queen of space. Which completely decanonized Char''s Deleted Affair, but like¡­ y''know. Good."

    "It sounds cool," I supply, trying to sound genuine despite having not a single idea what the fuck she''s talking about. Fortunately, it only takes the barest minimum of apparent interest to get Christine to talk about anime.

    "Oh my god, it was so cool," she groans. "It sucks that Japan got destroyed. I mean like, it''s a tragedy in general, but also I really wanted to watch the end of that show."

    God, what a thing to say. She''s in a bad way right now, though, so I''ll let it slide. I manage to finally coax her out of the bathroom stall over the course of her elongated ramble, making it back to our dorm just in time to run into Maria and Anastasia on the return trip. Christine now has a nasty bruise on her forehead, but she''s not showing any signs of a concussion so I let her hide it under her hair and decline to drag her to the infirmary. I think that would only make her more uncomfortable, and for now she needs to eat and unwind a little.

    Anastasia and Maria stick around for a bit as Christine insists that no, a Zaku is not a Gundam, it is a mobile suit, not every robot in Gundam is a Gundam, geez¡ªbut soon enough curfew hits and it''s just me and Christine again. I keep her talking well into the night, sacrificing many precious hours of sleep to the altar of keeping my roommate functional. Eventually, though, she finally gets herself into bed, quieting down and at least trying to sleep.

    I sigh, glancing at the time. 3:47 am. I have to be awake at six. Pretty awful, but I''ll manage. Exhaustion claims me almost immediately, and the ache of my morning alarm pounding into my skull is the next thing I''m consciously aware of, my body writhing with alien limbs that I struggle to focus on retracting back into my body. God damn this exhaustion is brutal. My body is flooded with chemicals demanding my brain to return to unconsciousness, I can feel them being produced and infecting my bloodstream with commands to pass the fuck out.

    ¡­Hmm. I wonder if I can just¡­ remove them, like I did with the MRI contrast. I lie in bed, the alarm still blaring as I focus on isolating the parts of my biology telling me that I need sleep. Getting rid of the urge probably won''t be an actual substitute for the sleep that I need (though for all I know I can separately remove that need, somehow) but it should at least prevent me from feeling tired and allow me to function normally.

    On one hand, this seems like a stupid idea because I have no idea what I''m doing. On the other hand, fuck it! My brain chemistry is already an existential nightmare and I feel like shit. Let''s see¡­ I can feel the part of my body that''s producing sleepy chemicals, and I can isolate the qualia of the sleepy chemical itself because of that. I know where they are in my bloodstream if I just try to unshape them like I would any other body part, then¡­ there. I¡­ wait, I still¡­ feel¡­ slee¡ª

    Blackness. Numbness. I have no eyes, no ears, no sounds, and no light. I can feel nothing, smell nothing, taste nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. I am nothing, and I fear this, so I take the flesh in my domain and make it breathe.

    I jolt awake, not in the sense that I successfully caused myself to stop being tired, but in the sense that I just made myself black the fuck out, and my entire body is now screaming in confusion and pain, my body returning to template from some catastrophic failure of¡­

    Holy shit. Did I just die? ¡­No. No, no, no, I couldn''t have died, I mean, I''m obviously alive. Hoo boy am I alive, and definitely no longer sleepy either because adrenaline is a hell of a drug. Still! That stuff I just removed from my body was really important, it turns out! I should probably learn more about biology before I do that again!

    I sit up, my heart beating a mile a minute as I look over to find Christine still in her bed, hiding her ears from my alarm underneath her pillows.

    "Hey, we gotta get going!" I encourage her as I get dressed.

    "Noooo," she groans.

    "Come on, Christine, if you don''t get yourself up the soldiers will come make you get up again, and that''ll be worse."

    "Let it be worse, then," she groans.

    "No," I say. "I told you last night: I''m not going to stop helping you. Let''s go."

    And I won''t. I won''t stop. Never, ever. I won''t be the same sort of person that raised me. No matter how much I feel like them, I''ll be better.

    Even if it kills me.

 18. Whos Lia?

    I think I''m finally starting to get the hang of this.

    I wake up, I eat breakfast, I go to our daily lecture, take notes on everything we have to memorize for super school. Lunch. Power training. I''ve managed to get a template of everything that frequents our little training zone, outside of the occasional new bug or bird that flies into my domain. Dealing with those surprises is never particularly fun, given I still have that near-irrepressible urge to ''test'' every new form I gain access to, but I can handle it and my domain radius has gotten past fifteen feet, which is apparently pretty good. Nowhere near the top of the class, though, and that''s where I need to be. I''ll keep working. I''ll keep training.

    After training I have my useless, performative therapy sessions, and then I grab dinner and head back to my room to hang out with Christine and Anastasia. We usually study¡ªAnastasia being a child and Christine being Christine, they''re having a bit of difficulty catching up with the material¡ªbut neither of them are stupid, just distractible and not terribly interested in what we''re learning. I''ve helped much less capable children complete their homework every day and I can certainly manage it with these two.

    It''s only when I fall asleep every night that I still find myself consistently unmoored. I''ll often have that dream where I''m floating through the air, with chaotic, ever-shifting lights dancing around me, falling slowly towards something. Sometimes it''s a very, uh, dreamy sort of dream, where nothing really feels real, but sometimes it''s very lucid. And when I speak in the dream, something tries to speak back. I try not to, because its words crash through my mind and leave me with a headache in the morning, but I never get the impression that it''s trying to hurt me.

    I do think, however, that whatever''s talking back is also what I''m falling towards.

    Sometimes I don''t have that dream, though, and that means I have the other dream instead. The dark room, where I''m blind no matter how many eyes I shift. The walls and floor are squishy and warm against my hands and feet, except for when they''re hard and sharp. Every night, it feels like the room has changed¡ªshifted, reconfigured, rearranged like a moving labyrinth trying to keep the minotaur lost inside. But it''s not a labyrinth, not really. It''s just a room, and for all I know the changes are just in my imagination; me forgetting where I am in the dark and blaming it on the world around me. I''m not sure what the room is, I can''t be sure. But I think it keeps getting bigger.

    The dream was scary at first. Confusing. But I''ve had my powers for nearly three weeks now, and now I just find it boring. How long until my body wakes up? I can feel myself sleeping, though the sensations are vague and distant. I can feel my head on the pillow, the weight of the blankets, the rise and fall of my chest as I breathe. Yet I''m still here, trapped inside this dream, staggering through the darkness alone. I always start the dream formless; nothing but a floating consciousness that has to create its own eyes to check the darkness, its own legs to walk, its own arms to grope blindly around the inside of my prison. But of course, I don''t have to make myself eyes, legs, arms, or anything else. I can be nothing. I can be human. I can be an Angel. I can be some horrific mess in between. No one can see me. No one can judge me. Because there''s absolutely nothing here but me and the room.

    I can''t be my old body, of course, but that doesn''t feel like it''s as much of a problem in my dreams. Still, I wish I could wake up.

    One more time, I try to open my eyes, and finally I am met not with the blackness of the dream but the light of my room in the military complex, with my dresser and my bed and the alarm clock reading 5:56 am, which is about to scream bloody murder at me in four minutes. As a person who has always preferred to be standing up and doing something instead of lying down somewhere comfortable, I get up that much earlier, shutting the alarm off and making a mental note to turn it back on after I get Christine up.

    Christine, of course, would much prefer to sleep until the last second, and far be it from me to make her any more irritated in the morning than absolutely necessary. I spend the next four minutes getting dressed and playing with my face in the bathroom a little until Christine''s alarm goes off next to her and I head over to encourage her to actually obey it.

    Abruptly, however, the alarm suddenly stops, without any of the usual fumbling that comes from Christine groggily attacking the snooze button. I step out of the bathroom and find the alarm clock hovering above the nightstand in pieces, disassembled in the air as Christine turns over in her bed and tries to fall back asleep.

    I mentally add ''barely conscious'' to the list of situations Christine can use her power in despite her disability and shove away the instinctive annoyance that comes with it. It''s pretty common for people to make up bullshit justifications for why they can''t do something, and the way I normally figure out what justifications are bullshit or not is by checking for contradictions like this. Christine, however, is not Peter deciding he doesn''t want to do the dishes right now. Christine has a medical condition that I''ve seen her taking pills for. No matter how random or contradictory her problems appear to be, I should actually trust that those problems exist. Old habits die hard, I guess.

    "Hey, wake up and put the alarm clock back together," I tell her, poking her shoulder.

    "Mmmnnngh," she eloquently responds.

    "Christine, come on. You know how this works by now."

    "No thanks, too cozy," she mumbles.

    "Christine. Please get up. I''m not doing this every day for fun, you know."

    "Then quit doing it."

    I suppress a twitch of my eyebrow at the implication that ''it is not fun'' counts as a good reason to not do what needs doing, and take a deep breath instead. She basically asked for this. She deserves what I''m about to do to her.

    "It''s really warm and humid here, isn''t it?" I comment. "We were having a toasty summer, but the Chicago area is normally nice and chilly. I like that."

    I pause. Christine doesn''t respond, forfeiting her last opportunity for mercy.

    "There are so many more bugs here," I continue cheerfully. "Can you feel them with your power? I can sure feel them with mine. They''re everywhere. Just all over the room."

    Christine shifts in bed, her face peeking out from the pillow to stare at me with mounting horror.

    "I think there are some in your mattress," I tell her innocently.

    She jolts out of bed, throwing the blankets away from her in a mindless panic. Now free from the covers, her breathing slowly slowing back down, she remembers that her power can, in fact, inform her if there are any bugs in her mattress. Which there are not.

    "...That was evil," she says, staring at me in horror. "That was some fucked-up torture shit. You''re going to hell for that."

    "What do you mean?" I ask innocently. "I''m basically one of god''s little Angels. Now put the alarm clock back together and let''s get going."

    She stares at me in horror for a little longer before turning her gaze back to the still-floating alarm clock and sighing.

    "Do I have to?" she whines.

    This girl just doesn''t learn, does she?

    "Christine, I am going to be getting your ass up at six in the morning one way or another," I tell her. "The only question here is how creative I''m going to need to be in order to accomplish that. Should I be getting more creative?"

    I grow a collection of various insect wings on the back of my hand and buzz them all for emphasis.

    "Uh. N-no. I''m good," Christine decides, and reassembles the clock with a twist of will. It returns to exactly how it was before, power cord in the wall and all, though the face starts flashing twelve o''clock instead of the actual time.

    "I''ll set it," I tell her. "You get dressed and stuff, yeah?"

    "Yeah," Christine agrees with a sigh.

    Soon enough we''re both dressed and ready, so we head out and knock on Anastasia''s door. After the usual brush with her domain to let her know it''s us she opens up and allows us inside. She''s still in her pajamas, though, and her hair is a mess. Considering that she knows how to braid it herself already, she must have slept in at least a little. Or¡­ wait. Shit.

    It looks like she''s been crying.

    "Hey Ana," I greet her gently. "You doing okay?"

    "I''m fine," she insists bravely. "I''m fine, I just¡­ I was thinking."

    Ah, yeah. That''s always dangerous in the military.

    "What about?" I ask anyway.

    "The Army are the bad guys, aren''t they?"

    Uhh. Oh boy. Well, there are probably recording devices in this room, so I don''t really wanna say yes, but¡­

    "The Army is trying to protect everyone from the aliens," I point out carefully.

    "I know that," she says. "I''m not stupid. They want to do good but they''re doing it in a bad way, so they''re bad."

    Welp, I can''t argue with that.

    "You''re not stupid," I agree. "You''re the smartest girl I know. How are they doing it in a bad way?"

    "I want to kill the aliens, but Christine and Maria don''t. They don''t want to fight, but the Army is making both of them fight anyway. That''s bad."

    She says it so matter-of-factly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Never mind the fact that, consenting or not, drafting a child is far worse than drafting an adult. Maria doesn''t want to fight, though? That''s good to know. She chats with us a lot and sits at our table sometimes, but I usually try to avoid talking to her much. Lia''s dumbass hormonal brain keeps making me say stupid things around her.

    "They''re pretty desperate," I agree. "Desperation can lead people to do bad things."

    "That''s not all of it, though," Anastasia insists. "I was thinking about how my family is dead¡ª"

    Sure, as you do.

    "¡ªbut then I remembered all of my friends. They might be dead. But they might not be. I don''t know if they''re alive or not. And¡­ nobody will tell me. Why are they desperate about that? That''s just¡­ mean."

    It''s an indoctrination tactic, in fact. Cutting someone off from whatever former support groups they might have. Forcing them to abandon their old life, so that the new life you present them is all they have to grasp onto. But of course, I don''t say any of that out loud.

    I''ll teach her later, when our handlers aren''t listening.

    "I bet you miss hanging out with kids your age, huh?" I commiserate instead. "Nobody around is your size. That must suck."

    "Yeah, I¡­ hmm. Hmm."

    "Let''s get you dressed, alright?" I prod her. "We can''t bring you to breakfast in your pajamas!"

    "...Okay," she says a little weirdly, heading over to her drawers to grab some clothes. On her way to the bathroom, though, she grabs my hand and drags me along with her.

    "Uh, I can braid your hair after you change," I insist, not particularly wanting to risk getting yelled at for being in the same room as a naked nine-year-old. I imagine the Army has pretty strict rules about that by necessity, because people are horrible. Though I guess on that note I''m kind of screwed already, considering how much I''ve been naked around her, so whatever. She keeps tugging on me despite my objections, and I definitely don''t want to disappoint her by pulling away, so I let her drag me inside and close the door behind us.

    "You get changed, too," Anastasia orders me.

    "Uh, I''ve already¡­" I begin, but then she raises up one of her child-sized outfits at me, a smug expression on her face. She brought in two identical pairs. "Oh. No, Ana, that''s¡­ a little too small for me."

    "It won''t be too small if you stop being so big!" Anastasia says proudly, triumphing over me with indisputable facts and logic.

    "...We have to go to class today, Ana," I remind her. We have to go to class every day. There are no breaks.

    "I go to class small, why can''t you?" she counters. And, well, obviously I can''t because¡­ well¡­

    Hmm. Because it would be creepy, I guess? I''m already creepy, though; you can''t wake up in the morning with bug legs all over your body and avoid that title. I instinctively steal parts of people''s faces whenever I shake their hand, what''s a little running around as a kid going to do to hurt my reputation? I''ve completely given up trying to not be the girl with the freaky power; I have to settle for the very competent girl with a freaky power if I want my instructors to like me. And yeah, sometimes those instructors will get on my case about transforming during lecture class, but I''m starting to get the impression that they just assume using my power means I''m not paying attention to them. For most people, power use is a conscious act of focus. The rest of my intake can''t use theirs and pay attention to the instructor at the same time, while I''m pretty much the opposite.

    The expected situation is that my body would remain Lia''s by default, and I''d be able to shapeshift out of that form via conscious effort. But I don''t have a default form; my original body is gone and I can''t shapeshift into it even if I try. Once again, I am reminded: every form I take is equally fake. A grown-ass woman walking around in a kid''s body is creepy, sure, but who gives a shit? It''s no more or less me than Lia''s body, the Angel''s body, or anything else.

    And besides, the question is never ''is this creepy?'' The question is always ''is this the right thing to do?'' And if the nine-year-old can survive this militaristic hellscape a little better if I let her dress me up like a doll and demean myself in public, then hell yeah I''ll do it.

    It''s all equally fake, and something about that makes me smile.

    "...Alright, fine," I say, playfully exaggerating a long-suffering sigh. "I''ll be tiny for the day."

    "I''m not tiny! You''re big!" Anastasia insists. "You''ll be normal size for a day!"

    "Uh-huh. You keep telling yourself that, Ms. Itty Bitty."

    Alrighty then! Time to definitely not think about the fact that I''m about to put on a nine-year-old''s underwear. I mean, technically it''s not her underwear. It is owned by the Army because they don''t even have the decency of letting us pick our own clothes. ¡­Though I guess to be fair, most of us don''t own any clothes because our homes were destroyed by aliens, so like, what are they gonna do? Not buy us a dozen fresh pairs of panties? That would be way worse. Wait, shit, I''m still thinking about it.

    ¡­Whatever, let''s get this over with. I shrink down into a sort of mini Lia form, mixing Anastasia''s and Lia''s bodies in more or less the opposite way that I mix them to look like her sister (which is yet another thing for the ''do not think about it'' pile, incidentally). My old shorts fall right off when I do, but my old shirt acts more or less like a dress so I can get all of the gremlin-sized clothes on without exposing myself. Much like my big girl outfit, everything from the shirt to the shorts is a bland, clean white, all of it decently comfortable, and it''s freshly washed. Also much like my normal-sized outfit, it''s not particularly sturdy or stretchy, so shifting back to normal size while I''m wearing this would not turn out well. I''m pretty much committing to being a mini-me until at least our morning class. I hope this isn''t a terrible mistake.

    Anastasia squeals in delight, rushing forward and squeezing me in an absolute deathgrip of a hug, lifting me bodily off the floor as she does so. I can''t help but smile, feeling suddenly vindicated. Yeah, there''s no way something that makes her this happy could be a bad call.

    "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" she cheers. "Aaah, this is great! We''re gonna have so much fun today, Lia!"

    "O-oh yeah?" I stammer, a bit shocked by being the one getting picked up instead of picking her up for a change. Gosh, it''s so weird looking at her face-to-face! "Well, I''m gonna step out. You get dressed, okay?"

    "Wait!"

    "Ana," I insist. "I''ll still be here."

    I carefully separate the two of us and walk out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me so Anastasia can change. She''s so clingy! I''m kind of worried about it. Then I look up, and¡­ woah.

    Christine is fuckin'' tall. Everything is tall! How is Anastasia even supposed to use the top drawer of her dresser!?

    "What the fuck? Is this seriously happening?" Christine asks, already seeming resigned.

    "Yep," I confirm, popping the ''P.'' "I guess you''ll have to chaperone this field trip for the day."

    "Ah yes, responsibility," she deadpans. "That thing I am definitely very good with."

    I shoot her two finger guns as if that comment was funny and relatable rather than extremely annoying (please become better at responsibility, Christine, you are going to be a soldier) and wait for Anastasia to come out of the bathroom. Of course, the moment she does, Anastasia just grabs me and drags me back into the bathroom again, and now that we''re the same size it''s very much not a matter of me letting her.

    "We''re not done!" she insists, dragging me back inside and closing the door again. But hey, she''s in clean clothes now, so that''s what''s important. I guess I''ll go along with whatever this is.

    "What more are we doing then, kiddo?" I ask.

    "You can''t call me that when we''re the same size!" she declares. "And especially not today, because you''re going to turn into me!"

    "Huh?" I manage.

    "You can turn into copies of people, right?" she asks. "I''ve seen you turn into other people on accident before."

    "I mean¡­ yeah, I can," I confirm. It is my normal day-to-day, after all. "I don''t recall doing it by accident, though?"

    "Oh, you do. You do all sorts of little shifty things whenever you''re thinking about something hard, like sometimes you''ll just turn into Maria or Emily for a little while before turning back? So you''ll definitely have to not do that because we''re going to prank everybody! Now come on, turn into me!"

    Oh my goodness is that why Maria keeps trying to talk to me? Because I keep turning into her? God fucking damnit I had no idea I was doing that, I''ll have to apologize. That''s not something I should be doing without permission. Though for now I guess I have not just Anastasia''s permission, but her explicit request. And honestly? The idea of looking like Anastasia for a day is way more appealing than the idea of looking like Lia. Even outside the fact that I''d rather use the body of someone who isn''t an abusive asshole, Anastasia''s body is dramatically better optimized than the human norm, and I just generally find it easier to hold onto a body plan that feels better suited for my situation. Which¡­ well, usually isn''t a baseline human body at all.

    I make the shift, staring down at my newly-clawed hands. Is that actually true? It seems kind of stupid; a human body would be optimal for social interactions with humans, wouldn''t it? Maybe not Lia''s body specifically, since she''s an awful person, but¡­ hmm. Hmm.

    "Oooh my gosh oh my gosh you look perfect!" Anastasia squeals. "Now let''s do your hair like mine, and then nobody will be able to tell us apart!"

    I glance at her massive braid, realizing somewhat belatedly that my own hair is nearly brushing against the floor and also I have absolutely no idea how to braid my own hair. Someone else''s hair? Yeah, I kick ass at that. But I didn''t have hair until I had superpowers, so I don''t actually have any idea how to do that whole thing behind my own head.

    "...I think that might take a while," I hedge, running my fingers through my newly luscious locks. It''s¡­ a very weird sensation. Having a sense of touch is still something I''m getting used to, and while it isn''t constantly on the verge of overwhelming me like it used to be, it''s always there in the back of my head, nagging at me. Hey Julietta, it''s me, the inside seam of your sock! I just thought you should be constantly aware of me at all times, no need to thank me. Hey Julietta, how are you doing, did you know you''re actually cold right now? Oh hey Julietta, I realize you''re just minding your own business, but wouldn''t it be awesome if I started screaming at you to scratch your skin for literally no reason!? Like seriously, how do people live with this shit? It''s absurd.

    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

    "I''ve got it, it''s okay," Anastasia assures me, and then she clenches a fist hard enough to stab her own palm open with her fingers. I flinch as blood pours out of the wound, snaking through the air like fluid, prehensile tendrils. The crimson snakes pour themselves onto my scalp, scaring the shit out of me before I feel them flow around my hair, saturating everything so Anastasia can twist it all into a braid with her mind. It all happens remarkably fast, the blood still pouring from her hand and feeding into the red medusa she''s made my hair into via a thin trail through the air. Before I know it, my hair is braided, and the sticky blood extracts itself from me without leaving even the slightest droplet behind before touching up Anastasia''s hair, too.

    It''s amazingly impressive. Anastasia has made so much incredible progress learning to use her power, and I couldn''t be more proud of her. I just¡­ y''know. I wish she didn''t have to use it. Or at the very least, I wish she didn''t have to hurt herself to do so. It''s a sick joke of a power to give a child, horrid and heartless and brutally, criminally unfair. And yet, her whole purpose here is to get good at using it anyway. She''s supposed to wield it as best she can. She''s supposed to stop being a child altogether, and turn herself into a weapon.

    It makes me sick, but there''s very little I can do about it. I can only try to keep her happy in the interim. Ultimately, this war creates injustices like a cow creates cud, regurgitating it repeatedly before swallowing everything all over again. I have lived my whole life with this fact at the forefront of my mind. We are dying, we are losing, and that means people like Anastasia will keep being created and keep suffering, even if the Army wasn''t the one forcing us into facing it. If we learn to fight, maybe we can keep as many people as possible away from hell, for as long as possible.

    Even if we lose in the end, that''s still worth it, isn''t it?

    I really don''t know if it is or not. I''m the type of shitty cynic to wonder if it might be better if we just get it all over with quickly. But at the same time, I''m the sort of person to push those feelings aside and do my best to solve whatever problems happen to be in front of me, no matter how ultimately meaningless. People are just contradictory that way, I guess.

    "If you use your power like that while we''re pranking people they''ll be able to figure it out, you know," I tell her, just to get her to hurt herself that much less. It''s ultimately meaningless. It''s immeasurably important.

    "Hmm, that''s true," Anastasia agrees, her wrist already scabbed over but still obviously injured. "Maybe we should wear matching bracelets to cover it up or something!"

    "Nah," I say, gently pushing my domain through hers to pick up an updated template, which she easily allows. "Here, I got it."

    I shapeshift her wound onto my arm, opening up my wrist and accelerating the scabbing process to copy everything. It''s a bit tricky, since I can only influence how the dead parts develop indirectly, but I think I do a pretty good job. It''s¡­ weirdly satisfying, and strangely natural. With my domain covering her like this, I''m getting constant template updates to the point that I find myself unconsciously matching certain parts of her posture and expression. I just¡­ know where all of her body parts are relative to each other and making them match feels¡­ I don''t know, comfortable? Still, Anastasia seems startled as I shapeshift injuries onto my own body, which I find delightfully ironic.

    "Doesn''t that hurt?" the cute little hypocrite asks.

    "I mean, it throbs the same way yours does, I imagine, so you''d better not make me hurt myself anymore to keep up this prank, okay? Because we are so going to prank the crap out of everyone."

    "Oh! Yeah! We are!" she agrees, her excitement returning instantly. "Are you ready?"

    "Hold on, let me get into character," I hum, placing two fingers against each of my temples. "Let''s see¡­ I hate vegetables¡­ yes¡­ I think bison can fly¡­ of course."

    "Hey!" she giggles, playfully smacking me on the shoulder.

    "Hold on, hold on, let me focus!" I fake-whine. "Now I have to start over! Let''s see¡­ so basically, I am very small¡­"

    She shrieks and laughs and hits me some more, causing me to laugh right back. Then I actually get into character, taking a deep breath and letting my power take over for all my constantly churning thoughts, leaning into that unconscious posture-matching and the habits of my copied brain to mirror the girl beside me in not just body, but in presentation.

    Why not lean into it? It''s all equally fake.

    "Ready," I say with her voice, and she grins exactly the same way I already am.

    We head out at exactly the same time, holding hands and smiling innocently up at Christine. She gawks at us for a moment, eyes flicking back and forth as she tries to tell us apart, but she can''t. How could she?

    "Oh, no," the poor woman whines. "No, no, no. Lia, you can not do this."

    "Who''s Lia?" we ask in stereo.

    "Aaagh," Christine groans. "Nope, fuck this The Shining shit, I give up already. I refuse to be responsible for this."

    "What''s wrong, Christine?" I ask innocently, tilting my head to the left.

    "Yeah, what''s wrong, Christine?" Anastasia parrots me, tilting her head to the right. Hahaha, yes! She''s a natural at this!

    Christine responds by scowling and pushing her domain out, pressing it into us to feel out our powers rather than our faces. She still isn''t sensitive enough with her domain to feel the weird qualia that Anastasia and I feel, but she has started to learn to tell different domains apart, at least. Unfortunately, my domain is still comfortably nestled inside Anastasia''s; to keep our acts in synch I need to keep my domain covering her, and her body is always inside her own domain by default. It''s actually pretty interesting. Domains can overlap each other, of course, but as we were taught in class, doing so generally causes a conflict of power. In the overlapping space, both domains are weaker as they struggle with each other for dominance.

    Yet I don''t feel any weaker with my domain inside Anastasia''s. I never have. I''ve felt it when my domain overlaps with other people''s domains, but not hers. I don''t feel stronger either, it''s just¡­ yeah. Our domains are both here. That''s fine. We trust one another, after all. Is that all there is to it? I wonder whether we should ask an instructor about it or just keep it to ourselves.

    I guess we''re going to be like this all day. Someone will probably notice, and then I guess we''ll see. Sure enough, with our domains melded together like this, Christine can''t even tell us apart that way.

    "What the hell," she mutters. "You two are¡­ ugh, whatever. Let''s just go to breakfast."

    Anastasia and I giggle, heading for the door. Y''know what, yeah! I can think about all this when we actually know if it''s going to be a problem or not. For now, it''s time to unleash ourselves upon the world! None shall escape our twin gremlin shenanigans!

    Christine stops to apologize to a startled soldier as Anastasia and I emerge from the room, shrieking with laughter as we race to the cafeteria for breakfast. Heh, this is actually kind of fun. People stare at us in confusion, realization, concern, and then yet more confusion, emotions flashing over their faces one after the other as we pass. I''d normally hate every second of it, the judgment, attention, and disgust, but Anastasia''s plan is actually perfect for dealing with it all.

    If I was just shapeshifted into a child version of Lia, everyone would treat me like a complete weirdo. But as long as no one can tell Anastasia and me apart, they can''t do that because they don''t know which of us is me. They''re stuck in the social position of being nice to both of us, because otherwise maybe they''re being a jerk to a kid! It''s awesome.

    "Food please!" Anastasia and I say together, causing us both to giggle as we lift our trays up to the serving lady. My chin barely peeks over the counter!

    "Well well, I seem to be seeing double," she comments, plopping a heaping helping of extra food on both of our plates. "Don''t get into too much trouble now, you two."

    "That would defeat the point!" I tell her.

    "Double trouble!" Anastasia chirps.

    The lunch lady laughs, content in the knowledge that she will be immune to our mischief because we''re not stupid enough to mess with the mess hall.

    "Take good care of each other, you two," she says, and then we scurry away to our usual table, where Ed and Maria are already eating. Maria doesn''t always sit with us, but she and Ed are still chatting with each other and smiling, seeming to enjoy each other''s company. As Anastasia and I approach, however, the conversation abruptly ends as the two of them stare at us. Ed shifts in his wheelchair a little, a smirk twitching on his wrinkled face as he appears to hold back a laugh. Maria, however, looks immediately concerned.

    "Uh¡­ Lia?" she asks carefully.

    "Who''s Lia?" Anastasia and I say together, and holy shit it feels good. Not me, that''s for sure!

    "Um, please tell me you haven''t actually forgotten who Lia is," she says, and for some reason she seems genuinely concerned about that possibility. Huh. Well, Anastasia likes Maria and she''s generally pretty perceptive, so I''ll trust her to finish the prompt here.

    "If, hypothetically, we knew who Lia was¡­" I start.

    "...We''re sure she''d be having fun!" Anastasia says. Ha! My god she''s adorable. And sure enough Maria seems to relax a bit. Hmm. That was a weird way to react. I should probably figure out more about her; I feel bad about avoiding her just because of how uncomfortable she makes me feel. Although¡­ huh. I''m not feeling that way right now, actually. Which makes perfect sense, now that I think about it. Anastasia''s body is right on the cusp of puberty, but she hasn''t hit it and doesn''t really have any concept of that kind of attractiveness yet. Man, this day just keeps getting better.

    "Is something wrong, Maria?" I ask innocently.

    "Yeah, you looked kinda worried," Anastasia agrees.

    "How the fuck do you even do that, Lia?" Christine asks, approaching from behind us with her own tray of food. "You sound exactly like her."

    "We''re the same," Anastasia says, both of us turning around to look at her in sync. "Why wouldn''t we sound the same?"

    "Because voices don''t work that way?" Christine answers. "What you sound like is maybe twenty percent biology and eighty percent habit. How you use your resonance and articulators and shit is way more important than their size. Lia should still sound the same as she always does, but like¡­ squeakier."

    "Yeah, uh, that actually ties into what I was going to say," Maria says, seeming hesitant to interrupt. She''s pretty soft-spoken for such a huge woman. "I''m pretty sure Lia is like me."

    "Like you how?" I can''t help but ask.

    "Well she¡­ I mean you¡­ I mean, one of you? Um. I think her shapeshifting powers affect her mind."

    Oh. Shit. Is that why she keeps trying to talk to me? And wait, do her powers mess with how she thinks, too? All I really know about it is that she makes little fairies. I want to ask for more information, but Anastasia''s a lot closer to Maria than I am and I don''t want to give away the game by asking a question she would know the answer to.

    "Yeah, we know," Christine says, sitting down and disassembling her food with her mind, sorting all the different parts into individual areas of the tray.

    "Wh¡ªyou know?" Maria says, which¡­ yeah, I mean, I don''t exactly recall talking about it!

    "She was always really meticulous about checking our food to make sure it hadn''t gone bad in the incursion zone," Christine says. "And then she would shapeshift into a Raptor and start eating aliens alive and raw. It was kinda fuckin'' terrifying."

    Wh¡ªall I did was check the expiration dates on the cans! Isn''t that just common sense!?

    "Don''t say mean things about people that aren''t here," Anastasia pouts. "That''s gossiping!"

    "Yeah, no gossiping!" I parrot gratefully. Thank you!

    "Fine, fine," Christine sighs. "My point is that I''m pretty sure Lia knows, too. Dunno for sure, because she literally never talks about herself, but it''s pretty obvious. I guarantee you she noticed."

    Maria''s eyes flick between Anastasia and me.

    "And you''re just¡­ okay with that?" she does her best to ask me directly, though she clearly can''t tell Anastasia and me apart. How would she? "It freaks me out every single time I use my powers. I feel like I''m going insane and I don''t know what to do about it."

    Well, shoot. Now I definitely feel like garbage for not talking with Maria more. She''s been trying to talk to me because she''s been looking for help. Why was I too dumb to see¡­ well, okay, I know why. Fucking hormones. Well, I don''t wanna break kayfabe, but I still have to try and set this right.

    "I bet if you asked her about it next time you see her, she''d be happy to talk to you about it," I tell her honestly. Today is an Anastasia day, because she deserves one. Next time I have a chance, though, yeah. I''ll talk about it. I don''t really want to, since it seems like kind of a dangerous thing to discuss in a military compound full of potentially paranoid soldiers, but this apparently isn''t just a me problem. Besides, the whole reason the military is suspicious of me in the first place is because I acted like an insane cannibalistic psychopath alien, like, right in front of them.

    Maria relaxes and nods at me, almost certainly having figured out which of us is which for now. Oh, well. I stand up and motion for Anastasia to come with me, and the two of us briefly step out of the mess hall to break line of sight. Then we walk back in and take each other''s seats, smiling innocently.

    "Aaand we''re back to square one," Christine grumbles. "Maria, do me a favor and poke them until one starts growing freckles. No way she keeps this up all day."

    "No cheating!" I insist.

    "Yeah, no cheating!" Anastasia emphatically agrees.

    "They''re right, you know, it''s important to play by the rules!" Ed nods along happily, a twinkle in his eye. "We''ll have to find some other way to figure out the difference between the two of them, like say¡­ Ana. Do you think Zuko and Azula would make a good match?"

    Who and who? I have absolutely no idea who those people¡ªor more likely cartoon characters¡ªeven are. Fortunately, I don''t really need to. If they want to try and be clever by asking questions only Anastasia would know, I can still answer them. I let my power guide my movements down to the finest muscle, and we once again respond in synch.

    "Ew, no!" we say, recoiling in disgust. "They''re brother and sister!"

    "Oh, heh heh! Sorry, I must have forgotten!" Ed smiles, perfectly happy to lose our game as long as he gets to see us play.

    Our entire breakfast is silly and fun from there on out, which is¡­ weird. I actually feel myself relaxing for a second, but when I panic and check to make sure I''m still in the right body, I actually am. Soon enough, though, we have to get up and go to our general power knowledge class.

    "Morgan, what are you doing?" the instructor snaps at me when Anastasia and I walk inside. Well, I guess she snaps at both of us, since she can''t tell who''s who.

    "I''m Anastasia," I correct her innocently.

    "Uh-huh," she says, glowering at the real Ana. "And who''s this, then?"

    "Anastasia," she says smugly.

    "Don''t worry, we''ll pay really good attention!" I promise.

    "Yeah, yeah! We''ll be good!" Anastasia confirms.

    The instructor sighs.

    "Whatever, just go to your seats," she grumbles, shooing us away. Anastasia and I share a grin of victory and do just that, hopping up into chairs that are suddenly way too big for me.

    It''s a constant marvel seeing things from a child''s perspective, reaching up to grab door knobs and food trays and generally struggling to get around in an environment not built for me. There''s a certain nostalgia to that; while it isn''t anything quite like how my real body (or at least my original body, I guess?) forced me to interact with the world, it''s definitely comparable. I never really thought about how almost nothing in day-to-day life is designed for use by a kid. They just have to constantly deal with environments that are explicitly inconvenient for them, and they don''t really know anything else so why complain?

    Honestly, the fact that the world isn''t going to accommodate you so you''d damn well better learn how to deal with shit by yourself is a pretty good lesson for kids to get used to. It shouldn''t be, of course, but it is.

    All that being said though, I can''t deny that it''s still dumb that I feel more comfortable now that things are less convenient. But even if that''s part of why I''m enjoying this body so much, I know it''s not the only reason. I like making Anastasia smile. It''s one of the only objectively good things in this fucked-up place, and getting to supply it in spades is making my day. It''s weird and awkward that people stare at us, that people judge me even if they can''t tell which one of us I actually am. But maybe, just this once, I can say fuck ''em and be done with it. Who cares how weird they think it is? I''m not doing anything wrong, and I''ll never be able to stop being weird ever again.

    Even if I get these stupid powers under control, it''s not like I''ll be able to stomach staying Lia all the time.

    The thought hits me like a toothache, throbbing in my head and refusing to go away. I''m pretty pissed at myself for not having the self-control to reliably stick to Lia''s body, since self-control has always been one of the virtues I hold most highly. But at the end of the day¡­ do I really need to be Lia all the time? It isn''t failure to change to a more effective strategy, right? The results are what matters, in the end. I don''t need to constantly be in her body to convince people I''m her.

    I glance over at Christine, watching her hands fidget under her desk as she struggles to pay attention to even a fraction of what the instructor is talking about. That''s sort of what my power does, isn''t it? It fidgets, constantly shifting and changing and twitching in little ways because otherwise I can''t focus. Christine might be struggling in class, sure, but she''d be doing worse if she tried to stay perfectly still. Maybe that''s the trick. Maybe I should lean into these tendencies even more.

    ¡­Of course, I don''t test this right away. Maintaining Anastasia''s game is more important right now, and if I''m right, the way my mind is constantly updating her template and keeping track of her physical state so I can match it is a form of fidgeting anyway. When class ends we go right back to playing, and I let myself have fun with it, following Anastasia wherever she wants to go. We do silly things like waiting for her to greet someone and turn a corner before I follow and do the same, or have Anastasia ''mess up'' and act like me for a bit to make people sure of the wrong answer. But my favorite is still the times we copy each other exactly, and I let my power run wild with being Anastasia''s perfect mirror in every action, which creeps people the hell out in ways I never expected to find myself enjoying.

    It''s good. It''s fun. But of course, when we get to our practical power training class, Commander is having none of it.

    "Recruit Morgan, what the fuck are you doing?" she snaps, her domain smothering both of us in an attempt to tell us apart. "Do you think you''re here to play kindergarten games?"

    Anastasia and I both instinctively hold her out of our domains, keeping the same matching flow we''ve had with our bodies all day. The space between us is evenly saturated with our areas of control, and I''m pretty sure even Commander can''t use them to figure out who is who. Anastasia still snaps her a salute, though.

    "No ma''am!" she says.

    "We''re training, ma''am!" I agree, matching the salute. Which is. Y''know. Not inaccurate.

    "Hmm," she frowns, her domain pressing in around us a little harder. "Well look at that. You two really are naturals. We don''t even bother teaching domain synchronicity unless you end up in an all-super strike team."

    "Domain synchronicity, ma''am?" I ask.

    "The thing you''re doing right now," Commander explains. "Overlapping your zones of control without weakening them. Negates resonance and dissonance effects, too. Of course, it also leaves you completely open to the full extent of the other domain''s control, as if you were powerless, so it''s only useful in small squads with more than one super that needs to operate in the same space."

    "What are resonance and dissonance effects?" Anastasia asks.

    "Glad you asked, because that''s what we''ll be learning today," Commander says. "BLACKBURN! EDWARDS! UP FRONT! The rest of you, form a line!"

    A hawkish-looking older man in our group walks up to where Commander is indicating, with Peter of all people following him. Peter has honored my request and more or less entirely left me alone, a state of affairs I am happy to maintain for as long as possible. Today, though, he looks directly at Anastasia and me as he makes his way towards Commander, with a focused look in his eye that I don''t particularly like.

    "Some of you have likely already noticed the phenomena I am about to describe, and only need to know the terms," Commander says, "but for those of you who have, through either skill or ineptitude, kept your domains to yourselves, I will explain. These two recruits, in addition to their other abilities, have a valuable power known as a resonance effect. In essence, though their domains still fight other domains for dominance, something about their abilities causes both their own domain and the domain they fight against to become denser and more powerful. This affects both domains equally, and so it does not affect the outcome of a fight for dominance with their domains, it can potentially swing a fight for dominance severely in the case of a third party. These powerful abilities can artificially inflate the strength of any superhuman or Angel. As such, they are carefully managed military assets."

    Her domain rushes towards us and presses against our own, like it often has in the past. But then, Commander reaches out towards Peter, and all of a sudden her power swells in strength, a simmering, dangerous feeling adding an undertone to her usual promises of happiness in exchange for obedience. Anastasia and I continue to barely hold her out, but from the winces of many people around us I imagine most were not so fortunate.

    "As you can see, by overlapping with Recruit Edwards'' domain, mine becomes significantly more powerful through the conflict. Edwards and Blackburn here have what we call generalized resonance domains¡ªthey will empower the vast majority of domains that they come into contact with, the only exception being other generalized resonance domains. When fighting with each other, they will do the opposite and make themselves weaker. This, of course, is called a dissonance effect."

    Commander''s power recedes from around us, a few people shuddering around us as it does. I almost do the same; the power just feels so slimy, for all its promises of joy.

    "While generalized resonance domains will empower almost anyone, it''s still entirely possible that you will run into specific domains that cause a resonance effect with you, but no one else around you. The same goes for dissonance effects. This is always vital information, so today we will be getting you used to the feeling, so you can immediately alert an officer when you experience it."

    Hmm. Wait a second, this actually does sound familiar. I look up at Christine, and judging by her face I think she''s reached the same conclusion. The first time we fought an Angel and it tried to use its power on me, Christine tried to use hers, too. She failed, and her power didn''t do anything, but both her domain and the Angel''s got a lot weaker as a result, allowing us to escape. I distinctly remember that feeling, the invisible pressure all over me suddenly dropping away.

    ¡­Is that part of why the Aliens wanted to kidnap her, or just a coincidence?

    I''m jolted out of my thoughts as Commander starts directing people to approach Peter and the guy I don''t know whose last name is apparently Blackburn. Darn, she''s probably going to use the opportunity to separate me from Anastasia and figure out who''s who, and it''s not like we can just leave like we did in the mess hall to reestablish confusion. And sure enough, I''m called up alongside someone I don''t know and directed to stand in front of Peter.

    Because of course I am.

    Peter flashes me his usual sardonic grin as I look up at him with a frown. He''s always been taller than me, but this is just ridiculous. I feel his domain try to pass inside mine so I fight against it, and sure enough the sudden rush of extra power is unmistakable. God, even his domain pisses me off. It feels like arrogance beyond mere arrogance; a supreme knowledge of one''s superiority because the concept of anything superior is categorically impossible. My strength rises with my own irritation, but Peter''s just casually rises with it, as if to prove its own point. A perfect power for the perfect asshole.

    "So, you''re little Ana, huh?" Peter asks, though it''s easy for me to tell from the way he looks at me that he knows I''m not. "Sorry for the scene your new big sis and I had when you first showed up. I''m afraid I''m just cursed to love the sound of my own voice."

    "...Um, okay," I answer like a confused and somewhat irritated child. That is, after all, basically what I am right now.

    "It''s not the only voice I love the sound of, though," he continues. "I like to listen. And gosh, I couldn''t help but overhear a bit of your conversation earlier, in the mess hall? The way Lia copies your mannerisms so accurately, it just¡­ well, it''s quite impressive. Hell, I bet she could fool me even if she was pretending to be someone I know."

    Oh, god damn it. He knows. Or¡­ well, he can''t know, and he knows he can''t know, but he at least suspects. What is he thinking right now? I certainly haven''t kept up a perfect Lia act at all times, and he would have definitely noticed that. But when I do put on a Lia act, it''s pretty damn accurate, and that''s probably been throwing him off. The changes he has noticed could be explained away by the literal life-changing experience I went through, so the glimpses of Lia are that much more believable when they show up.

    But now he knows I can fake that. And, I realize with horror, it might even be possible that he saw me use my power after the crash. I¡­ I don''t really remember the crash all that well, I was pretty damn out of it at the time, but I think I remember Emily trying to convince Lia to take me with them because I had powers. Was Peter still there at the time, or had he already run off?

    If so, he knows for a fact that I had powers. And he does not have any evidence that Lia did. And I just gave him everything he needs to know to understand why I keep seeming to be the genuine Lia anyway. God damnit.

    "...I''m going to leave now," I tell him frankly, not really knowing what else Anastasia would say in this situation.

    "You do that," he grins. "Oh, and tell Lia I need to talk to her, yeah? I''ll come find her later."

    I don''t respond just walking away as I thank my power''s manual control over my body. Without it, I''d be sweating bullets. This was probably inevitable, right? Peter is too smart and he knows both Lia and me too well. Maybe it''s better that we''re just getting it out of the way now.

    Still, I can''t help but be anxious. Peter has blackmail material on me, and I have no idea how he''s going to use it.

 19. I Have To Admit When Im Beat

    After everyone finishes poking at Peter and the other guy''s domains to get a feel for what resonance effects are like, Commander has us all line up and sends us down to check everyone''s domains, one at a time. The people around me give me odd looks for still being itty bitty, but I''m doing this for Anastasia, not them. Everyone''s domains are pretty unique and weird, but I don''t feel any resonance or dissonance all the way until I push my domain against Ed''s, of all people. Have I really never touched Ed''s domain with mine so far? It''s¡­ oddly sad-feeling, and yet¡­ yearning? Anticipating? Like something watching and waiting with bated breath for something bad to happen, because it knows without a doubt that it will.

    It''s strangely creepy for such a nice guy, and that gets me wondering what all these domain qualia actually signify. Does it say something about who the person is? Should I be using it as a hint regarding their inner feelings and personality? ¡­No, I probably shouldn''t, huh? Anastasia said my domain felt like hope, and that definitely has nothing to do with the thoughts I''m usually thinking. So what is it, then? Is it a hint as to how the power in question works? Some powers really seem to follow that logic¡ªCommander''s domain in particular¡ªbut others don''t. Again, how is shapeshifting anything like hope? Would other people who feel domains the way Anastasia and I seem to experience my domain as hopeful, or is that just an Anastasia thing?

    I don''t know, but I decide not to change my opinion on Ed just because his domain is creepy. He has consistently been kind-hearted, empathetic, and tactful. The fact that his power and mine make each other stronger is a good thing.

    Soon enough, of course, we''re done messing with resonance effects (and for some people, the occasional dissonance effect, though I never felt one) and we return to our usual power training. This is usually the part where I step away from everyone else in order to practice expanding my domain (I copy people''s bodies by accident pretty much all the time, but it would be rude to not at least try to avoid doing so without permission) but of course today I meet back up with Anastasia instead, if only to touch base with her before deciding exactly how I want to train today. The diligent girl is already practicing a bit with her blood when I reach her, but when we mix our domains together again I feel an odd tug from inside my body. I flinch, and Anastasia quickly turns to look right at me. Huh.

    "Was that¡­?" I start.

    "I¡­ maybe?" Anastasia says, scrunching her eyebrows, and then my power informs me that my blood is moving in ways blood is not supposed to move, which is in fact extremely bad for basically every location in the entire body.

    Barely thinking about it, I dig one of my claws into my wrist the same way I''ve seen Anastasia do, and the blood leaking from it flies into the air instead of dripping down onto my palm.

    "L-Lia!" Anastasia yelps, trying to keep the rest of my blood inside my body after pulling a little towards herself on instinct.

    "Now you know how I feel when you stab yourself," I smirk at her. "I thought you couldn''t control any blood other than your own."

    "I can''t," she confirms with a frown. "I can''t control any blood that''s still inside my body, either."

    "Well I guess I''m currently using your blood, but it''s inside my body?" I say. "I mean, it''s easy to change. One sec."

    I shift the composition of my blood from Anastasia''s slightly inhuman version into Lia''s, and sure enough it all starts flowing totally normally again.

    "...That''s so weird, though," Anastasia frowns. "I don''t want to be able to use your blood."

    "It''s fine," I tell her honestly. "I''m mostly just surprised we didn''t figure this out earlier today."

    "...I wasn''t trying to control all the blood in my range at once earlier today," Anastasia says. "Bleh. This makes things less fun."

    Well, we can''t have that, can we?

    "What''s wrong with it?" I ask. "I don''t mind, Ana. Heck, if anything this is great. Our powers have amazing synergy: your biggest weakness is running out of blood, but I''ll never run out of blood until I run out of biomass. And at this point I have¡­ well, I don''t really know how much, but a lot of biomass."

    And I can still store more. So much more.

    "But I don''t want to use your blood!" Anastasia protests.

    "Why not?" I ask.

    "Because that''s evil!"

    Huh?

    "...No it isn''t?" I frown. "Why would you think it''s evil, Ana?"

    "B-because I could like¡­ reach into someone''s body and puppet them around!"

    I blink. Uh.

    "Ana, is that from one of your cartoons?" I ask. "I''m pretty sure that yanking someone''s blood around while it''s still inside their body wouldn''t do anything other than kill them in a surprisingly large number of different ways, more or less simultaneously."

    "W-well that''s not better!" Anastasia insists.

    "Again, why not?" I ask. "Ana, you can turn your blood into swords and blend someone to death."

    "I''d never kill a person!" Anastasia insists.

    I open my mouth to say ''you killed a ton of people, though,'' but close it without making a sound. Ignoring the fact that it would be a stupid thing to say for like a dozen reasons, Raptors and Wasps and Behemoths and so forth probably aren''t people, right? They don''t fear death or mourn their comrades. They remind me more of ants, extensions of a general hive intelligence that doesn''t seem to have any real individuality. Like yeah, I''m still a person when I use a Raptor brain, but I''m me. I have weird superpowers. It''s different. Hopefully.

    "...I''m not saying you would or should kill anyone," I say instead. "I''m just saying you already have the means, and I don''t think which means you use particularly matters. If you could kill an alien by just looking at them and pulling all the blood out of their body, wouldn''t that be easier? And wouldn''t the fact that it''s easier be a good thing? You wouldn''t have to hurt yourself in order to fight."

    Anastasia squirms a little.

    "...I think fighting should hurt me," she says softly.

    "Wh¡ªAnastasia, no."

    "It should!" she insists. "Fighting is wrong! I know we have to do it anyway, I know that, but it''s wrong. It should hurt somehow, and if I don''t regret it, then¡­ then this way works!"

    "No!" I insist again. "Ana, no. You should never have to be hurt. Not for any reason!"

    She doesn''t respond, and I suddenly find myself hoping that other people are getting more out of the military therapists than I am. Fuck, I know I could use help from them too. Unfortunately, I can''t be honest with the military at all, ever! Ugh, I still need to call Lia''s parents and convince them to buy Emily''s way out of the draft. That''s definitely going to suck.

    "...You can use my blood for practice if you want, Anastasia," I tell her after a while. "I really, genuinely don''t mind. It only works when I decide to let it work, so it''s not really a big deal."

    "No," Anastasia says. "I''m not going to."

    I sigh.

    "Well, I certainly can''t make you," I say. "But please think about it, okay?"

    The rest of power training is somewhat awkward, but we get through it and then I have to break off from Anastasia in order to go to my still-mandated therapy. Dr. Morrison acts very happy to see me, only briefly surprised by my body when I walk in and shift from full Anastasia copy to Lia-Anastasia mix, just to make sure he knows it''s really me. As fun as it would be to make him think I really was Anastasia, if he says I ditched a session I''ll definitely be reprimanded.

    "Well hello there, Ms. Morgan," he says. "Trying something new for the day?"

    "Cheering Anastasia up, mostly," I answer. "She was feeling down because she didn''t have anyone her size to play with."

    "Oh, that''s kind of you," he smiles. "I hope she''s had a good day."

    "Eh, she was until she wasn''t," I frown. "Things got a little depressing in power training class, but I''ll do my best to end the day strong."

    "I''m glad to hear that," he says. "She certainly deserves a chance to be a kid from time to time."

    I give him a firm nod.

    "She does."

    He nods back, checking over some information on his clipboard for a bit before speaking.

    "So," he says, "this would normally be the point where I would summarize what we talked about last session and ask if you wanted to keep on the same topic or if there''s something else you wanted to discuss today, but if it''s alright with you I''d actually like to start today by asking you a question."

    "You''re the boss," I shrug.

    "I must emphatically protest that I am not, though I suppose I know better than to try and convince you of that."

    "You''re learning," I smirk, crossing my arms.

    "I''m learning some things, yes," he agrees. "Things about you, about how you see the world, about how you believe you should treat others. But what I have yet to learn anything about is your past. I''ve never heard you speak about your family, or any friends you have outside of this building. You''ve mentioned in passing that you have a girlfriend, but I don''t know anything about her. And, well, we''ve been having these sessions for weeks now, and it strikes me as odd. Not so much as a single anecdote about your past. Is there a reason for that?"

    I sigh. Well, it was going to happen eventually. I''m just glad he confronted me directly about it. Makes it easier to handle.

    "That," I say. "That''s exactly it, right there."

    "What''s what, exactly?" he asks.

    "Why I don''t trust you," I answer. "Would a normal therapist press me about that? It wouldn''t be that strange for most people. To not talk about their past, I mean. Certainly noteworthy, but not concerning enough for you to bring it up on your own. So why did you?"

    "Well, I¡ª"

    "Rhetorical," I snap, cutting him off. It honestly sounds kind of funny, since I''m still using Anastasia''s voice, but I kind of like it. "You did it because I''m a shapeshifter, and because that stupid ''truth power'' or whatever thinks I''m four weeks old. You don''t care about what''s best for me, Dr. Morrison. This is, and has always been, an interrogation."

    He stares at me a while, like he''s upset and trying not to show it. Trying to get a handle on himself before speaking. But is he upset because my accusation is wrong, or because it''s right? I don''t know, and I can''t trust myself to be sure either way. It''s not a safe risk to take.

    "...I am truly, deeply sorry you feel that way," he says.

    "I hope that''s true," I answer with a shrug.

    "It is. But¡­ I can see I''ve still been going about this the wrong way," he says. "For that, you have my deepest apologies. You are somewhat of a blunt person, aren''t you? I should address things directly."

    "It''s not like I can''t be tactful, but yeah," I agree. "If you have something to say, say it."

    Never mind how I never take that advice myself. If I spoke my mind, it would be disastrous. Most people don''t really have that problem.

    "You have some of it right, Ms. Morgan," my therapist admits. "I was informed of the results of your interview after you were found in the incursion zone, and those results are a large part of why I have scheduled you to see me so often. Both what we learned about you from that interview, and the horrific, inhuman way we treated you during that interview, which was frankly inexcusable."

    "No, it isn''t," I say. "It''s very excusable."

    "Is that why your response to being shot multiple times was to apologize?" he asks.

    "Yes," I say flatly. "I failed to control myself. There are consequences for that. I was the one to make a mistake."

    "That''s it?"

    "Yeah, that''s it," I scowl. "What, would you rather I be mad about it? What would be the point? I don''t get anything out of being mad other than my own anger, and anger is pretty fucking unpleasant. It''s not a big enough deal to warrant that."

    "I think anyone would be justified in being upset about being shot by the people they had gone to in order to seek protection and safety."

    "Oh my god, you do want me to be mad. Can we not talk about this?" I scowl.

    "Of course," he nods. "What would you like to talk about?"

    "Nothing, but since I know that won''t satisfy you, let''s rip the bandaid off and talk about the damn truth power."

    "Only if you''re comfortable with that," he says.

    "Fuck off, you don''t care," I snap, and then flinch. Damn it, why did I let that slip? "Sorry. I shouldn''t have said that. Anyway, the truth power thing is really straightforward: I have no idea why it says that, and it freaks me the fuck out. That''s why I don''t talk about it. Okay?"

    "It could be mistaken," Dr. Morrison says.

    "And here I thought you said you were going to address things directly," I sneer. "I''m not stupid. There''s absolutely no reason for the government to set up that whole situation as a ruse, and there''s no reason people would be reacting the way they did if it wasn''t reliable."

    "Reacting by panicking and shooting you with a gun," he says.

    "Three times, yes. It''s a bit extreme. But I have no idea why. Do people just think I''m an Angel?"

    "No," Dr. Morrison answers. "You wish for me to be blunt, so I will be blunt. It is possible that you are an Angel, yes. But it is much more likely, Ms. Morgan, that you are an Angel''s power."

    That brings my thoughts up short. What? No, no, no, no. That doesn''t make sense. Does that make sense? That might make sense.

    "The day you were supposedly created is the day you got your powers. However, that isn''t the only thing that happened that day, is it? You also¡ª"

    "Shut up," I snap. "Shut up. Let me think."

    He obligingly closes his mouth, and I start chewing on my thumb claw as I run that over in my head a few times. What happened back then? The Army interviewed the others before they got to me, so they likely have full testimonies of the events of that day. Emily''s would of course have lied about a few things from before we met Christine, but they would just be the same lies I gave, ultimately around swapping Lia''s and my roles in the story. It''s true some weird things happened, and I definitely blacked out that one time and don''t know how Emily got me to safety alone, but that''s probably not relevant here unless like¡­ I dunno, Emily''s an Angel, and that would just be stupid.

    So what else happened? We stole a bunch of stuff, we found Christine, we fought that Angel with weird powers none of us really understood¡­

    Oh. Shit.

    "The first Angel we encountered," I say. "Not the one I killed, but the other one. The one that slithered out of the air in pieces, that we encountered before we found Anastasia. You think that could have been when I was created."

    "I do not think that. The Army intelligence division¡ª"

    "Spare me. That''s just a fancy yes. Damn it, sorry, I didn''t mean to interrupt."

    "It''s fine. Really."

    Liar. Whatever, not important right now.

    "That''s been the assumption this whole time, huh? I feel like such an idiot."

    "You are anything but that," he says. "Your instructors have nothing but praise for you."

    "Oh my god would you cut that out? I don''t need you to water my ego like a houseplant. I''m trying to focus."

    "Of course, my apologies. I think the first question in this situation is how likely you feel this theory is."

    Right. Yeah. That is a good question. Am I just someone else''s power?

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    "...I don''t think it''s likely," I decide.

    "Why is that?" he asks.

    "Too many things don''t feel consistent with that theory," I say. "Like, there''s the obvious bits¡ªI might not want to tell you about my past, but I definitely have one, and the people whom I know from before I got my powers still recognize me as me. So if I was just created, it would have had to be as a copy of someone, full history and all, with all their memories and so forth. But the powers I have don''t give me access to the memories of the bodies I use, at least not to the best of my knowledge. It definitely changes how I act and gives me new habits, but I never get memories. So if I''m a copy, it''s not because of my power; but if I''m the result of an Angel''s power, wouldn''t that Angel need to have me in their domain in order to control me?"

    "Not¡­ necessarily," the therapist says. "There are certain powers which can conditionally manifest their domain somewhat arbitrarily. The domain isn''t necessarily attached to you now, but there''s nothing that prevents a power''s domain from suddenly becoming present around you, if the right conditions are met."

    "Oh," I hum. "Like the forbidden name? I assume that power manifests the domain of the wielder wherever the name is spoken, then allowing them to do¡­ whatever it is that they do."

    He blinks with surprise, but then nods.

    "That''s¡­ correct. Do you know the forbidden name? It wasn''t in your files."

    "No," I shake my head. "I know of it, but that''s all."

    "See, that''s interesting," he says, "because I lied to you. Lia Morgan''s files do list that she has heard and can speak the forbidden name, due to a close relationship with someone whose name had to be changed."

    Fuck. Whatever, roll with it.

    "Oh, damn," I say, smiling at him. "Yeah, that''s right. I just didn''t want to correct you; I kind of have enough scrutiny as-is."

    "I see," he says. "And if I told you I just lied again?"

    Nope, not getting me again. Commit. Even if it''s not in her files I can claim to have learned it a different way.

    "I''d say you''re talking out of your ass," I smile at him. "And proving I was right not to trust you, of course."

    "And you are proving to me that even in the best-case scenario, you are a liar with something to hide," he says. "In the worst-case scenario, you are a power-generated time bomb sent by humanity''s greatest enemy to destroy us from the inside. If whatever you''re hiding is less severe than that, I highly recommend that you come clean about it so we can actually get started with proper therapy, which you clearly need."

    Not yet. I haven''t played all my cards yet.

    "Is the fact that I killed a fucking Angel not enough to prove that I''m on your side?" I ask. "Agnus fucking Dei was there. She confirmed it."

    "That, Ms. Morgan, is the reason you''re here in this room getting scrutinized by an unpowered therapist rather than back in that interrogation room," he says. "But there is a point at which I need more to work with, and it is now."

    I click my tongue in annoyance, bouncing my feet a little since they don''t touch the ground when I sit in this body. Scales ripple up and down my skin, interspersing themselves with splashes of Lia''s brown and Anastasia''s ghost-white. I guess I have to admit when I''m beat. I let my guard down and got cornered. It''s frankly kind of embarrassing how many mistakes I''ve made; it''s always easier to recognize them in retrospect, and I swear to god Lia''s brain is making me worse at not speaking my mind. Or is it Anastasia''s brain? Whose brain am I even using right now? Why is it so difficult to just act like a normal, well-adjusted person!?

    Whatever. It''s probably not the end of the line. He needs more to work with. That doesn''t mean I have to give him everything.

    "...I don''t lie to hurt people," I say. "I''m not a time bomb trying to disguise the sound of the tick. It''s just very personal stuff. Stuff that I don''t really think other people would be inclined to respect."

    "I''ve told you my privacy policy before, Lia. Even if you admit to something illegal, I will not report you unless it presents a clear threat to you, to others, or to military interests."

    "And I''ve told you that I don''t believe you," I snap. "Why would anyone believe you?"

    "Because it''s my job to help you, and I can''t effectively do that job if I am unable to keep secrets and earn trust."

    "But that''s not your fucking job, Dr. Morrison," I snap. "You''re not just a therapist. You''re the military''s therapist. Your job is to make sure that the soldiers on the battlefield don''t stop fighting for any reason other than death. Your job is to make sure we''re stable enough to kill monsters, specifically. It has nothing to do with my individual well-being as a person."

    "Yes it does, Lia," he insists, and I want to scream at him to not fucking call me that. "I do care. I do. You''re obviously suffering, and¡ª"

    "I. Am not. Suffering!" I snap. "I am fine. Fucking hell, I get that all the yelling and swearing isn''t terribly convincing but I am just so tired of hearing this crap! I''m not an idiot. I know we have to fight aliens and save humanity. I''m pretty damn annoyed that I have to be here even though I assumed my whole life that I wouldn''t be joining the military at all, but shit happens, I got powers, and I''m needed. I get it. I''m not going to try to escape, I''m not going to put less than everything I have into training, and I''m going to be ready because I''ve fucking been out there, Henry. I lived four days in what the average person can''t survive for one second. And I''m ready to go back the moment I''m needed. What else do you want from me!?"

    My body is a chaotic, twisting mess of parts by the time my tirade is over, so I let out a huff of air and push everything back into place, taking a full copy of Anastasia''s body rather than mixing it with Lia''s. I can''t handle it right now.

    "What I want," Dr. Morrison insists, "is for you to let me help you."

    "No, you don''t," I say, because I guess my filter is well and truly fucked.

    "Why can''t you believe that?" he asks.

    "Because no one wants to help me, Henry," I sigh. "And you are certainly no exception."

    "Why not?"

    I give him an annoyed look. I''m so fucking done with this. I haven''t felt this emotional in years. What the hell happened? Why can''t I handle this? I''ve always been able to navigate social situations fine before. I just. I need a break.

    Maybe that''s why he hasn''t given me one. Why I need to be here every day.

    Maybe I need to give myself that break.

    I take a deep breath and do something that I haven''t done in weeks. Growing my body enough to fit it without damaging Anastasia''s clothes, I change my brain into a Raptor brain. The flood of emotions inside me quickly washes away into blissful clarity as I add and alter sensory organs to more clearly feel the world around me. I''m alone, with no pack to coordinate with, and while that''s deeply quiet and lonely I find the emotion easy to push aside.

    After all, I have my task. I need to get through this conversation without any more damage.

    I want to just ask him what the minimum amount of information he needs from me today in order to not escalate is, but that''s not how humans think. He himself doesn''t know what sort of conversation will satisfy his need; he just knows he hasn''t been getting what he wanted.

    He mentioned how I never speak about my past. Obviously, it''s because I don''t actually know much about ''my'' past, and even if I did it would be exhausting trying to fake whatever Lia''s emotions on the situation would logically be. So I won''t. I''ll weave a narrative that allows me to talk about my past as if it was Lia''s, focusing on possible points of overlap and relying on the fact that this man would only know the mask Lia''s parents wear in public if he even knew them at all.

    "...I don''t like talking about my past because I have absolutely nothing good to say about it," I tell him frankly. "It''s unpleasant, and it''s kind of pointless. But if you absolutely need me to convince you I have one, sure. Let''s talk."

    He motions for me to go ahead, and I pause for an appropriate amount of time to appear like I''m gathering my thoughts.

    "I guess we''ll start with the easy part," I say. "My parents don''t love me, and I don''t love them."

    It''s pretty obvious that this is as true for Lia''s situation as it is for mine, and filling in the blanks of her past with my own isn''t that hard.

    "Adults who aren''t in combat are supposed to have kids," I say. "The government has all the right propaganda in place to encourage that, and my parents care a lot more about appearances than they do about me. I was not raised because they wanted me, I was raised because I was an obligation. They''re selfish, greedy, gaslighting bastards and my interactions with them more or less revolved around needing to keep them happy at all times."

    I wouldn''t have words quite that harsh for my most recent foster parents¡ªthe ones that died in the incursion, I mean¡ªbut I''ve lived with much, much worse. I''ve only seen Lia''s parents a couple times, but I could tell they were that sort of person at a glance, and the way Lia herself treats people is a clear consequence of being raised by people that awful.

    Considering how I''ve been bitching and snapping almost as much as she did, I bet Dr. Morrison feels the same way about me.

    "I pretty much existed entirely as a trophy to show off, to show how magnanimous they were for raising me. In return, I was to do everything they wanted me to do without question or complaint, though this often boiled down to just staying out of the way and letting them pretend I didn''t exist when I wasn''t convenient. And since that was most of the time, I at least got a lot of time to myself."

    "And what did you do when you were alone?" Dr. Morrison asks.

    "Whatever kept me out of the way. I was never really that deep into any of my hobbies, they were just something to relax and pass the time with. I would lie on my bed and listen to music, podcasts, audiobooks. When I had the chance, I''d leave the house and stay far away from my parents as much as possible."

    "When you did interact with your parents, what was it like?"

    I shrug.

    "Like a play," I answer. "I didn''t know the script I was supposed to follow, but I knew my part and improvised the character as best I could. If I did well enough, the play eventually progressed to completion."

    "So it felt like acting to you," he says. "Like most of your life, you were wearing a mask. Is that right?"

    "Sure, you could put it that way," I agree.

    "You know, that''s interesting," he says. "If you don''t mind me speaking for a bit?"

    "Anything so I don''t have to," I respond, and he chuckles obligingly.

    "Due to the nature of my position, I''ve specialized somewhat in superhuman patients over the years. And¡­ well, everyone has their own little pet theories of how people get powers, why they get what powers they get, and so on. Would you like to hear mine?"

    "Of course," I answer. Explanation about how our abilities are linked with our cognition, desires, and/or personality in three, two, one¡­

    "It seems as though a person''s superpowers are responding to them somehow, answering our wants and needs through one roundabout method or another."

    Oh wow, who would have guessed? A professional thinks that his profession has relevant insights into a mystery. Can you imagine relating a thing you have to think about all day due to your career to other aspects of life?

    "That''s interesting," I lie.

    "You feel as though you must constantly present masks to people, and your powers have given you the ability to literally change yourself to match that mask."

    Oh wow that''s so true wow golly. You could sell me a horoscope with that level of insight into who I am. Next you''ll theorize that some people who want to fight aliens gain powers that let them shoot aliens!

    They''re superpowers, genius. Of course they match some aspect of our personality, you can stretch the metaphor for any power to match any person. You could just as easily have said I can shapeshift because I wanted to hide myself, or because I wanted freedom, or because I was jealous, or because I really wanted to fucking walk. No one knows why the gods choose who they choose; what matters is how we give them joy through our embodiment of them.

    ¡­Wait, hold on, roll back that thought a second.

    "It makes me wonder if your struggle to control¡ª"

    "Quiet," I snap, cutting him off. "Give me a moment. I need to think."

    Again, he obligingly shuts up so I can investigate whatever that just was. Gods? What gods? What does this brain know about gods? I don''t get an answer, of course; that thought didn''t pop out of the woodwork because I have access to this brain''s knowledge base, it popped out because thinking that way is habitual for it. My own annoyance at the topic mixed with something this particular Raptor brain thought frequently enough to be instinctual, the same way any movement or pattern of speech is instinctual. But what does it mean? That Angel talked about gods, too, before I killed it.

    Oh, shoot. If Raptors worship a god, doesn''t that mean they''re people, too? Pretty sure you can''t contemplate the nature of the universe and your place in it without at least a little bit of sapience.

    Whatever, I can figure that out later. This god thing feels important. Or I guess ''gods?'' Gods, gods, gods. Something talks to me in my dreams, so maybe it''s a god. What else does this brain think about gods? Come on. Empty my mind. Let the thoughts come naturally. What would I do if a god spoke to me?

    I would need to report to one of that god''s Queens, even if it meant leaving my own. I would feel them. I would move to them without even trying.

    Like I was falling slowly through the void.

    Any time of day, any time of night, I can point to the direction of the moon. It doesn''t matter if it''s overhead or on the other side of the Earth, I can always feel it like the slightest tug, a little shift in gravity. But while the Grand Queen was lost before I was born, there are other, lesser Queens (though to call them ''lesser'' feels absurd) and I should feel them too. Even lighter, even slighter, but they should tug on me all the same. I''ve known this since I was born, since any may be chosen and we must know what to do.

    I gasp, sucking in an intake of breath as a panic I didn''t think I could feel shudders sharply but briefly through me. What was that? What was that!? Did I¡­ no. No, that wasn''t a memory. It felt like¡­ a dream. An abstract dream lacking a location, a situation, or any other context. Just a series of thoughts running through a mind without filter or association. I was just¡­ letting my brain think what it would think if I wasn''t using it.

    Does that even make any sense? No, that''s not important right now. I should be able to feel her. My Queen. Where is she? I should feel her, but there are too many pulls. Ignore the sensation of the moon. Ignore the lies of the God of Nothing. Where is my Queen?

    I can''t feel her, but she is here, she must be. My god is here and my Queen would follow. So if I can''t feel her, I must allow myself to feel more finely. I remove the hairs on my body, adapting them into vast numbers of tiny, sensitive antennae. There should be a pull. The slightest vector added to my flesh by my newborn soul. Feel it. Seek it. Where is it?

    ¡­Northeast?

    "Lia?"

    I flinch.

    "What?" I breathe, remembering where I am and what I was doing.

    "I was saying that our time today is up," Dr. Morrison tells me. "Are you doing alright?"

    I blink, realizing I''ve been staring at the northeast corner of the room like I needed to burn a hole through it with my eyeballs.

    "...Uh, I¡­ sorry," I manage. "I just¡­ I don''t really like talking about¡­ what I talked about earlier."

    "That''s understandable," he says. "It sounds like your home life was far from enviable."

    "Yeah," I agree. "Well, kinda. It wasn''t fun, but I mean, it''s not like they beat me, right? Couldn''t let something like that happen, it would damage their reputation. I would actually get in big trouble if I ended up bruised by something. And I kinda¡­ did that a lot as a kid."

    What the hell, why did I say that? Does that even make sense in regards to Lia''s life? I guess it''s vague enough to be believable, people with actual pain responses can still get a bunch of bruises. Our time is up, though. I can just leave.

    Ugh, my body''s really screwed up right now. I smooth myself back down to normal human skin and hair, though I keep the Raptor brain for now. This¡­ I need to think about what just happened.

    "...Can I actually stay here for like, two or three more minutes?" I ask. "Is that alright?"

    Dr. Morrison blinks in surprise, but he nods.

    "If you feel like you need to, yes."

    I nod and go back to thinking. What the fuck was that, Raptor brain? Where''s all this yearning coming from? I know I literally asked for this, but I kind of went wacko for a moment there. I''m not actually some alien sleeper agent, am I!?

    Actually, fuck it, let''s make determining that my current task.

    It''s easier to think about this way, my budding hysteria dropping as I prioritize some questions to actually try and figure that out. First of all, what was with that compulsion to go northeast, and do I actually feel the need to do that?

    Hmm. No. Well, kind of. I''m definitely curious, and I have a weird feeling that it''s what I''m ''supposed'' to do in some nebulous way, but it''s not some desperate urge that I need to take care of right now. It''s just¡­ a thought. Yeah, I''m probably supposed to do that for some reason. It''s probably not a big deal if I don''t. Probably.

    Second of all: am I feeling any other compulsions while using this brain? I''ll double-check myself with other brains later, but I think the answer is no. I still feel like me, and I still feel in control of myself. Do I want to hurt humans? No, not really. Do I want to seek out my Queen for orders? Heck no, I''ve never even met her. I kind of want to talk to her, but if she tells me to do something stupid I don''t see why I couldn''t tell her to fuck off. I''m in command of this vessel and I like it that way, thank you very much.

    Third of all: why northeast? What''s up with that? The incursion was in the Chicago area, and I''m currently in Georgia. Therefore, the incursion I got my powers in¡ªand therefore encountered Angels in¡ªis decidedly northwest of here. In fact, there aren''t any alien incursions northeast of here until you get to the coast and the ocean, which humans pretty much don''t even try to contest anymore. Humans do contest rivers and other freshwater out of both tactical reasons and necessity, so even if the Chicago incursion means the aliens take the Great Lakes, it wouldn''t mean they would have any way to connect with any Queens in the ocean. Therefore, whatever Queen my Raptor brain wants me to go say hi to is probably unrelated to the Chicago incursion. But¡­ why would that be the case? The specific Raptor brain I''m using is from the Chicago incursion, so they can''t be completely unrelated. I haven''t heard of the aliens coordinating between hives much, though. If they had that level of organization in addition to everything else we''d be long dead. They mostly just drop onto a plot of land and sit there, never expanding except via an additional incursion.

    "Lia?" Dr. Morrison says, breaking me from my thoughts again.

    "Ah! Right, sorry," I mutter. "I''ll head out. Ugh, you''ve got me worrying about whether I''m a sleeper agent or not. I still think I''m not, but it''s definitely going to keep me up at night."

    Figuratively speaking, of course. I figured out how to manually induce sleep a few days ago. I shift myself back into a full Anastasia copy-body, running through my mental checklist again to see if there''s anything weird, but nope. Still no desire to serve my feudal alien overlords. So that''s good.

    "Apologies, but I felt like you needed to understand the situation," he says.

    "I did," I admit. "I appreciate the openness."

    He nods, seeming a little sad, but I don''t waste any more time exiting his office and heading down to the mess hall. There isn''t really a lot I can do to investigate this further; if I am some kind of power-created faux-person, I''m well made enough that I can''t even tell, so there''s no real point in overthinking it. I''m doing what I can, and that isn''t much, but that''s fine. I''ll figure out what''s up with my apparent age when I have more of an opportunity to.

    "What''s up, Jules?"

    I flinch, then turn my head up to glower at Peter, who has apparently been waiting for me behind a corner. What the fuck is he thinking, calling me that?

    "Chill out, don''t look at me that way," he smirks. "No one''s around. Here, follow me."

    He walks off, hands in his pockets, without even waiting for me to agree. I follow, my tiny legs having to occasionally do a short jog to keep up with his just-slightly-too-fast walking speed. He takes a few turns and then opens a door I don''t recognize.

    "In here," he says, leading me into what looks like a lounge and then immediately dragging me into an attached single-person bathroom, which he locks the door to behind us.

    "There we go," he grins. "Officer pisspot. If there''s one place they won''t have recording equipment, it''s in here."

    "Are you sure you should be having private, clandestine meetings with a little girl?" I say flatly.

    "Nope, so it''s a good thing you aren''t one," he grins. "How you been, Jules? You really had me fooled."

    "Don''t fucking call me that," I snap. "You know I hate it when you call me that."

    "Sorry, sorry," he lies unrepentantly.

    "What the hell do you want, Peter?" I demand. "I''m here, you figured me out. Let''s get this blackmail over with."

    He blinks.

    "Uh, what? Blackmail? Who says I''m going to blackmail you?"

    "I do, because I''m not an idiot," I answer.

    He shrugs.

    "Well sure, if you insist. I guess I''ll think of something to blackmail you for if it''ll make you feel better. But seriously, Jules. How have you been?"

    "I don''t know, not great?" I answer. "I got trapped in an incursion zone and drafted, Peter, why the fuck are you asking?"

    "I¡­ because I thought you were dead!" he answers. "Look, Jules. Julietta. I''m not¡­"

    He sighs, kneels down, and then without asking he wraps his arms around me and gives me an awkward hug. I freeze up, not really knowing what else to do, while my domain roils with power as it fights against his.

    "I''m not going to apologize for saving myself," Peter says. "But I''m glad you''re alive. I''m seriously, actually just glad you''re alive. Sorry for being such a dick to you, I straight-up thought you were Lia."

    I don''t have any idea how to respond to that. How should I respond to it? I''m still angry at Peter for ditching us, especially since he apparently got powers, but I never expected to get an olive branch from him, even if it isn''t actually an apology.

    The awkward hug eventually ends, Peter standing back up and smirking like the touching moment didn''t even happen. My foster families never actually felt like family to me. Peter is no exception. But he is, at least nominally, my brother. I''m probably supposed to forgive him, right?

    "So anyway, about that blackmail," Peter grins. "How do you feel about helping me become a supervillain?"

 20. Discontinuity of Consciousness Club

    I stare at Peter. He stares back.

    "...Are you an idiot?" I eventually ask.

    "Ha! Woah!" Peter laughs. "Wow Jules, Lia''s brain is really doing wonders for you. Normally you''d just politely try to talk me out of it so I change my mind without you ever having to nut up and say no."

    I roll my eyes. I''m not ''normally'' alone with Peter. Peter doesn''t care if I toss insults his way, but I can''t do that around other people because it would make me look like an asshole. ¡­But I''d rather say something else as my excuse; it would be annoying to have the subject changed.

    "There''s a bit of a gulf between politely asking you not to order me maximally spicy food because ''I can''t taste it anyway'' and plotting treason inside an officer''s bathroom. You can''t blackmail me into committing treason, you idiot. The consequences of treason are worse than what happens if you release the blackmail. It''s not even a tempting kind of treason! I mean, supervillain? Really?"

    "Whaaat? Come on, Jules, it''s not like we have to rob a bank or some shit. We just have to, y''know, walk away and not get ourselves killed in forced conscription to a hopeless war."

    "No, we''d just be more likely to die in a hopeless war. If we run off, the military will come after us and force us into suicide missions anyway, except now they''ll be mad at us."

    "Not unless we suck at it. Aren''t you a winner, Jules?"

    "Don''t. Call. Me. Jules," I growl. "My fucking name is Julietta! If you''re going to insist on outing me, screwing Emily over, and wasting my goddamn time, then you can at least spend that time saying my name right!"

    "Wait, Emily?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. "What does Emily have to do with this?"

    "Do you think I''m pretending to be Lia for fun?" I snap. "She needs me to be Lia so I can get her a combat exemption."

    Peter absolutely lights up.

    "Oh holy shit you''re scamming the government!" he says happily. "And Lia''s parents! Alright fuck the blackmail thing I''m so down for this. You can count on me to back you up. And like, if I run off later, maybe just don''t tell anybody if you see me?"

    "What makes you think you''ll have a chance?" I ask. "Do you really think you can escape an entire military compound?"

    He shrugs.

    "Yeah, probably," he says nonchalantly. "My power kinda kicks ass. I''m inviolable."

    "...You mean ''invulnerable?''"

    "Sure, I''m that too," he smirks. "I''m not gonna leave today or anything but I bet I''ll have a fair shot at it sooner or later. I''m surprised you aren''t planning to leave, honestly. You always hated the idea of being a soldier."

    Well, there''s a pretty simple reason for that.

    "I can''t leave Anastasia," I say firmly.

    "Then bring Anastasia, ya damp shoggoth. You think I''d leave a poor, helpless orphan behind?"

    I narrow my eyes at him. He smiles back unrepentantly.

    "...Even if I thought I could, I''m not sure she''d let me," I say. "She''s¡­ a fighter. She wants to go back out there, to kill aliens. But I don''t think she could stomach fighting our way through humans, which we''d probably have to do. Plus, it''s just a bad idea. I think it''s a riskier gamble than just doing what we''re told."

    Peter rolls his eyes.

    "You''re just saying that because you''re so pathologically conformist that you literally steal other people''s faces," he groans. "Ugh, I can''t believe I almost thought you were cool."

    "Well if it makes you feel any better, I probably can''t disappoint you more than you''ve already disappointed me. Can I leave this fucking bathroom now?"

    "But it''s so nice in here!" Peter protests. "Hey, do you think I should turn my shirt inside out and skew my shorts a little? It is the Army, so if we get spotted it''s probably better if people assume I''m a pedophile than a seditionist."

    I flip him off and unlock the door, since a comment like that doesn''t deserve any other response. I bet more people have been sexually attracted to me looking like a nine-year-old than my actual real body. Agh, that is not the intrusive thought I wanted to have today, what the fuck, me?

    I wonder how many people have been sexually interested in Lia''s body?

    Probably¡­ a lot? I feel like it¡¯s probably a lot. Though I''m no stranger to getting stared at, being lusted over is obviously not something I''ve ever experienced before; being ugly is an unforgivingly grave sin in the relationship department. I can certainly recognize the look, if only from how different it is to the way people stare at me, but I don''t know if I ever really understood it. Attraction was always something I could only view from the outside, as I never felt it nor evoked it in others. I mostly just knew it as ''that thing that makes people stupid and gets you in trouble,'' and of course I was completely right about that.

    That''s exactly why Lia would always flaunt it. Lia enjoyed any power she could hold over others, and the baby''s first manipulation she could pull off by being sexy as hell was one of her preferred sources of dopamine rush. It was a habit for her to present herself that way, from the way she dressed to the way she walked to the cruel little teases that she could pretend were flirting rather than base abuse. And I have inherited at least some of those habits.

    But not all of them, right? Hopefully? I slip out of the bathroom and sneak my way down the hall, thankfully not running into anyone as I try to figure out if I''m walking weird to emphasize my butt. I''m not, but then I realize I''m not using Lia''s brain anyway, since I''m still in a kid body. So I guess I have to table this for now.

    Still. I realize that I''ve been struggling with suddenly being attracted to people, but the reverse? That''s¡­ no. I steal people''s faces, for fuck''s sake. Quit overthinking things, Julietta. You''re never any more than the local freak.

    The mess hall is closed when I finally get there, which is really annoying since I still haven''t found anything close to a limit on the amount of biomass I can hold, and that could potentially be very important. Also, hunger is uncomfortable, but I can handle that pretty easily. Actually, I wonder if I can shapeshift into a template of myself that isn''t hungry. Just like, shift food directly into my stomach. I try it, and it works easily. Huh, I wasn''t expecting that. Neat. It''s a net loss of biomass, of course, but at least I won''t feel hungry.

    My power is so fucking weird. Like, in a general sense, but also it seems like it shouldn''t be able to do a lot of the things that it does. Like, okay, I can eat stuff and add it to my biomass, then I can use that biomass to shapeshift living tissue. That seems like it should be straightforward, but it''s kind of¡­ not? Like, my scales aren''t living tissue. They''re crystals. I can rapidly develop them with hyper-accelerated biological processes, but then they stop being alive. Yet my power only works on living things, right? So why can it unshift those crystals? Why can I remove my hair, for that matter? Hair grows, but then it''s dead. Maybe it still counts as ''my body'' so it''s subject to shapeshifting? That''s kind of an arbitrary descriptor, but when you get down to it ''biological material'' is an arbitrary descriptor, and powers have long since established that they do not particularly need to conform to any sort of logical or scientific consistency. There''s a guy we train with who can lift himself up out of his own shadow at whatever height his shadow was long. My brain hurts just looking at it. It is absolute bonkers nonsense.

    I make it back to my room unaccosted, which is a pretty good sign. That conversation with Peter might have ruined my plans, but that''s worse for Emily than it is for me and there isn''t really anything I can do about it either way. No sense worrying about it; it''ll bite me in the ass or it won''t.

    "You''re back!" Anastasia cheers when I open the door to my room, Anastasia practicing her powers while Christine lies on her bed and seemingly does nothing at all.

    "Hey Lia," Christine grunts, and I suppress my scowl at the name. "They keep you longer at therapy?"

    "It was an interesting day," I answer with a scowl. "Apparently some of the higher-ups think I''m not a real person? In addition to the normal way they think that about us, I mean. So that''s cool."

    "Huge mood," Christine says for some reason.

    "Hey, hey! Check this out, look at me!" Anastasia demands suddenly, wrapping blood tightly around her waist and lifting herself precariously into the air. She wobbles as she hovers slightly above the ground, an enormous smile on her face.

    "Woah!" I say, giving her a big smile back. "That''s super cool, Ana! You can fly now, huh?"

    "I can fly!" she agrees shortly before her control slips and she falls flat on her face. "Ow!"

    "Oh, gosh, are you alright?" I ask, rushing up next to her.

    "Hehe, yeah, I''m fine!" she promises, sitting up and pulling the small trickle of blood coming out of her nose into the air. "It''s a little hard for me to keep the blood stable enough to hold something. When I stab a monster I only have to keep it solid for a second!"

    "Still, that''s a really useful thing to practice," I praise her. "Good work, Ana!"

    "Thanks!" she beams, standing up and wrapping me into a big hug. "You''re still me-sized, so maybe I could make you fly too!"

    Hmm. That''s probably a safer way for her to train, if she keeps dropping whatever she lifts up. I open my mouth to agree, but then there''s a knock on the door. Anastasia and I both instinctively stretch our domains in that direction, and brush up against a domain that feels almost like carbonated water: an uncountable number of bubbles swirling, mixing, combining to form bigger bubbles, separating into smaller ones, creating new bubbles seemingly out of nothing, all of them ultimately part of some greater whole.

    "It''s Maria!" Anastasia announces happily, and I nod, the two of us heading to the door to let her in. I shapeshift into a full Anastasia copy-body before we open it, matching Anastasia''s smug grin.

    "Hey Maria!" we both say at the same time, causing the large young woman to flinch in surprise, her eyes flicking back and forth between us with a moment of worry before she plasters a fairly serviceable fake smile on her face.

    "Well hey, Ana. And hey, Ana! Have you two seen Lia anywhere?" she asks. Anastasia and I giggle.

    "Maybe we have, maybe we haven''t," I tell her coyly, swaying my body back and forth in opposite time to Anastasia''s.

    "Maybe she''s here, maybe she isn''t!" Anastasia agrees.

    "I-I see," Maria manages. "Well, I was hoping to talk to her about something¡­ a little private? You know, if she''s around."

    I look at Anastasia as she looks at me. I say nothing, letting her decide.

    "...She''s probably nearby," Anastasia allows. Alright then.

    "I think she''s in the bathroom," I agree. "Let''s bring her some clothes."

    We head over to my dresser, collect some stuff for large me to wear (wait, I mean normal-sized me) then head into the bathroom together, though only so Maria can''t confirm who was who before Anastasia turns around and leaves. Now alone, I strip out of the kid''s clothes and shapeshift myself back up to an adult body before¡­ uh.

    I stare into the mirror, where Maria''s naked body stares back at me.

    My body''s reaction is immediate, and all the more powerful as I see the blush on my face light up her (my) freckles in bright red, the heat crawling down her neck. The freckles themselves go even further, dusting her broad shoulders and even the top of her breasts. But Maria''s body hardly has Lia''s absurd supermodel genetics. Her chest is fairly large, but the stretch marks at the sides indicate they perhaps grew too quickly when she hit puberty. The left boob is a little bigger and has a slightly different placement of the nipple compared to the right. A bit of a belly completely hides the strong abdominal muscles my powers know are underneath the skin, and her body type would be better described as ''rectangular'' than any distant synonym of curvy. Her legs are unshaven, her armpits are prickly, and her feet are so big she probably can''t even find men''s shoes to fit them in without shopping online.

    And she is so, so beautiful.

    It''s a thought that makes my whole body tense, my instincts jibbering incoherently in an attempt to make me do something deeply unwise. W-why am I even having this reaction!? I''m using Maria''s brain just as much as I''m using her body. Is she attracted to herself? I swap the brain (and only the brain) back to Lia''s just to find out, and the feelings only multiply tenfold, no longer drowned out by the countless little critiques and pet peeves of her body that Maria is apparently so used to focusing on. Fucking fuck fuck fuck, I can''t be letting myself get this distracted all the time, I have to¡­ right. Yeah. I swap to a Raptor''s brain, and the burning attraction finally recedes back to a manageable level. But it isn''t totally gone for some reason, and somehow I doubt that reason is because Raptors are secretly attracted to human women.

    It''s about ten more seconds before I realize that I should probably stop using Maria''s body entirely instead of just changing which brain I stare at it with.

    I shift back into full Lia body, the numbness of my Raptor brain leaving me uncomfortable in my stolen skin. I just don''t want to keep relying on it as a crutch, especially with all the suspicion floating over me. I don''t particularly dislike how Raptor-Julietta thinks, but I can tell that I present myself¡­ differently when I''m using it. It''s especially noticeable when I''m moving a lot, every step feeling unbalanced and odd without a hunched posture and a tail to counterbalance with. Using a full Lia body is just so annoying and so hard to actually maintain. Hmm. You know what? On a whim, I grow myself crystal claws on my fingers and toes. Even just that little bit of variation helps me feel more comfortable wearing Lia''s far too perfect (yet far less enticing) skin.

    God. Am I still thinking about Maria? What the fuck is wrong with me?

    Shaking my head, I make a few other minor adjustments to Lia''s body (mostly little changes to details of my face and skin; I''m not really sure why I feel the need) before quickly getting dressed and finally exiting the bathroom. I spot Maria, shapeshift my cheek capillaries back down to their normal size when they try to make my face red, and greet her with a smile.

    "Hey," I greet her. "You wanted to talk somewhere private?"

    Could it be about¡ªno oh my god it obviously isn''t, shut up. I don''t even know if she''s gay. I don''t know if I want her to be gay, that would make everything so fucking complicated. ¡­Wait, no. No it wouldn''t. I''m not going to date anyone either way so it doesn''t actually change anything.

    "Uh, yeah, Christine and Ana were nice enough to head over to Ana''s room," Maria says.

    Oh. Huh. We''re already alone. How did I not notice that?

    "Uh. G-great. Okay. So what did you want to talk about?" I manage to ask.

    "Well, uh, Anastasia told me earlier that you''d be happy to chat with me about¡­ you know. Our powers messing with our heads."

    Oh. Right. That. Obviously. It''s not like it was going to be anything else. Come on, Julietta, would you just quit being a moron already? You''ve wrangled your mind into obedience under worse circumstances and you can damn well do it now.

    "Sure," I say. "What''s on your mind?"

    "Uh. Heh," she half-laughs at my half-joke. "Well, it¡­ okay, first of all, do you know how my power works?"

    "Not really," I admit. "I''m a bit too occupied to pay a whole lot of attention to other people in power training class, but I pretty much never see you use your power. It¡­ summons a little fairy or something, right? It''s all small and glowy?"

    "Yeah, I try to avoid using it as much as possible," Maria admits. "I''ve been training my domain, but Commander insisted that I have to actually practice using the power if I want proper domain growth. But¡­ well, it freaks me out."

    "Why, what happens?" I ask.

    "Uh. Okay. So yeah, my power basically summons a little fairy. But¡­ I''m the fairy. And I''m also me. But only kind of? Like¡­ I split into two. And neither part is quite fully me but they both feel like me while I''m them, but when they recombine back into me it kinda stops feeling like they were me? And it just. It really freaks me out! I''m breaking continuity of consciousness and basically killing myself every time I use my power, and then I kill the two new mes in order to revive the old me!"

    "Huh," I say. "Okay."

    "I dunno, I guess just¡­ is your power like that? My therapist isn''t being particularly helpful but I needed to talk about it with someone who might get it, you know?"

    I nod slowly. I do know.

    "So¡­ when I shapeshift into someone else, my brain also shapeshifts. And like¡­ that''s kinda scary, because I don''t just instantly fucking die when it happens, but¡­ I should, right? It feels like my software just starts running on someone else''s hardware, but that''s not how brains actually work. As far as I know, the hardware is the software. A person is their brain. So while I keep the same memories and I feel like I keep the same me, things definitely change."

    "Yes!" Maria agrees. "Yeah, that''s¡­ Isn''t that terrifying? How do you convince yourself to keep using your power?"

    "Uh¡­ well I''ve kind of had to get used to it because of¡­ uh. The incursion. And my powers don''t really turn off, either."

    "R-right," she says, scratching her cheek in embarrassment. I''m not sure if Maria knows much about what I actually did in the incursion, but basically everyone knows that Christine, Anastasia, and I were trapped there for a while.

    "...But I''d probably still use it anyway," I continue. "There''s not really much choice, you know?"

    "How do you manage it, though?" Maria presses. "How does it not completely freak you out?"

    I think on that a little, trying to figure out the best way to phrase it.

    "...Look. The first rule of discontinuity of consciousness club is ''don''t think about discontinuity of consciousness club.''" I tell her. "Of course it''s freaky. Of course it''s scary. This kind of stuff always is. But it''s also literally all inside your head. I think differently when I use different brains, sure, but I don''t think that means I''m not me? Like, people are allowed to change without dying. Changing is normal. So what if it happens way faster and more dramatically than a normal person? We aren''t normal. A sense of self can be broader than one exact state of mind or point in time. What counts as ''you'' isn''t objective. It''s something that you decide. And while making that decision won''t stop it from being scary¡­ well. If I start to spiral about it, I just remind myself that I made my decision and force myself to stop overthinking it."

    Maria is quiet for a moment, so I stay quiet too and give her the time to think it over. My strategy isn''t exactly perfect, but it works for me and I hope it can work for her, too. At the very least, I hope it helps. It''s no fun having to deal with an existential crisis while there''s also a normal crisis going on.

    "...I think I should show you my power," Maria ultimately concludes. "Uh, if you''re okay with that."

    "I¡­ don''t see why I wouldn''t be?" I hedge.

    "Um. Well, first off, fairy-me might be kinda mean," Maria hedges, a blush forming on her cheeks. "And second off she''ll be, uh. Y''know. Naked."

    Oh. Of course. That figures, honestly. Well, come on, Julietta, there''s no better time for an apology than this. I open my mouth to speak, but the words don''t come out. Damn it, why is this so hard? Just say it. Say it!

    "I¡­ um. I already¡­ know what you look like," I manage to choke out. "Naked, I mean. Sorry, but with how my power works¡­"

    "O-oh," Maria says, her blush growing ever deeper. With how pale her skin normally is (barring the freckles) the change is very noticeable, and very cute. "Right. I guess I''ve seen you turn into me once or twice. Or like¡­ kind of turn into me, but shorter?"

    "Am I shorter when I do it?" I blink, thinking back to the bathroom just now. No, that was her normal height¡­ oh! When I''m doing it unconsciously I''m probably blending a bit with other bodies so that my clothes still fit. "Huh, good to know. I''m not really doing it on purpose most of the time."

    "...Just most of the time?" she asks. Shit. Go anti-blushing powers! The optimal use for shapeshifting!

    "I''ve¡­ been meaning to apologize," I stammer. "Using other people''s bodies without their permission is¡­ extremely uncool of me."

    "...It''s a bit uncomfortable, but I guess it''s not any weirder than your usual stuff," Maria says softly. "I''ve seen you do stuff like slowly matching your skin tone with whoever you''re talking to? That''s always a little off-putting, but like, nobody''s suicidal enough to tell you what your skin tone ''should'' be."

    I open my mouth and then shut it, having absolutely no idea how to respond to that. I didn''t even know I was doing that. Once again, I feel a blush threatening to ambush me.

    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    "And then you''ll just move wrong sometimes, you know? Like you forgot how to walk and settled on puppetting yourself from the inside. Same with facial expressions. Most of the time it''s normal but sometimes your face just does this thing like you asked an AI to blend two photographs together over a timelapse. Like instead of smiling you just¡­ take a smile out of a box and wear it."

    Okay, yeah, now I''m definitely getting embarrassed. I mean, I guess it''s not surprising that Maria thinks I''m a creepy weirdo freak, it''s just¡­ gah! Emergency abort, shift the focus back to Maria, STAT!

    "You''re stalling," I accuse, keeping my voice as even and unbothered as possible.

    "...Yeah, I guess I am," Maria admits. "Okay. Doing it now. Apologies in advance, and I promise to shift back whenever you say so, alright?"

    Uh. Bit of a concerning set of things to say, but alright.

    "Ready," I nod.

    She nods back, and her domain starts to churn. The bubbly water now feels like it''s flowing down a drain, making a beautiful whirlpool funnel that bends further and further and further until it collapses entirely in on itself, twisting apart like taffy and forming a brand new sphere of power. That sphere is small, but it becomes an entirely separate domain from Maria''s, like a mini-version of her power budded off via mitosis. And within the tiny new cell of eldritch might, there is a fairy.

    She''s about the size of my hand from wrist to fingertip, and sure enough she is stark fucking naked. She doesn''t look exactly like Maria, though. Her face and body are similar, but sharper, thinner, more angular. Diamond-shaped dragonfly wings keep her aloft in the air. Long, pointed ears extend from either side of her head. She even glows a rich orange color, enough to light up a dark room. The larger Maria is still there (and still clothed), but this new Maria just¡­ appeared, seemingly out of nothing.

    "Hey!" she snaps. "Eyes on my face, bitch!"

    I blink. Huh. Well that didn''t sound very much like Maria. I suppose I should defend whatever tattered shreds of honor I have left.

    "You are literally so small that I can''t actually focus on one part of your body over another," I point out.

    "W-well you know what, fine!" the fairy fumes. "Look, then, I don''t care! I bet you already jilled off to me anyway!"

    What. I''ve literally never¡­ I keep my hands entirely off those parts of myself as a general rule. I frankly don''t think I could handle it.

    "Hey!" original body Maria squeaks, her voice surprisingly timid. "D-don''t say that to her!"

    "And what are you gonna do about it, huh?" fairy-Maria snaps. "You''re not even real!"

    "You''re an energy construct," I butt in, pointing to the fairy. "I''ve got my domain on you and I don''t sense anything biological at all."

    "So?" fairy-Maria demands, crossing her arms. "That just means I have our soul, and the big ugly bitch over there has all the useless stuff."

    Original-body Maria just cringes away from the insults, not contesting them. Okay. That''s a red flag.

    "You implied earlier that you share memories, or at least recombine them when you recombine yourselves, right?" I ask. "So¡­ that''s you. And you''re not ugly."

    "She''s not me," the fairy rolls her eyes. "But of course you''d think that. You implied earlier that you don''t believe in souls, even though you''re basically walking evidence that they exist."

    "...That''s not how evidence works," I protest. "You can''t just point at a single thing that could have countless explanations and say it proves whichever one you want to be true."

    "Oh yeah? Then what else could explain it, genius?"

    "Your energy construct could simply have a working brain composed of materials my power can''t detect. Or maybe your power partitions your main body''s brain into two distinct streams of consciousness and remote-controls the fairy body."

    "Or I have a soul, and using my power frees it from the husk of my shitty organic body and puts me into this objectively cooler and less painful one," the fairy says, motioning to herself. "God, I should just be doing this all the time. I feel so much better like this!"

    "...Um, please don''t," flesh-Maria says. ¡­Wait, no, I shouldn''t call her ''flesh-Maria,'' that''s creepy. "I don''t wanna be stuck like this."

    Physically, the non-fairy Maria looks exactly the same as before, except for maybe a sharper, brighter color to her eyes (but that could just be the gay talking, and it''s a dumbass). Yet in terms of her posture and how she speaks, she''s as different from the original as the fairy is. The poor thing has the general demeanor of a wet cat, scrunched in on herself and looking like she''s on the verge of crying if someone makes too loud of a noise.

    "I think it''s absurd to say that either of you have a more valid claim of being the ''real'' Maria," I say. "You can consider yourselves separate from her or from each other if you want to, but one way or another you are all Maria, and you are all people. That makes you intrinsically equal in value, full stop."

    Flesh-Maria gives me a thankful smile while fairy-Maria pouts, but doesn''t protest.

    "I guess I can''t argue with that," she grumbles. "I remember us being one person, and so I remember being her. She''s just¡­ I dunno. Mostly the annoying parts of myself that I don''t like, I guess."

    "...Like courtesy, thoughtfulness, and tact?" flesh-Maria snipes back bitterly.

    "Call it what you want," the fairy scowls. "I don''t have to justify myself to myself."

    "Really?" I ask. "Most people do."

    She snorts with something close enough to amusement to make my heart flutter a little.

    "For now," I say slowly, "I think it would be best if you two shifted back, at least for a little bit."

    "What!?" fairy-Maria protests. "Already!?"

    "Don''t worry," I reassure her. "You''ll be using your power a lot more from here on out, one way or another. There''s just some things I wanna check."

    "...Fine," she sighs. "I guess I did promise."

    Ah. Well, that was in fact one of the things I wanted to check. Do the ''new'' Marias consider the actions of the singular Maria to be theirs? It sounds like the answer is a firm yes. I glance over at the other Maria''s body, and as expected she nods. It''s an agreement; she also promised. Fairy-Maria flies towards flesh-Maria, and when the two touch the fairy turns into light and soaks into the other''s body, their domains recombining.

    "How are you feeling?" I ask.

    "...Embarrassed, mostly," Maria answers. "A little panicky. It''s just¡­ it''s so weird. Fairy me is so confident all the time. It''s nice, but in the back of my mind I''m always reminding myself that it''s temporary, and soon enough I''ll also remember being the other half. And more than that, I¡­ I know what you said about how a person can change and still be themselves, but I''m not just changing. I''m splitting. I have two contradicting sets of memories now! It''s really disorienting."

    "And to be clear, both of those sets of memories remember being the combined you, and consider your actions to be theirs?"

    "Uh," Maria says, shrugging. "I mean, they are, aren''t they?"

    I pretend she didn''t ask that as a question. Let''s not open that can of worms right now.

    "You have self-esteem issues," I tell her bluntly. "I bet your fairy self isn''t at your throat in any way you don''t already have thoughts about while combined, is it?"

    She cringes away miserably, not answering. I take that for the confirmation it is.

    "Well, that''s a good thing, right?" I ask. "You''re not dying or being replaced when you use your power. It''s all you, fully and completely. Just different aspects of you."

    I have no idea if that''s actually true, but it''s what she needs to hear right now to get over this slump. She''s stuck with this power one way or another; she can come to terms with how it actually works once she''s had enough practice using it that it doesn''t instinctively freak her out anymore. And hey, maybe I''m right! It looks like I''m right, anyway. I just can''t be sure after a five-minute examination.

    "It''s kind of a useless power though, isn''t it?" Maria asks. "I make a tiny little fairy. Whoop dee do. Compared to everyone else, it''s kind of¡­ I don''t know. Worthless?"

    Now that''s just a lack of imagination.

    "Even ignoring the countless uses the army would no doubt have for the fact that you can separate your domain into independently mobile pieces, I somehow suspect that you haven''t fully explored everything that fairy can do. It''s not flying with those wings, that''d be biologically infeasible, so it must have some kind of pseudo-telekinesis. Can it apply that to anything other than itself? Whether it can or can''t, how much can it lift? How fast can it fly? How durable is it? Can you make more than one?"

    "Why would I want to make more than one!?" Maria cringes.

    "I''m just saying that you''re judging yourself harshly on next to no information," I tell her. "If you''re going to use your power well¡ªand I think you can¡ªthe secret might just be being kinder to yourself."

    "...This is not how I expected this conversation to go," Maria mutters, her blush returning. "I just wanted to pick up a few tips on dealing with an existential crisis."

    I stare up at the huge girl and try not to imagine her picking me up.

    "...Honestly?" I tell her. "Having a higher opinion of yourself is a good way to deal with an existential crisis. You are what you believe yourself to be, Maria. And if what you believe yourself to be isn''t what you want yourself to be, you work to close the gap."

    No matter how much you have to beat your head into a wall to get it to stick.

    "I can''t just decide not to be an awkward, ugly mess of a person!" she insists.

    Uh, well, you kind of can. Deciding doesn''t magically make it true, sure, but making that commitment is something anyone can do to take the first step towards change. I''ve done it dozens of times. When I decide what I want from myself, I force that truth into reality by any means necessary. I hate not living up to my goals. I despise every failure I''ve ever had. And that anger, that burning shame, drives me to be better. If Maria really hates herself so much, then let that be the fuel that drives the combustion engine of her soul.

    But instead of saying any of that, a completely different set of words drops stupidly out of my mouth.

    "What the hell are you talking about?" I blurt. "Awkward? Ugly? You''re considerate, clever, and drop-dead gorgeous. Fuck anybody who says otherwise."

    Including you. Especially you? Wait, shit, phrasing. Oh god. Why did I say it that way? Why did I say it at all? And for the last time, you stupid capillaries, you will not blush without my say-so!

    Maria stares at me with an expression my mind is too overwhelmed to interpret. Fuck, shit, does she think I''m coming onto her? Am I coming onto her!? This is like the one aspect of interpersonal interaction that I have no idea how to perform or interpret. Fuck these stupid fucking hormones! You know what, screw this, alien brain time. I don''t need Lia''s stupid gay flirty bullshit thoughts.

    The human in front of me has a problem, and I care about them, so I am going to help. That''s all this is.

    "Apologies," I say. "I just mean that you''re judging yourself unfairly. Your self-perception is biased against you, but those things you''re so sure of aren''t how the people around you see you. Anastasia especially seems to have taken a shine to you, and if that''s not a sign of good character I don''t know what is."

    Maria gives me a funny look.

    "...You just started talking different," she accuses me.

    Um.

    "Did I?" I ask. "I feel like this is pretty much how I normally talk?"

    "No. No, you¡­ you shapeshifted something just now, didn''t you? Was it your brain?"

    Um. I open my mouth to deny it, but that would be stupid, right? It wouldn''t even work. Wait, why wouldn''t it work?

    "Nnno," I say deliberately, feeling an odd surprise at the act.

    "Yes you did," Maria insists.

    "Yes, I did," I admit, mostly because I don''t actually want to lie to Maria, I just thought it was weird to assume I couldn''t. This has happened before, hasn''t it? Can aliens not lie? That''s just weird. Maybe it''s a Raptor thing; it would be fucked up to design some kind of working-class species that physically can''t lie to its superiors, but the aliens are committing omnicide on the human race so it wouldn''t exactly be out of character. I''m glad that whatever it is doesn''t seem to work on me, though?

    "...Did you do it on purpose?" she asks.

    "Yes," I confirm.

    "Why?"

    "To flush out an overwhelmed endocrine system," I answer succinctly. "I believe we were talking about you, though?"

    "...No, you''re not getting out of this that easily," Maria affirms. "Did you seriously shapeshift yourself an entirely different brain because you said something embarrassing?"

    Emergency maneuvers! Deflect, deflect, deflect!

    "Why do you think what I said was embarrassing?" I ask. It should have been embarrassing for her, too. Emphasize that, and she might focus too much on her own feelings to press me.

    "Because you acted embarrassed for a few seconds before all emotion completely dropped off your face!" she accuses. Damn. "Are you seriously going to lecture me about unhealthy cognition and then go do something like that?"

    "...I don''t see anything particularly unhealthy about having self-control," I frown. Intentionally. Because I had, in fact, not been emoting at all.

    "How is swapping to someone else''s brain so you don''t have to feel your own emotions ''self control?''" she asks.

    "The part where it helps me control myself," I answer simply. "It''s not like I''m going out of my way to emotionally numb myself at all times. I''m not an idiot; I know emotions are a necessary part of who we are and that I will have to manage them the normal way sooner or later. But right now, this conversation is about helping you. My feelings should not be inserting themselves into that in unproductive ways."

    "Unproductive¡­ Lia, come on. I want to talk to you, not whoever''s brain that is. I''m asking you because I want your input, and how you feel is part of that."

    "It shouldn''t be."

    Maria gets an odd look on her face that I can''t interpret. I feel like I should be able to interpret it, but I can''t. I can see the position of her mouth, the tension in her face muscles, the slight squinting of her eyes, but putting it together into a coherent, singular image is weirdly difficult all of a sudden. ¡­Is my Raptor brain face blind? I guess that would make sense, huh? I feel like I can usually figure this stuff out, but I guess people''s expressions are normally simple and my memory of those expressions is established with a human brain beforehand.

    "Can I please talk to you while you use your own brain?" Maria asks.

    "No," I answer immediately, which seems to surprise her.

    "Lia," she presses. "Please."

    "No."

    "Why not?"

    Because I hate the way my body feels when I''m aroused. Because I don''t know how to handle talking to someone who makes my mind go haywire from just looking at them. Because you deserve better than a mess of confusing urges and emotions that a normal person would have figured out when they were fourteen. But above all¡­

    "Because I can''t," I say, like a fool.

    "Lia, come on."

    "No, Maria," I say, frowning deeper. "I mean that I can''t. It''s gone. The brain you associate with me isn''t mine. I''ve been exclusively using other people''s brains since before you met me."

    I should not have said that. I should not have said that. They''re almost certainly recording this conversation. They''re going to use this against me. They''re going to say this is proof that I''m not real. I should not have said that!

    "I¡­ whose is it, then?"

    "Someone who died in the incursion zone," I answer. "Someone I failed to protect. They aren''t using it anymore, so it''s less weird than using something like Emily''s brain, or your brain."

    "Emily?" she asks.

    "My¡­" My what? Not ''sister,'' I can''t say ''sister.'' "My maybe-girlfriend. She escaped the incursion with me, but she doesn''t have powers."

    Maria''s eyes go wide, mouthing something I can''t identify to herself for a moment before she focuses back on topic.

    "Why can''t you use your own brain anymore?" she asks.

    "My power copies the exact condition of a body," I answer. "I gained my powers during a car accident. To survive, I had to shapeshift into someone who could walk. I''ve learned how to fix most of the injuries I suffered at that time, so I can still use my body, but brains are too complicated. I don''t understand them yet. The damage to mine is enough that I can''t stay conscious."

    The lie drops off my tongue with ease, to the surprise and wonder but not the protest of my current instincts. It''s spun with just enough truth to be easy to remember and hard to contradict; even if they insist on dropping me in another MRI, I can pretty easily just give myself severe head trauma to sell it. It''s not like it would kill me.

    "Oh my god," Maria says, her hands over her mouth. "I''m so sorry. I had no idea."

    "Please do not worry about it." Or bring it up again. "What matters is that I have a fairly vested interest in believing that I still count as ''me'' even when major aspects of how I feel or act suddenly change. That belief applies to me, and it applies to you. No matter how many Marias there are, you are still Maria if you want to be. And if you don''t want to be¡­ then go ahead and be something else. You are up to you."

    And therefore, any deviation from who I wish to be is my fault, and my failure. Lia''s brain wants this, my power wants that, none of it matters. I am in control. I have to be in control, because no one else can be and I will be held responsible for myself either way.

    "...I am up to me," Maria repeats softly. "Okay. I''ll think about it."

    I nod.

    "If you want to have me around to tell you when I think you should recombine while you practice, I''d be happy to help," I say. "Ultimately, you and I both have powers that prevent us from thinking entirely like normal people. I''m glad you reached out to me; we can both probably use the support."

    "Yeah, no kidding," she sighs, giving me another inscrutable look. "I guess we''ll call this the first meeting of the discontinuity of consciousness club?"

    I have to force myself to smile, though the emotion behind it is genuine.

    "Don''t think about discontinuity of consciousness club. But yeah, let''s do this again soon."

    "Will do. Thanks, Lia. See you tomorrow."

    "See you tomorrow," I nod. "Would you let Christine know we''re done on your way out?"

    "Sure thing," she agrees, and then I''m left alone in my room. I allow myself a long exhale, shifting Lia''s brain back in place and bracing for the inevitable overwhelming feelings. They aren''t as bad as I expected, though; I feel bad about lying to her, but that lie ironically let me be honest about a pretty relevant truth so I don''t feel that bad. Overall, I think the conversation went well. I can only hope that I was helpful to her, but I got the impression that I was.

    She wanted to talk to me again, after all.

    A weird sort of squirmy happiness blooms in me at that thought, though an extreme irritation immediately follows so I crush it mercilessly. It''s a stupid thing to be happy about. Don''t let it get to your head, Julietta. She''s not gay. Not that I would care if she was.

    Actually, wait, can''t I check?

    I have her brain. My sexuality is affected (though maybe not determined completely?) by the brain I''m using. I could just use her brain to look at naked women and see how it reacts. I mean, obviously that would be kind of intrusive, so I shouldn''t. I guess I''ve literally already seen her naked, but that''s not really a good reason to intrude even further.

    Yep. I shouldn''t do it.

    ¡­I''m not going to stop thinking about this, am I?

    That, of course, is also a stupid reason to do something. Talking yourself out of the clear best decision isn''t self control just because you gave yourself an excuse before fucking up. Yes, it''s probably true that I won''t be able to focus very well while this question is both on my mind and an easy answer to it is available to me. But that''s just something I have to deal with, right? That''s my problem. It shouldn''t ever, in any way, spill over into something unfair for Maria. I just have to not do it.

    Because, you know, that strategy has been working so well for me lately.

    Failing at things isn''t an excuse to fail at more things.

    It''s a trend, though. A trend with a cause I can''t identify. Expecting perfection from myself won''t solve the problem, it will just blind me to what the problem is.

    Still not a reason to fail on purpose.

    Is it even actually immoral? Just look at Lia''s body in the mirror with Maria''s brain. I don''t even have to be naked. It''s not like I''m doing anything to Maria''s actual brain. I''m just using my power, which is part of me.

    That''s a bit of a gray area. I think a lot of people would argue that I don''t have a right to copy their body parts without permission.

    But are those arguments correct?

    In the context of using them to learn things about a person that they haven''t willingly told you? Yes, probably.

    And yet, here I am. Back in the bathroom. Looking at Lia''s awful, irritating face in the mirror. Lia''s brain, of course, doesn''t find itself particularly turned on, not even in that vague, muted way I was attracted to Maria while using Maria''s or a Raptor''s brain. I consider Lia''s body to be attractive, but in a manner that evokes hints of pride and smugness rather than arousal. But Maria''s brain would feel differently, wouldn''t it? One way or another. I just have to do one little shift, and I''ll know.

    To my shame, I do it.

    The effect is obvious. I stare into my eyes, directly and intensely, and my cheeks flush. My chest tingles. The various other parts of my body react in their predictable and irritating ways. Yes. A resounding yes. I hook a finger around the neckline of my shirt, dragging it down to expose the top of my chest, and I find it hard to look away. So I let go, shift everything back to ''normal,'' and sigh.

    This didn''t really help, did it? Now I know, and it isn''t going to solve literally any of my problems. I just kind of let myself be a nosy asshole for no reason. Spectacular work, Julietta. Truly. If this is what puberty is like for everyone else, it''s no wonder they all dread it.

    "Lia?" Christine''s voice calls as the door opens.

    "Hey, Christine," I greet her, stepping out of the bathroom and giving her a performatory smile. "Have fun with Anastasia?"

    "Yeah, she''s as cute as always," Christine shrugs. "Exhausting, though. I''m ready for bed."

    "Sounds good to me," I agree.

    We do our nighttime routines, and soon enough I find myself clean and under the covers. Christine, true to her word, falls asleep almost immediately, but I''m not so lucky. My brain is still racing a mile a minute, thoughts making my fists clench and my body tense, begging to hit something just to give some physicality to the regret.

    But of course, I don''t do that. It would be juvenile, and it might wake Christine. Instead, I take advantage of a use of my abilities that spending a day constantly shapeshifting myself to match Anastasia made me think to try. I have ''templates'' of bodies I encounter, but maybe I''m thinking about them wrong. They aren''t really templates for a body, they''re records of a given body at a given point of time, in a given state. A body isn''t a static thing, after all. It''s literally always changing, growing, shifting, living. At a microscopic level, a human is in perpetual motion. Billions of cells die and are replaced with new ones every day.

    What''s to stop me from shapeshifting not into ''Lia,'' but specifically Lia from last night, while I was in bed, right before I fell asleep?

    My eyes close, a sudden wave of fatigue hitting me so quickly that I partially jolt back awake, an addle-brained panic making me question reality for a moment before the exhaustion takes me fully. The next thing I know, I''m somewhere very warm and uncomfortably moist.

    Ah. This dream again.

    I try to open my eyes, then shapeshift myself some eyes and open them uselessly, once again seeing only darkness. Dutifully, however, I form myself the rest of a body: a full head, a neck, a torso, arms, legs¡­ everything I need to be human. Being human doesn''t mean much here alone in the dark; frankly, alien bodies are easier to navigate with as they rely much less on sight, but this is still the body that comes to mind first so it''s the one I start with.

    I take my first step, trying to find the closest wall to navigate with, and nearly trip over something that feels like a person. I kneel down, patting it over with my hands. Is it alive, or is it dead? It isn''t moving. I find an arm, feeling around the back enough to determine that it''s a person lying face down on the squishy ground. Something feels like it''s holding them in place, but they don''t seem to be breathing so I doubt they''re alive enough to care. I keep patting down their body, finding the butt and accidentally confirming that this body is female. Or was, I guess. This is interesting; I''ve never encountered a corpse in this dream before. I wonder what her body is like?

    Huh. Wait. That''s right. Why don''t I know what her body is like? I can check with my domain, can''t I? I''m not sure why I never thought about that before. Dead bodies aren''t things I can shapeshift into (not that it would be particularly useful to do so), but my domain can still feel and analyze them. I try feeling for it, try figuring out how to expand it, and¡ª

    Meat.

    Meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat it''s all meat it''s all flesh it''s all me no no no no no no no no no no too much too much. The walls are meat the floor is meat the ceiling is meat it is not alive but it is alive it could be alive it could be anything but it is MEAT.

    I try to vomit, realize that I don''t have a stomach, but then I do and the walls give me the acid and the half-eaten food and shove it inside me so I may obligingly retch it out. I feel dizzy, delirious, like I just got off a teacup ride and folded my brain like a paper airplane. I don''t feel my domain and yet I feel everything, an entire house of flesh and hair and crystal with rooms full of piss and attics of mushy food and dungeons of feces. Half-digested bodies sink into the floor, becoming one with the homogeneous skin and muscle below. I start to hyperventilate, my breaths coming out cold compared to the heat of the writhing room, the entire construct shifting as if in protest to my displeasure. I can''t see it, but I can feel it, and it''s too much it''s too much I can''t I can''t I can''t I¡ª

    With a gasp, I sit up in a panic, my alarm blaring to announce that morning has come. Sweat coats my skin and my sheets, but I swallow, take a deep breath, and push it all aside.

    There''s more work to do today, and I already have too many distractions.

 21. Put Her In The Tank

    One of the advantages of a military training schedule is the fact that you aren''t left with very much time to think about dreams. I mean, arguably this is also a disadvantage if you care about weird things like individuality, but in this particular case I''m talking about the very specific sort of dream that happens in the middle of the night and makes you wake up in a cold sweat so I''m calling it an advantage for now.

    Maria gives me a big smile when we meet up for breakfast, which is also distracting, if nothing else. Our little group has expanded, thanks to Anastasia becoming a huge fan of both Maria and Ed, and since everybody here seems to be on the same page (Team Make Anastasia Happy) I appreciate the extra help. Our general knowledge class passes as usual, and lunch is a repeat of breakfast, so before I know it we''re all out in the yard, ready to train our domains. We line up and wait for Commander to arrive, as always, but when she finally does she has someone unexpected with her as well: Cross Country, the teleporter guy who originally brought me to Georgia. Are we all going somewhere?

    "Alright future soldiers, against all expectations of your capabilities, all of you are finally more or less capable of practicing your powers without hurting yourself or others. You will be continuing to do so, on your own time, and you will be tested on your continual progress. But! Today, we add to the curriculum further! Today, we start pushing you past what you think you can do now to test the limits of your individual capabilities. For most of you, this will require a lot of self-direction: your abilities are unique, and so you must be involved in the process of learning how best to use them. You will be expected to write up requisition requests for anything you suspect you might need to improve your capabilities in whatever direction you think will be most effective¡ªwhich is also something you will need to justify to your superiors. If we don''t like something you''re doing, or if we really like something you''re not doing, you will have your training forcibly refocused. You may also consider this a test of your judgment; if any of us find that you are wasting your capabilities, we will not be happy. For a few of you, however, we have already set up somewhere we''d like you to start. Baker, Folbridge, Lamburg, Morgan, White! Get your asses up here! For everyone else, we''ll pass you the forms."

    I sigh, heading up to the front without a single drop of surprise that I''m in the special fancy group. Why would they trust me to train my own powers when they can''t even trust who I am? It''s all I can do to not be actively scowling when it''s finally my turn to get my assignment from Commander.

    "Well if it isn''t today''s luckiest little lady!" she greets me, every last ounce of her fake cheer making me dread this all the more. "Tell me Morgan, have you ever been to a zoo?"

    Wait. What?

    "A¡­ a zoo, ma''am?" I blink.

    "Yeah, a zoo! God, please tell me that people your age have at least heard of zoos?"

    "I just¡­ I didn''t realize they still existed," I admit. A zoo? A zoo? Like the place they used to keep a bunch of wild animals for people to pay money to ogle at?

    "Ah, I''m sure you of all people know how eccentric, rich bastards are," Commander taunts, correct for all the wrong reasons. "Yeah, there''s still a private one up in Ohio, and until the aliens take Lake Erie it''ll probably still be around. And correct me if I''m wrong, but you tend to have a bad time when you first encounter a new animal, but afterwards you''re pretty fine, right? Seems like it''d be efficient to just get them all out of the way, in that case."

    Oh. Oh, wow. That¡­ does seem like it would be really helpful, actually. Nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. But at the same time¡­ they''re going to want me to cram as much into my head as quickly as I can, aren''t they?

    Cross Country holds his hand out to me without even a single word of greeting, and he activates his power the moment I touch him and let him through my domain. The disconcerting sensation of being doubled, multiplied, forcibly present in two places at once nearly makes me fall, but then it''s over. Cross Country lets go of my hand, vanishes, and leaves me in a windowless room.

    "Lia Morgan?" a soldier in full combat gear addresses me, causing me to flinch slightly before I stand up straight and nod.

    "Yes sir, that''s me," I lie.

    "We''ve been informed this is a¡­ training operation?" he asks like it''s a question he doesn''t know the answer to. Which is¡­ weird.

    "Um¡­ that is my understanding," I nod. "We''re at¡­ a zoo in Ohio, right?"

    "That''s correct, ma''am."

    I frown at that, expanding my domain to look the three soldiers in the room over. I twitch slightly as my body tries to become them, but I hold it back and just nab a taste of what was important: none of them have domains of their own. I''m the only person in this room with powers.

    Interesting.

    "...I''m the one training," I tell them. "I don''t even have a rank yet, let alone an officer rank. You don''t need to call me ma''am. Who are you three?"

    They all glance at each other, then back to me.

    "Uh, I''m Private McConnell, that''s Private Jimenez and Private Larson," the first guy says.

    "Hey," says Private Jimenez.

    "You''re¡­ all privates?" I ask.

    "Well, Private First Class, technically," he corrects. "Look, we were just told to wait here and escort whoever came into this room, and you came in with CC so I assumed you were some powered bigwig. If you know what we''re doing here, I''d appreciate being informed."

    Hmm. Well, I thought I was just here to pick up more forms, but I guess I''m also here to be tested. On what, I can only guess, but I''m pretty good at guessing so let''s go through the list of possibilities, shall we? First and most obvious: they want to see if I run. Three unpowered Privates who don''t even know who I am versus a shapeshifter capable of taking any form and shrugging off being impaled? Yeah, I could probably skedaddle under these circumstances, but even if I believed for a second that they weren''t waiting for exactly that moment, I wouldn''t do it. Emily relies too much on my status as Lia to avoid the very fate I''d be running from, and Anastasia, Christine, and the others need my help anyway. So if they are testing for that, well¡­ I''ll pass. Better for me to earn their trust now and use it to get what I want under superior circumstances in the future.

    Next possibility: it''s a practical test of everything I''ve already been taught. Since my primary duty as a powered member of the army is ostensibly going to be protecting unpowered soldiers with my domain¡­ well, I could be reasonably expected to already be working on that. So I let my domain expand back over the three of them, doing my best to take calm breaths and remain in control of myself as I let every last detail of their bodies passively filter into my subconscious. If that''s the test, I''ll be ready for it, too.

    The third test this could be is one of conduct, protocol, and decision-making. There are three low-ranking enlisted here, and none of them seem up to taking charge of the situation. But what does that mean the correct move is, here? Arguably, I don''t have a rank yet, and therefore they technically do not outrank me, but common sense seems to indicate that they''d still be above me in any hypothetical hierarchy. They passed basic training, and I haven''t even started it. I certainly shouldn''t be acting like I outrank them and trying to tell them what to do. But at the same time¡­ if I don''t take at least a little bit of control over this situation, we''re probably not going to get anywhere.

    "I''m powered, just not a bigwig," I answer, standing up straight and keeping my chin angled just slightly upwards. "I''m a shapeshifter, and the forms I can shapeshift into are based on the forms I''ve already encountered. My instructions were to head around the facility and add the animals here to my capabilities. If you were sent here to be involved in a training operation, I''d imagine you''re escorting me."

    "Wait, so we just get to wander around with you and look at the zoo?" Jimenez asks.

    "That''s my best guess, unless you''ve received orders I don''t know about," I answer neutrally. They knew to wait for me by name, so they''re obviously here to handle me in some capacity.

    "Awesome," Jimenez says, brightening up.

    "You''re really a shapeshifter?" Private McConnell asks, and in response I quickly shift to match his face and height before returning to Lia''s. He stiffens up, but gives me a short nod. What other evidence do I need to show?

    ¡­Still, though. I don''t like that they didn''t know that. I don''t like how little they''ve been told in general; it''s a bad sign, in my book. Sure, there are a lot of reasons a soldier might not be informed about the full nature of an operation. Confidentiality, operational security, or maybe just the officer in charge not fucking feeling like explaining it. But maybe it''s because the nature of the operation isn''t something the soldiers would like. Maybe it''s because the real reason I''m here doesn''t have anything to do with the sort of tests you''d give a normal soldier. Maybe it''s because if you tell three disposable privates that they''re going to be used as a litmus test for how quickly I go The Thing when I''m no longer surrounded by threats, they might decide that getting court-martialed is an acceptable outcome to saying ''no.''

    Whereas if you just put them in the situation without explanation and it all goes to shit, they just have to deal with it.

    It''s extremely frustrating, but I suppose that being sent off alone somewhere counting as a sign of trust was too much to ask for. I can''t refute their fears with anything other than my actions, and at the end of the day, my job here is the same no matter what they believe I am. I intend to do the job as they presented it to me. What else is there?

    "Well, in terms of what''s likely to be the most useful¡­ do you guys wanna start with elephants or tigers?" I ask.

    "Oh, oh! Tigers!" Jimenez says excitedly, so I chuckle and motion them out of the room. I suspect it was some kind of conference or meeting room, because we exit into a hallway that seems to lead into the main entrance-slash-exit-slash-gift-shop of the zoo, full of informational displays, animal sculptures, and novelty products. A huge glass doorway along the far wall seems to lead to the zoo proper.

    It''s also completely empty, except for a single woman. She''s dressed in what I assume is the uniform for the zoo, which looks halfway between a safari tour guide and a park ranger. She appears to be about fifty to sixty years old, and though I brace myself as she walks into my domain, I don''t have too much trouble analyzing her biology. She''s just human; no domain and no notable biological variations from my current collection of templates, other than age. She''s surprisingly fit, but that''s more surprising to me personally than it is to my power. I hang out in military complexes all day, so most of the templates in my brain are fit.

    "You four are the ones I''m escorting, then?" she asks, holding out a hand for me to shake since I happen to be in front. "Rebecca Turner. I oversee management of most of the animals here."

    "Good to meet you," I nod, shaking her hand. "I''m Lia Morgan, and these are Privates McConnell, Jimenez, and Larson."

    "Good to meet you all as well," she responds, though her flat tone and unimpressed expression indicate that she doesn''t quite feel that way. "I''ve been instructed to allow you into any enclosures you deem necessary."

    Yeah, she pretty obviously doesn''t want to do that. I give her a reassuring smile.

    "That shouldn''t be required," I promise her. "I can do most of what I need to do from behind the glass."

    "Most of our enclosures are not walled in by glass," she frowns. "They''re too big for that. It''s important to give the animals space."

    ¡­Ah. Well, I guess that''s good?

    "I might need to get close, then," I admit. "Within¡­ fifteen to twenty feet, or so? I don''t need to give your tigers a hug. ¡­And, um, if any of the animals attempt to give me a hug, I can survive a mauling or two. None of the animals will need to be hurt, even in the unlikely event that they attack. Right?"

    I glance back at the three heavily armed men behind me and give them an intense smile until they nod in confirmation.

    "Uh, r-right," McConnell stammers. "Safeties stay on, right guys?"

    "Y-yep," Jimenez agrees, and Larson nods silently. Good. I close my mouth and turn back to Rebecca to¡­ wait. Why do I have fangs? Aw, crap, I totally gave the wrong impression there. Well, whatever, Rebecca looks a lot less hostile now and that was my main goal. My mouth twitches as I blunt my teeth again and the zookeeper gives me a nod.

    "That''s appreciated," she nods at me. "This is the largest conservation project in the entire world, with over a quarter of the species here being critically endangered, not held in any other facility on the planet, or both. The entire Hawaii exhibit is full of animals that are no longer possible for humans to interact with in the wild. While you have the authority to do whatever you please here, superhero, I would appreciate it if you were willing to defer to me within the confines of my facility."

    "I''m just a superhero-in-training," I tell her with a much-less-feral smile. "Consider yourself in charge here, and please, just call me Lia. In fact, while I''m certainly no veterinarian, the nature of my powers allows me to get a pretty intimate biological understanding of anything nearby. If there are any animals you''re worried about, I''d be happy to take the time to see if I can help you confirm a diagnosis."

    It''s not technically part of my job right now, but it''d be the easiest argument in the world to claim that practicing using my powers for medical assistance is a good use of my time. And again, the words make another chunk of Rebecca''s hostility soften.

    "I appreciate that," she nods. "I suppose we have most of the afternoon, so is there anywhere you''d like to go first?"

    I jerk my thumb backwards at the soldiers.

    "Jimenez really wants to see the tigers," I tell her.

    That almost gets a smile out of her, so I mentally mark this conversation down as an unconditional victory. Fucking finally. I''m so tired of seeing the social skills that I normally consider to be one of my greatest assets constantly going awry because everyone around me assumes I''m from another dimension or whatever.

    The privates and I follow Rebecca as she leads us through the zoo. She wasn''t kidding about the enclosures; they''re more like¡­ uh, enopeners, I guess, with how much empty space is inside of each of them. All of these animals sure get a lot more room than Christine and I do in our little furnished jail cell, though I guess that''s a pretty sad standard to hold considering these animals will have to live here for their entire lives.

    I''m tempted to stop and soak in information from everything we pass, but I figure it''s not much less efficient to start with something big and impressive before moving down from there, no matter how much I really want to collect all that neat biological info right now. Honestly, I''m unexpectedly giddy about this whole thing. Still, I remain patient until we reach the tiger exhibit, raising my eyebrows as I see how completely different from every other enclosure it is. Layers of upper walkways, nets, and wide cage walls completely encase the exhibit as if they expect the tigers to fly out of the top like birds.

    "So¡­ twenty feet, you said?" Rebecca asks.

    "Yes, though I might be able to stretch further in a pinch," I nod. "I assume you don''t want me getting close enough to touch any of them."

    "I''m not letting you into the enclosure at all," she snorts. "I''ll just wave some meat near where you''re standing and get them to jump nearby, yeah?"

    "Ooh!" Jimenez says excitedly, and I suppress a smile. God, what a dork.

    "That should work just fine," I nod. "Thanks, Rebecca."

    The Siberian tigers seem sleepy and entirely uninterested in us as Rebecca heads off to get some food for them and climb into the upper walkways, attaching the meat to a long metal pole and dangling it down into the enclosure. It takes them a long time to start to care, which is honestly kind of cute. They''re just huge, lazy cats, after all. It seems only fitting that it''d be a pain in the ass to get them to do anything you want them to do. But eventually, one decides it''s hungry or bored enough to go after the wiggling chunk of food, so it wanders over, tenses its body for a second, and then leaps ten feet straight up into the air, snatching the meat with its mouth and front paws before landing on the ground in front of us.

    Woah. It''s really big. It''s one thing to hear that they''re ten feet long, but something about a cat nearly doubling me in size hits different this close up. Of course, I only have a split-second to acknowledge that incredibly human instinct before the information from my power overtakes it, nearly eliciting a squeal of delight from my lips as I happily devour the incredible glut of information pouring into me.

    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

    With a clamp of willpower I prevent myself from just transforming into a tiger outright and ripping my entire outfit apart, but I can''t help but let a ripple of fur form and unform in a wave over my skin, a single arm shifting fully into the tiger''s massive paw so I can feel the potency coiling inside of it. The hydraulic muscles of the Behemoth might have more raw power, but these designs just quintupled the maximum strength I can output via mammalian musculature, at minimum.

    Of course, this is about muscular density, percentage, and distribution just as much as it''s about the muscles being more efficient. As I play with the tiger-arm design, the underlying commonality is always that the limb is bigger than the human counterparts available to me, bulging with impossible-to-hide strength. Still, this is great information. I can always average, adjust, and experiment down the line to determine a more optimal distribution, but it would be easier if I¡­

    I look up to ask Rebecca something, flinching with surprise when an excited yowl is the only noise that comes out of my mouth. Oh, whoops, haha! I''d better grow a human voicebox and face again.

    "C-can you get more of them over here?" I ask successfully this time, putting all my fur away for a second time as well. "It would be useful to have more examples. Especially if some of them exercise more or less, or are different ages!"

    "Uh¡­ I''ll see what I can do," she answers and I twitch my tail in excitement. ¡­Wait, dangit, when did that get there!? Spine, get back in my ass, or so help me¡­ ooh! Another one is coming over!

    I manage to get a couple more excellent examples of tigers, including a cub, and already I''m starting to figure out where things can be optimized, where certain tigers have more or less developed muscles and therefore what developed muscles look like compared to atrophied ones¡­ oh, this is exciting. This is so exciting!

    "Are¡­ you alright, Ms. Morgan?" someone asks, and I ignore it for a solid ten seconds before realizing that it would probably be best for me to respond.

    "Huh?" I ask, jerking back to attention. Am I alright? Do I¡­ okay, my clothes still fit, so I haven''t done anything too bad. I flex one paw, feeling my claws extend and retract before shifting that limb back into a hand, growing Anastasia''s claws on that hand, and then pulling those back inside as well to return to an externally human appearance.

    Internally, though, I''m making some exciting adjustments. Not that anyone else needs to know about that.

    "I''m good!" I assure everyone once my skin is back to looking all Lia-like. "That was a lot of useful information, is all! Uh¡­ we can move on now, if everyone is okay with that!"

    Nobody objects, and so the start of my incredible journey through the zoo begins in earnest. Every single stop is mind-splatteringly cool, my collection of interesting and useful mammals and birds growing by the hour. ¡­The birds less so than the mammals, though, since most of them can''t actually fly due to having their wings clipped. Since I''m just taking the templates, all the bird info I get is similarly disabled. Kind of disappointing and fucked up, though I guess I can probably fix it one way or another. Accelerating the wing growth, maybe, or just trying to mirror the structure based on the other wing?

    Some birds of prey would definitely be cool; normal bird bodies are a bit too small for me to be comfortable trying them, and having to shift into an entire ass Wasp to fly isn''t exactly acceptable in polite company. But ah well, there''s plenty more cool stuff¡­ like the elephants, holy shit! They''re even bigger than the Behemoth was! Sure, the Behemoths in the Chicago incursion tended to be smaller and faster than the average Behemoth, relying more on their oversized blades than the usual size and girth of that class of alien, but still! This is the biggest living thing I''ve ever scanned, and absolutely everything about it is fascinating, especially the trunk. The whole thing is an astonishingly complicated collection of muscle fibers, the tip of the nose housing absolutely minuscule bunches of radially patterned muscles that allow for a mind-boggling amount of fine control, not just for an animal that large but by any standard.

    This is just¡­ a fantastic appendage! I mean, I like hands, hands are great, but something with this much strength, dexterity, and flexibility is hard to say no to. The capacity for suction is just something that a hand has no equivalent to! Sure, the trunk can''t compete with fingers either, but it would hardly be impossible to create some kind of combination appendage¡­

    "Uh, hey, Ms. Morgan?" McConnell says hesitantly. "You''re doing that thing where you start twitching and laughing again¡­?"

    "Huh? Oh. No. I''m good. I''m good!" I reassure him unsuccessfully. Which is annoying; I am very good at reassuring most people. I indignantly put my bones back into my arms so I can give him a thumbs-up. Oh whoops, claws again.

    "I''m super good," I assure him again. "Sorry if my powers are creepy, but I promise that as long as I''m still standing, I''m okay."

    "Are you¡­ likely to stop standing?" he asks as I shrink my ears back down and make my skin soft again.

    "Yeah, I might have a seizure or something. Which is bad, but only for me. Just give me space and I''ll be alright, probably. Unless I remove my own heart or something dumb like that."

    Though even then, I feel like I would probably survive somehow. I don''t exactly want to find out for sure, but with my luck I probably will sooner or later.

    "...Not to complain," Private Larson says, speaking up for the first time since I laid eyes on him, "but if we''re supposed to stand back and do nothing regardless of what happens to you, why are we here?"

    To fulfill a quota, perhaps? To be less useless on paper? That''s probably the best-case scenario, because the alternative is to be used as a potential sacrifice, but hopefully the military would at least have hidden contingencies in place if they suspect I''m actually a threat. But of course, I don''t say any of that.

    "How should I know?" I ask. "I don''t even have a rank yet, they haven''t told me shit."

    He nods glumly, not seeming at all surprised by the answer. Which like, of course he isn''t. There''s nothing a low-ranking grunt will empathize with more than ''the people in charge don''t give us the time of day.'' It''s pretty much a get-out-of-questions-free card.

    Over the next four to five hours, we drudge through most of the facility, adding everything from penguins to pangolins to my repertoire. I feel absolutely bloated with information, my body a nonstop jittery mess of new ideas and temptations to try them. And frankly, I fail to resist most of those temptations and struggle to feel bad about it. The way my flesh can just flow from one thing to the next with little more than a thought¡­ I can''t deny that it''s exciting. Exhilarating, even. This is freedom like nothing I''ve ever experienced before.

    More than that, though, it''s a puzzle. It''s intellectually engaging. I can really sink my teeth into this stuff, literally but also metaphorically. Every new solution leads to a new set of exciting questions. It''s constant, ongoing progress towards a goal I don''t even fully understand, and it doesn''t matter because the method of getting there is so fun.

    So who cares that my body won''t stop shifting? Who cares that I''m making everyone around me increasingly concerned for my mental stability? I know I''m sane, and I''ll probably never actually need to care very much about any of the people I''m with right now, and even if I do that''s a problem I can just figure out later. It''s fine. I''m fine.

    I''m better than fine, actually. In fact, I am having a great time and it is honestly one of the weirdest experiences of my entire life. Which is¡­ y''know, probably a thought I should talk to a therapist about. Not that I expect mine to help.

    At least it''ll probably be over soon. We are, after all, about to enter the aquarium complex, which apparently expanded pretty rapidly around three decades ago when whatever rich conservationist funds this place apparently determined how fucked the oceans were going to be before the government did and scooped up as many aquatic animals as they possibly could over the year or two before it was too dangerous to do so. A big part of the zoo''s claim to fame is therefore this very aquarium, as while we don''t have any way to know whether the species inside are endangered or extinct in the wild, they may as well be as far as humanity is concerned.

    But that''s somewhat less important to me than the fact that¡­ well, it''s an aquarium. And based on what I''ve seen in pictures and old movies, aquariums do not have individual tanks for each and every species like they do for land animals at the zoo. Aquariums have enormous, packed reefs full of hundreds of animals in the same place at once.

    ¡­But I don''t really know what to do about that, so I just do my best to mentally prepare myself as I walk inside. This is, after all, a mental hurdle I''ll have to overcome eventually. A soldier who can get knocked out of a fight if a flock of birds gets too close is obviously a liability, and I refuse to ever be a liability.

    I will overcome this.

    ¡­For all my mental self-hype, though, when we walk into the aquarium we are, in fact, met by a series of small, enclosed tanks with only one or two kinds of animals inside. I can see big, fancy aquariums down a hall in front of us, but there''s still a lot to do in the meantime. The jellyfish have a few interesting venoms but make me a little uncomfortable since they have no central brains, the sea snails have a few interesting bits but are mostly too simple for me to implement much of use, and the various crabs and other crustaceans are definite upgrades to all the information I''ve gathered on exoskeletons so far but nowhere near strong enough to justify removing the advantages of endoskeletal systems.

    Then we get to the octopus tank. Or tanks, I suppose. There are six of them, and each one is kept alone in an entirely separate tank. I guess they don''t play nice together, or with anyone else for that matter. I like them already.

    "Why do you have so many tanks for these guys?" I ask.

    "Because they''ll either fight each other or mate with each other," Rebecca answers, "and both will cause them to die. Octopus bodies will rapidly age and deteriorate after mating, and their natural lifespans are already pretty short. In order to continue preserving them, we have to carefully regulate how they interact with each other, generally by preventing them from doing so at all."

    "Sounds lonely," Private Jimenez frowns.

    "I don''t think they get lonely," Rebecca says. "I think the only reason they might want company is because they get bored. The damn things are smart. Really smart. They can think, solve puzzles, recognize people, and have opinions. But they''re all brutal, vicious bastards. No empathy at all, just a big enough brain to act nice because they know they''ll get more rewards that way."

    "Is that a bad thing?" I ask, captivated by the constant writhing of the tentacles of the one closest to me, never fully idle even as it rests on the glass wall. "If they act nice, then they''re nice. It''s actions that matter."

    "The illusion is broken when you can tell it''s just manipulative," Rebecca insists with a frown. "A tiger doesn''t care about hurting people in the general sense, but when you''re kind to one and spend time with them enough, they will love you. It stops mattering to them that we could so easily be prey."

    "But tigers are still dangerous," I point out. "Even if they care about you, they can still severely injure people because they aren''t good at regulating their strength. You had to do all sorts of extra stuff just to feed them without getting hurt, right?"

    "I''d rather forgive a tiger for making a mistake than try to care about an octopus that''s just pretending. They''re more alien than human."

    "More alien than human, huh?" I repeat quietly to myself. That''s such an absurd thing to say, in my opinion. What does it matter how the octopus feels if it''s still less likely to hurt someone? "Seems unlikely, for a native to Earth. But I''ll take anything, as long as it''s useful."

    I step closer, letting my domain overlap with the closest tank and start absorbing data from the cephalopod. Almost immediately, I fall to my knees, the glut of new information paralyzing me for a moment before I force myself back into a standing position, waving people away as I shakily hold my attention between maintaining awareness of my physical self and the incredible amount of new potential I have for that physical self. Suction cups, tentacles, siphons, chromatophores, venom, a distributed central nervous system, and a light-sensitive, variable-texture epidermal layer!

    I can''t help but try some of it out, luxuriating in the feeling of a near-perfect camouflage system on my skin that I can change and reconfigure however I desire without even using my power to do it! I want it all, of course, but today is about self-control so I force it away with the promise to myself that I''ll practice later.

    And yes, thank you, I am self-aware enough to know that''s kind of a concerning coping mechanism. I mean for fuck''s sake, that''s how people treat candy. I can''t have any now, but it''ll be a little treat to reward myself with if I''m good! Using my power shouldn''t be the sort of rush I can get addicted to, right? That can''t be normal. ¡­Not that I''ve ever been normal, I suppose.

    I''ve never had the luxury of being normal. It wasn''t an option for me; my body was simply too weak. Now though, my body is everything that makes me worthwhile, and it''s my mind that''s holding me back. After so long scraping through life with the inverse, it''s beyond infuriating. Everything I thought I could put value in suddenly isn''t enough, and everything I thought didn''t matter is now the most valuable part of who I am. I won''t let things remain this way.

    The mind is everything. Superpowers don''t change that; I am the one in control of my body, I am the one deciding how to use my body, and I am the one ensuring the unimaginable selection of options available to me are being utilized to their fullest potential. It''s not that my body is worth more than my mind, it''s just that my body has changed from a weight holding me back to a complex tool I have only begun to learn. So¡­ it''s alright to enjoy that, isn''t it? To revel in mastering it? The ability to enjoy important tasks is a virtue, really.

    It just means I''ll naturally excel at them. It''s easier to put in the work when you find it enjoyable.

    So I approach the biggest tank of the aquarium, the uncountable torrent of aquatic organisms intimidating me long before I ever get my domain close. If I can just get past this hurdle, this final step of larger, more complex organisms that I haven''t made templates of swarming within my domain, I''ll be able to handle anything. So I step forward, and I let my power touch the first fish.

    Okay. Yeah. Nothing too crazy. Being a vertebrate, there are already a lot more similarities between this animal and everything else I''ve scanned today than there were between me and the octopus. It''s nothing I can''t handle. I take another step.

    More fish swim in and out of my domain now, three or four at a time, always changing. It''s distracting, but not unbearable. I take another step, and another. More and more information pounds at my head at once as I get closer and closer to the glass. That''s a sea turtle, an eel, a lobster, a stingray, a shark¡­ I can do this.

    "That doesn''t look good."

    "She said not to touch her, right?"

    I can do this. There are just so many fish, though, nearly all new and unique. More fish, more sharks, more everything, more more more moremoremore¡­!

    "I don''t¡­ I don''t think she can breathe."

    "What do we do, then!?"

    I¡­ I can''t do this. It''s too much. I have to shrink my domain but I don''t remember how. I am biology and supremacy and the path ever-forward into the unknown. I am Julietta and Lia and Anastasia and anyone else whose body I have stolen. I am an unstoppable bastion of competency and a screaming, flailing child who can never amount to anything more than barely managing to pay off the burden of her existence.

    "Put her in the tank!"

    Do not put her in the tank. That will put me even closer to everything, and that will make the problem so much worse. I told you not to move me. Don''t fucking move people when they tell you not to! Still, somewhere distant I feel that stomach-flipping experience of unasked relocation, the sensation of being carried, and then weightlessness, gravity, and frigid cold.

    And then, for a little while, I stop being anyone or anything at all.

    ¡­

    JOY. NothING can BE anythING.

    ¡­

    When I come to, I don''t know how it was ever possible for me to do so in the first place. I have nothing like a human brain anymore, my nervous system distributed across my many tentacles and at least three different animals and one alien''s worth of brain matter. Something like this shouldn''t even be capable of thinking my thoughts, yet here I am, thinking anyway. I''m not sure what that''s supposed to mean.

    I''m floating in the tank, my siphons pumping water over my gills as my countless tentacles¡ªgrowing not from my central body (because I barely even have one) but from each other, like twigs growing from branches growing from yet stronger branches¡ªstretch around the tank, caressing any animals that come close. I have apparently achieved both of my conflicting desires at once: returning my domain to exclusively touch-range, but also slurping up as much biological data at once as I can muster. Fuck, I hope I haven''t hurt any of the animals. ¡­No, I don''t think I have. How could I? I don''t have a stomach right now, let alone a mouth, and no part of my body is toxic.

    That''s¡­ reassuring. Even when I''m so mentally gone I cease to be myself at all, I make sure not to hurt anything. ¡­Or anyone. I form an eye on part of my body floating above the water and turn to look at Rebecca, who hangs calmly in the water next to me on a flotation device, her bare feet the only deviation from the now-soaked uniform she''s been in all day. She kicks lightly in the water to maintain position, not flinching from the one tentacle I have firmly wrapped around her hand. ¡­She does flinch a little when she spots the human eyeball that wasn''t there a second ago, but I can''t really blame her for that.

    She waited here patiently for me. With me, in this freezing tank of water, all for my sake. I just gained a lot of respect for her, all at once. When I start retracting my tentacles and reforming something at least vaguely human-adjacent, it''s actively difficult to not take her form, no matter how suboptimal it may be.

    Ugh, how do lungs work again? Right. Right, there they go.

    "...Thank you," I cough slightly, deciding to use octopus skin to make it look like I''m wearing a swimsuit as I slowly reform Lia''s body. It''s not perfect, but I do a pretty good job making it look more like fabric than flesh, if I do say so myself.

    "For throwing you in here?" she grunts. "Because I didn''t do that."

    I chuckle.

    "Double thank-you, in that case," I tell her. "That made everything much worse. Are all the animals safe?"

    "As far as I know, they''re a bit scared but otherwise fine," she answers. "Of course, we''ll have to keep an eye on them."

    "Of course," I agree, webbing growing between my fingers and toes with barely a thought from me as I right myself in the tank. "Uh, where do we go to get out?"

    "Over here," she answers, and I follow her, climbing up the ladder after her and drinking the remaining water stuck to me through my skin to dry off.

    "Do you mind if we end things here for the day?" Rebecca asks, offering me a towel for my hair.

    "Not at all!" I assure her, simply returning my hair to my body to make the water fall off before re-growing it dry. "Please, get yourself changed and something hot to drink, I''m really sorry for all this."

    "It''s¡­ fine," she lies, drying herself off instead. "You''ll be back tomorrow, won''t you?"

    "Most likely," I admit. "Again, let me know if there''s anything I can do to make up for the burden on your time."

    "It really is fine, Ms. Morgan," Rebecca sighs. "Fighting back against the aliens is everyone''s burden, and you''re going to be an important part of that. If you get a handle on half of what I''ve seen you do, you''ll be a fine superhero."

    I look away, unable to meet her gaze.

    "...Thank you, ma''am," I say, not really knowing how else to handle the situation. Universal counter: change the subject! "Um, how long was I in that tank?"

    "Nearly an hour," she answers. "I stayed in there to make sure you were still moving and your gills were still working. Everything else was a bit over my head."

    "I see," I nod. "Well again, thank you. Regardless of what you think, I feel like I owe you a debt."

    "Then when they send you out there to fight the bastards," she says, "make sure you win."

    Geez. No task too great, huh? Just send me off to accomplish something the entire human race has been failing at, no big deal.

    Still, though¡­

    "Will do, ma''am."

    ¡­It''s not like I can say no.

 22. Whatever, I Have Tiger Muscles

    I shift my body back and forth, frowning in the mirror as I try to look at myself from every angle. I''ve been going on trips to the zoo for the past three days now, and last night I cleared out their entire catalog of animals. My twitchy, shapeshifting jitters have been all the worse now that I have so many more interesting ideas to work with. I actually ripped my shorts yesterday without even thinking about it, as the constraints of clothing have felt tighter and tighter around my neck. Obviously, though, I can''t just walk around naked.

    Or at the very least, I can''t walk around appearing to be naked.

    So here I am, experimenting with covering my body in octopus skin and trying to make it look like fabric. Octopi (it sounds better than octopuses, bite me) have absolutely absurd skin biology, capable of almost instantly changing not just the color but also the texture of that skin. Most other animals that can change their skin color, like chameleons, can only apply simple palette swaps and it takes them a long time to do so, in the area of five to twenty seconds, because they control the color of their body through hormone releases into their bloodstream. Octopus skin, however, is directly linked up with my nervous system, letting me apply changes to it with the same speed and ease that I move my own hands with.

    Unfortunately, the octopus evolved to camouflage against a background of rough coral, colorful anemones, and peppery sand, not cotton shirts. I can definitely make myself not look naked, just by redistributing fat and making sure the papillae of my skin hang a little at the edges to simulate something I''m wearing rather than just looking like I''ve painted myself a different color. This isn''t enough, though, because it doesn''t believably look like the uniform, and since this is the military I get the distinct impression that I am very much supposed to wear the uniform, even if it is only a white shirt and short shorts. People are going to ask me questions if I walk outside wearing a solid pale mass of slightly shiny pseudo-shirt with little bumps on it in a vain attempt to look like finely woven fabric.

    Oh, well. I guess I''ll just fill out a power provision request form for being allowed to walk around naked. It''s a little weird, but I already know from experience that sometimes I will just have to grow bigger in a fight, and whatever I have on my person has to be able to accommodate that or it will get left behind in pieces. Maybe they have someone who can design me some sort of stretchy super-suit, but I genuinely don''t know if that''s possible outside of movies.

    A knock on the bathroom door startles me out of my thoughts.

    "Come on Lia, I need to pee," Christine mutters groggily. Right, right. I quickly put my real clothes back on and open the door for her.

    "Hey, nice job getting up on your own!" I smile at her.

    "It feels vaguely condescending to be praised for something like that," Christine grumbles, pushing past me towards the toilet.

    "Any improvement is worthy of praise," I insist. "You don''t need to be ashamed of doing better."

    I exit and shut the door to the bathroom, leaving behind her wordless grumbles. Today''s experiment might have been a failure so far, but I''m definitely going to be doing a lot of experimentation with octopus bits from here on out. Those things are awesome.

    I find that thought, and the genuine excitement behind it, to be vaguely surprising and kind of uncomfortable. I don''t really get excited about things very often, and I''m not entirely sure what to do with the giddy feeling in my chest. I idly shift and unshift a few more things as I wait for Christine to be ready to head to breakfast, growing tentacles out of my scalp in place of hair, experimenting with a dozen different kinds of animal eyes to try and find my favorite, shifting the muscles underneath my skin to try and optimize the best mix of strength and aesthetics. I don''t really need to passively walk around with super-strength because I can just give it to myself anytime I don''t have it. Still, though, it just makes me weirdly happy? I like being better than I used to be. I like turning that better state into my new norm and then finding something to improve on even further.

    I''m a firm believer in evolution, but one of the stupidest arguments I''ve heard against intelligent design is ''if all these creatures were made on purpose, why would God make something as absurd as the platypus or horrific as the horsehair worm?'' Well, because creating stuff is awesome, obviously. I''m barely scratching the surface of everything I can do, I can feel it, but all this potential inside me is a fount of hot energy, a burning need to keep going, keep improving, keep finding out what I can do next. If a god created the universe, I can''t imagine them not getting addicted.

    I almost, almost think I feel something like agreement humming in the back of my mind, the smile of something happy to be understood. But I''m probably just still waking up, last night''s dream still sticking to the edges of my mind. I would rather not believe that there''s a god poking around in my head, if I can help it.

    I feel a familiar prod at the edge of my domain and head over to open the door for Anastasia. I guess I really did take too long in the bathroom if she''s coming to get us rather than us going over to get her.

    "Hey, Ana!" I greet her, and she grins back at me, her braids bouncing as she rolls back and forth on her feet.

    "Good morning!" she greets me back. "Ready for breakfast?"

    "Just about," I confirm, glancing back at the bathroom door. "I took a little too long getting up this morning."

    "Hehe," Anastasia giggles. "I like your tennycles!"

    Huh? I lift the tentacles coming out of my head up in front of my face to check if they''re there, and¡­ well, okay, I guess obviously they are. I wiggle them in front of my eyes a bit anyway before returning them to rest on the back of my neck and down my shoulders. I guess I should probably get rid of them and turn them back into hair. I can feel them squirming and curling with next to no input from my conscious mind. They each effectively have their own brain, as an octopus'' decentralized nervous system extends down into each tentacle and I seem to have made the same additions to myself. Lifting up one of my human arms, I poke at some of my suckers and feel them instinctively curl around my finger, a dull thrum of curiosity towards what everything feels like and tastes like with these new, foreign organs.

    Oh yeah, did I mention that I can taste through my tentacles? I can taste through my tentacles. So that''s weird, but the taste is¡­ different? Like, things that I would expect to taste really bad like, say, shampoo, mostly just taste interesting. Not good, not bad, just¡­ interesting. Unique. I guess the way my tentacles taste is more about exploring substances than trying to identify what is and isn''t safe to swallow; the sensory organs on my suckers did not evolve with the assumption that everything they touch carries an immediate risk of ending up in the stomach like my tongue did. Instead, I feel an almost voracious need to investigate and grab every new thing I can get my suckers on, the entire experience abstractly engaging to the back of my mind. It''s surprisingly easy to ignore these new limbs twisting around and exploring everything they can reach, like background music or a scented candle. It''s pleasant, but not distracting. If anything, it makes it easier to focus.

    "You know what, Ana? I think I''ll keep them today," I tell her, giving her an affectionate pat on the head. "It''s not like people can get mad at me for training my power in the power training building, right?"

    "Oh, oh!" Anastasia says, bouncing up and down. "You should be a baby tiger again!"

    I chuckle.

    "Unfortunately, I think I will need thumbs for most of the day. Maybe after class?"

    "Okay!"

    Christine raises an eyebrow at my new hairstyle when she comes out of the bathroom, but she''s seen me looking a lot weirder so I guess this doesn''t even warrant a comment from her. We head to the cafeteria together like we always do, Anastasia and I collect our double servings of casserole, and Christine immediately separates hers into component parts before dropping everything back onto her plate sorted and separated.

    I hesitate. Honestly, casseroles have been pretty difficult for me to eat in the past, with so many different flavors and textures all fighting for supremacy in my mouth. After a bit of arguing with myself inside my head, I give in and push my plate closer to Christine.

    "Mind doing me?" I ask.

    She blinks at me with a far more surprised expression than the tentacles elicited.

    "Uh, yeah, sure," she agrees, and my food expands up into the air, every individual ingredient snapping into a position sorted by type rather than relative location. Christine has been getting a lot better at using her power, ironically seeming to make the most progress whenever it is in the service of allowing her to be a little more lazy. Or¡­ maybe not lazy. She''s learning better when it allows her to do something more efficiently. I should phrase it like that.

    Everything drops back onto my plate in discrete little piles, and I give her a nod and smile of thanks before chowing down on everything one at a time. Goodness, this is a lot more enjoyable. I really don''t like casserole. I can eat it normally, I''ve proved that plenty of times now, but I really don''t have to, do I? So why have I been? Trying to seem normal has been a lost cause from the start.

    "My my, I love what you''ve done with your hair," Ed says, grinning at me as he wheels up to the table. "Very chic, very avant-garde."

    "Why thank you, Ed," I say, pressing my fingers against my chest in an exaggerated, flattered expression. "I must introduce you to my stylist."

    "I would love to meet them and exchange fashion tips! I''m really hoping gray will be in next season," Ed agrees, gesturing to his salt-and-pepper hair.

    "I think it''s in season now," I say, matching my tentacles'' color to his hair. He lets out a reedy laugh and starts eating breakfast.

    "Well, good morning Medusa," Maria says, sitting down next to him. "How are the snakes today?"

    "You know, I could probably actually do that," I say, trying to think about exactly how all the body plans would connect together. I''d have to remove the digestive systems in the snakes so they don''t end up pooping in my brain or something¡­ although, maybe I could just extend the tracts down around my spine until they meet up with my esophagus¡­ I start twisting my head around a bit, trying to figure out exactly how much space I would need to free up for that kind of thing.

    "Oh crap, you''re not joking, are you? Please don''t, I''m really afraid of snakes," Maria backpedals. "You seriously think you can do that? Just turn yourself into a chimera? I mean, I guess you''re already doing it¡­"

    "No I''m not," I insist. "The chimera is a completely different mythological beast. Although yes, I could probably turn myself into one of those too. That one would be way easier, actually. Only one snake to manage."

    "Oh no, please, I really mean it about the snakes," Maria whines.

    "You should not have let her know one of your weaknesses," Christine says. "She never forgets stuff like that."

    I quickly shapeshift my tongue and flick it out of my mouth, thin and forked as I taste the air. Though rather than freaking out, Maria just turns beet-red and looks away from me. Huh. Not really what I was expecting. I wonder what''s up with that. Christine suddenly starts choking on her food, hammering a fist against her own chest as she tries to stifle a laugh between every breath she manages to take.

    This is a sex thing, isn''t it? Everybody only reacts like this when it''s a sex thing. I just flicked my tongue out, what does that¡­ no, wait, I get it now. Agh. Not what I meant, not what I meant!

    "Oh my god, you two," I sigh, trying to sound annoyed enough to convey that the innuendo was very unintentional while not sounding so annoyed that I seem judgmental or offended. Of course, I still find myself as unable to look at Maria as she seems to be unable to look at me.

    "What is it?" Anastasia asks. "What''s going on?"

    "Gross teenage stuff," Christine wheezes. "Lia is simply demonstrating her only weakness."

    I''m suppressing my blush, as is my new habit, but that doesn''t stop my tentacles from writhing in embarrassment, wrapping around each other and squeezing as if I could squish the stupid out of my head.

    Thankfully, breakfast ends before I can make too much of a fool of myself, and before I know it we''ve gotten through our first round of classes and lunch. Our group heads out to the practical class field together, chatting away with each other while I experiment with all the different versions of every sensory organ I have access to in hopes of finding my favorite set. I think I can probably mix different aspects of different eyes together in order to create an optimal ocular system, but the problem there is properly linking it to my brain. Brains are very adaptable, but my brain changes so often that adaptations don''t really stick. Using a sensory organ that no particular brain has experience with is like trying to run a resource-heavy program on an old computer. The program is incredible, but it''s just not up to speed.

    "Well recruits, you''ve made it a long way," Commander announces, pacing in front of us with a dangerous smile. "Actually getting you good at using your physics-defying gifts is somewhat beyond the scope of our time together. That will be a lifelong journey for all of you. What we do aim for here, however, is making sure you have the base of knowledge and experience required to ensure that everything you do with your powers is intentional. Purposeful. Controlled. Accidents can happen when people are learning to deal with abilities outside the scope of anything they''ve ever had in their life before. But nobody wants a soldier who has accidents. When you leave this little cradle, we want to know that whenever you kill someone, it will be very much on purpose."

    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

    She stops in the middle of our line, hands clasped behind her back as she slowly crosses her gaze over each and every one of us.

    "It''s taken you all a while, but I think we are officially at that point. And so in celebration of this agency, we''ll be having a slightly different class today. Blackburn, Cortez, Folbridge, White! Form up behind me, you are all exempt from this exercise. Everyone else!"

    She snaps her fingers and a soldier walks up next to her, holding a hat upside down.

    "Draw lots."

    Ed, along with three other people, moves behind Commander as instructed, while the person first in the remaining line walks up and pulls a piece of paper out of the hat. When it''s my turn to do so, I grab the first scrap my fingers touch and take it out to see that the number two is placed on it. Interesting. I decide to be a little proactive and perform the obvious follow-up step of finding everyone else who drew the number two. Only one other person fits the bill: a guy named Felix Koch, whose powers I''m pretty sure have something to do with secreting some kind of gross fluid.

    It doesn''t seem very special. I can do that too.

    "Alright, everyone!" Commander announces. "Welcome to the Fort Moore Power Training School Class of 2056 Single Elimination Tournament!"

    What? Wait, seriously? They''re going to have us fight each other?

    "I am, of course, well aware that most of you have the relative athletic ability of an obese housecat," Commander continues. "I also know what a concussion is. This is not a literal knockout tournament; in fact, causing any significant injury to your opponent is grounds for disqualification. You will fight to either restrain or dominate. If your domain completely crushes your opponent''s, you win. If you grab onto your opponent and they cannot break free, you win. If you otherwise prevent your opponent from moving or reaching you, you win. In cases where none of these conditions seem likely to occur without substantial injury, I will determine who wins. The two of you who drew the number one, approach. Everyone else, line up where you would at the start of class."

    "Well, this sucks," Christine mutters as we all line up. "I''m going to get annihilated."

    "Don''t count yourself out already," I encourage her. "Your power is a lot stronger than you think."

    She just glumly holds up her piece of paper, which has the number seven on it. Beside her, Anastasia gleefully holds up her paper, which has the same number. I pat Christine on the shoulder.

    "Never mind, it was nice knowing you," I tell her.

    "I wonder why those four aren''t participating," Maria comments. "I mean, Ed is in a wheelchair, so that makes sense, but what about the other three?"

    "Honestly, it might not even be the wheelchair thing," I hum. "Ed''s power straight-up doesn''t work unless he has other people to use it on. It doesn''t test his abilities to put him in a one-on-one situation. As for the others¡­ my guess is that they have the opposite problem."

    Blackburn''s power turns things into statues. Not like, stone statues, but it freezes them in place and I don''t think he has any way to unfreeze them. If he uses his power on a person, it either doesn''t work because they have enough domain protection, or they die. There isn''t really any in-between. I''m not entirely sure about the other two, but the fact that I''ve never seen them practice their powers around everyone else makes me assume a similar situation.

    Of course, it''s always possible that Ed was excluded because of his disability. Frankly, I''m not entirely sure if I want that to be the case or if it would piss me off. I''d look like an asshole trying to express a strong opinion about it in any case, so I just hope that Ed is happy to sit this out. He probably is; Ed doesn''t seem like the type of man who feels like he needs to prove himself to anyone.

    Whereas I, meanwhile, am very much going to be disappointed with myself if I don''t get first place. I killed an Angel for fuck''s sake. Getting bested by any of these morons would just be embarrassing.

    The first match is between shadow teleport guy¡ªI think his name is Cameron¡ªand someone else whom I have never really paid any attention to. Commander calls a start to the match and Cameron immediately moves towards the west side of the field, so that the sun casts his shadow along the length of the combat area. His opponent is faster, though. Much faster. His power clearly enhances his speed. Though he moves as if he is just taking a leisurely walk, he covers distance impossibly quickly, the speed at which his feet move not matching the rate at which he glides across the ground.

    As the speedster attempts to grab Cameron, however, his hand ends up swatting straight through Cameron''s wrist, which explodes into a cloud of dust. Before anyone can worry too much about whether or not Cameron just died, though, his hand reaches up out of his own shadow a few feet behind the speedster. He grabs onto the edge of the illuminated part of the ground and heaves himself up out of the earth, his body now unnaturally lanky and tall. In fact, it has the same height and proportions as the shadow his old body cast from the evening sun.

    Now that his opponent is far larger, with an enormous stride and an unnatural reach, the speedster backpedals to keep his distance, dodging a swipe from one of Cameron''s newly giant arms. Cameron seems content to give his opponent space, resuming his walk west. Why wouldn''t he? His now-larger body casts a now-larger shadow, putting him more or less in the same position he started with but better.

    The way Cameron moves in his elongated body is disturbing; I''ve fought giants and I''ve been giants, and something with that much mass has a fundamentally different presence than something the size of a person. An insect can fall out of a tree and hit the ground almost entirely unharmed, even if it can''t fly. A person would be severely injured by that same fall. An elephant, meanwhile, would die instantly from a far shorter fall. Physics is cruel to the large, yet Cameron doesn''t seem to be moving any differently than he did before. It''s as if he didn''t get any bigger at all, everything else just got smaller.

    Not that I think that most of us would be okay if we jumped out of a tree right now. Powers just¡­ make the world not work right.

    Eventually, Cameron''s shadow is long enough to cover the entire length of our designated battlefield. Then, it''s only a matter of using it to hem the speedster in. As his opponent tries to jump over Cameron''s shadow to regain space, though, Cameron''s hand shoots up from the darkness and latches onto his leg. After a few seconds of the speedster failing to escape, Commander calls the match.

    "Group two! You''re up next!"

    Well, I guess that''s me. Felix and I head onto the field, my opponent giving me a cocky smile as we square off against each other.

    "Don''t feel too bad," he says. "The rules are hilariously in my favor."

    "If you say so," I answer blandly, uninterested in posturing. I kick off my shoes and socks, my clothes growing tight as my body bulges, as much muscle as I can fit into this humanoid frame blooming into existence with a twist of will. I crouch down slightly and wait.

    "Begin!"

    As expected, Felix waves his hand toward me and emits a glob of grayish goop in my direction. I dodge without much trouble and start rushing towards him, so he responds by backpedaling and coating the ground between us in slime. I hesitate, my path towards him blocked off, and he takes the opportunity to start expanding his area of control, starting with shooting more bits of goop at my feet. Ugh, this is annoying. If I could just take my clothes off I could turn into something that can fly, but trying to figure out how to create a flying body that can also wear a shirt and shorts has been an exercise in futility so far.

    Whatever, I have tiger muscles. I can do the next best thing, and jump.

    He clearly isn''t expecting me to leap fifteen feet straight at him from a standing position, but I guess his confidence wasn''t entirely for nothing because he still manages to react. He jumps away from me as I jump towards him, coating the area he was standing in with more gunk as he rolls into his own trap. It doesn''t seem to affect him at all, letting him rise to his feet immediately, but the moment I land my feet jerk to an instant stop, nearly toppling me over onto my face as I''m unable to skid even a centimeter.

    I''m glued down. Again, this makes very little sense. The ground underneath us is grass and soil. Even if I was superglued to the earth, I could just pick up some earth and take a step anyway. Whatever surface-level dirt gets caught on my feet wouldn''t really be much of a hindrance. But nope! I straight-up can''t move my feet at all.

    The goop is also weirdly comfortable? Like, it''s just the right temperature, it doesn''t have that unpleasant clamminess I''d expect from a heavily viscous liquid, and it hasn''t even splashed up between my toes to annoyingly stick them together. Felix''s entire domain just kinda feels nice, comfortable and hopeful that I''ll enjoy my stay inside of it. I briefly wonder if I''ve misjudged him. Was he really giving me an arrogant smirk, or were the words that I interpreted as smack talk actually genuine? ¡­Nah, probably not. People aren''t that nice.

    "Gotcha!" Felix grins. "See what I mean? My power is perfect for locking people down."

    I ignore him and push my domain down into the goop at my feet, trying to see if I can overpower him enough to disable the adhesion. It''s clearly a supernatural property of the liquid, and one that his domain controls given that he can walk through his own slime just fine. I don''t succeed at freeing myself, though, so either his power doesn''t require much dominance to work or I''m just wrong. Probably the former.

    Okay, plan B then.

    "As far as I know there''s straight-up no way to get out of that other than me letting¡ªwoah woah woah what are you doing!?"

    I lift up the top half of my foot, leaving the stuck bottom behind and reforming it before taking a step. Then I free my next foot, leaving the stuck flesh behind from it, and so on as I approach my opponent.

    "Oh my god," he says, cringing back and retreating from me. "Oh my god, holy shit, are you alright?"

    "Yep," I assure him. What a fucking baby. I''m killing off the bottom parts of my foot and reforming the flesh underneath to be relatively stable before I lift my leg. I''m not even bleeding when I do this. It barely hurts.

    He takes another step back and I shift my right hand into a long mass of tentacles, reaching out to try and grab him before he can run away further.

    "Nope, nope, nope," he squeaks, and the ground underneath me stops being adhesive. "I forfeit."

    Hmm. Commander never actually mentioned whether or not it''s legal to forfeit. Just in case, I keep advancing on him until she calls the match.

    "Morgan!" she snaps at me. "You win by forfeit."

    Oh, alright then. I drop my arm and shapeshift my hand back into place, a ripple of scales passing onto and then off of my skin.

    "Good match," I nod to him. "Your initial tactic was okay, and it still slowed me down. You probably should have tried coating my whole body with that stuff once you made it harder to dodge. It would have been a lot more costly to replace my entire epidermis."

    He just gives me an uncomfortable stare. I guess that makes sense. Most people don''t like to get advice right after losing. It''s a bad habit to not look for ways to improve when you fail, of course, but that''s just how people are.

    "Okay, now the two of you clean up the field of the mess you left on it," Commander orders.

    That seems to snap Felix back to attention, and he retracts his entire domain, the goop vanishing wherever his power no longer touches. I walk over and retrieve the now-unglued chunks of my own feet that I left behind, wondering what exactly I''m supposed to do with them. Part of me is tempted to¡­ eat them? And I mean, in terms of efficiency that''s a pretty good idea, but that would probably make a few people vomit if they saw me do it. I guess I''ll just carry them back with me into the line and surreptitiously feed them to a mouth I form on some other part of my body. That should be doable, right? It''ll be a fun way to pass the time between matches, at the very least.

    Man, this is such a weird thought process to have. It is absolutely insane that my life has reached a point wherein I am considering eating my own discarded dead feet, but like¡­ it''s optimal. My power is limited based off my own biomass reserves, which have no known upper limit but can very much run out. Eating everything I can get away with eating is the best way to prepare for future engagements, and my life from here on out is more or less just going to be a very long string of future engagements rapidly becoming present engagements. The idea of eating my own discarded flesh is a little gross to any human brains I use, but at this point I have fewer available human brains than I do other kinds of brains, and I know I won''t mind at all if I just swap over to one of the more cannibalistically inclined options at my disposal.

    I suppose I could be even more optimal, though. Like¡­ maybe I should grow a part of my body designed to attract and catch insects. It wouldn''t really be a fast method of gaining more biomass but every little bit adds up. Heck, I can digest the grass on the ground now, come to think of it. I bet Commander would yell at me if I started eating her lawn, though. Could I eat a tree? I''ve definitely picked up biological information from a few tree parasites here and there, but I''m not sure how much actual biomass I would get from chewing wood. Presumably, I am using the specific materials and chemicals that I eat in order to form the body parts that I make. Does wood have the proteins and minerals and other components that I use to grow body parts? I don''t have any idea. I''ll have to look that up at some point in the future when I actually have internet access. Maybe I''ll chew on a two-by-four at some point in the meantime, just to see what happens.

    These are all questions for later, though. Cameron and I won the first two matches, so Cameron will be my next opponent, assuming a normal tournament structure. How can I stop him? His ability to teleport to any location in his shadow makes him very hard to restrain, and I doubt I can just act weird enough to intimidate him into surrendering. I wasn''t even under the impression that was an option, I just sort of did it by accident. So how can I actually win?

    I guess the first question is ''what happens if I stop Cameron from exiting his shadow?'' Normally, he leaves behind some sort of creepy husk to continue casting the shadow that he crawls out of, but what if I force him to stay inside it while the husk disintegrates? What if I move the light source while he''s in the middle of trying to emerge? I''m not sure I can risk figuring out the answer to those questions, because if what happens is really bad for Cameron, I''m disqualified for hurting him. That''s not really an option.

    ¡­Because it hurts Cameron. It''s not an option because it would hurt Cameron. Not because it would disqualify me. Right, brain? What brain am I even using right now anyway? Whose is this? Oh shoot, ''who'' isn''t even the right question, is it? It looks mostly like an alien brain, but there''s also¡­ wait, when did I start mixing them?

    "Begin!"

    Oh, the next match is starting. I quickly switch back to Lia''s brain and resolve to investigate this later. Hey, Peter''s fighting! Kick his ass, other guy!

    Man, I probably should have learned some of these people''s names. I''m just not really in the habit of introducing myself to others, and nobody other than Maria and Ed has gone out of their way to introduce themselves to me. I get the impression that a lot of people are scared of me.

    That''s kind of a weird thing to think about. Julietta, the legitimate threat. I know it''s been the case for a while now, but it still doesn''t feel like me. I''m just trying to use my power in the best way I can. It''s not my fault that it''s weird.

    Speaking of powers, the guy currently fighting Peter uses his to pull a bunch of humanoid dirt monsters up out of the ground, their bodies flash-solidifying into imposing stone golems. He makes half a dozen of them, each nearly eight feet tall, and they rush towards Peter simultaneously. For his part, though, Peter just stands there with his hands in his pockets, wearing his usual shit-eating grin.

    Damn. I was really hoping Peter would lose.

    The golems surround him on all sides, closing in and forming a solid wall of stone around him. In any normal situation, this would be the end of the match, since golem guy can win by preventing the opponent from moving or reaching him. Against a lot of the powers here, he probably would have won, but I can tell from Peter''s dumb face that he is supremely confident how this match is going to go.

    Sure enough, Peter just walks right out of the encasement.

    The absolutely wild thing about this is that it is neither an exaggeration nor an understatement. Peter walks forward, and the stone that would normally be impeding him simply doesn''t. He doesn''t phase through it, he doesn''t teleport through it, he walks through it, pushing it aside like it was a wall made of bubbles and leaving behind a Peter-shaped hole.

    It wasn''t even a show of strength. He didn''t hit the wall, or otherwise generate enough force to break it. He just strolled leisurely through it and reality simply lacked the means to stop him. I see what he meant now, when he described his power to me. Not invincible, although that is a pleasant side effect. Inviolable. Unable to be broken or infringed. Peter is an immovable object that can move.

    And I need to figure out some way to stop him anyway, because there''s no way I''m letting that smarmy bastard beat me in the third round.

 23. Theres Nothing Wrong With Being A Little Weird

    The fourth round comes and goes without much fanfare. Neither participant is anyone I know, so I spend most of the time focusing on thinking about more optimal body plans and surreptitiously digesting the biomass I discarded earlier. It turns out that adding an extra esophagus isn''t too difficult, and I can fit a mouth around or beside my abdominal muscles without too much issue. The main problem is gravity; my initial attempt at adding a second throat was trying to pull the food up into the bottom of my stomach, which was both intrinsically inefficient and immediately caused acid reflux to pour down into unprepared tissue when I tried to swallow. Very uncomfortable, but good to know for the future.

    I probably should have paid attention to the fourth match. There is a chance, however slim, that the winner will beat Peter somehow and I''ll have to face them in my third match, but if there''s someone whose ability is more dangerous than the capacity to casually brush aside solid matter I''m not entirely sure what sort of plans I''d be able to concoct against them. One way or another, the match is over now, and I''m definitely watching the next one.

    After all, Maria is participating.

    "Careful," Christine says to Maria as she starts heading towards the field. "She can really mess with your head."

    Maria grimaces.

    "I already do enough of that by myself, but thanks for the warning."

    "Good luck," I offer her, and she brightens up a bit.

    "Thanks," she smiles back. "I don''t really have any idea how I''m going to fight with my powers, but I''ll give it a shot!"

    I give her an approving nod. I think that''s pretty much what this whole exercise is about, after all. How does a person instinctively use their own abilities to fight? There''s a lot you can learn about the person and how they view what they''re capable of by watching them in a high-stress situation.

    Less distracted by encouragement, Maria''s opponent makes it to the field first and immediately starts doing some quick stretches before hopping up and down a few times, shaking out her limbs. I don''t quite recall her name, but I know her domain isn''t very strong because she''s one of the people whose template I''ve accidentally picked up while wandering around. Her shoulder-length blonde hair is put up in a ponytail to keep it out of her face, and what she lacks in domain strength she clearly makes up for on the physical side. She was definitely some kind of athlete before the whole superpowers thing, putting her build more on par with the soldiers guarding us than most of my fellow superhumans. Which is nice! It''s always good to get more physically impressive templates; every bit of extra information helps with the optimization process.

    It''s a bit unlucky for Maria, though. Against most opponents she might be able to forgo using powers at all and just take advantage of her superior strength and size to catch and disable people for the victory. She might still have the advantage in strength against an athlete simply because of that sheer size, but actually catching her opponent will be much harder.

    "Hey, if you start getting dizzy or something, would you let me know?" Maria''s opponent asks her. "I don''t want to accidentally give you heatstroke."

    "Um, alright, I''ll keep that in mind I guess," Maria agrees uncomfortably.

    "Delaney! Galloway! Are you both ready?" Commander asks, and the contestants nod. "Begin!"

    Maria immediately summons her fairy self, the small, orange copy of her appearing out of nowhere and then starting to glow so brightly that she''s difficult to directly look at. That''s at least fairly useful on a tactical level, though I have a suspicion that Maria figured out how to do that just because she was embarrassed about people looking at her.

    Athlete girl¡ªI guess her last name is Galloway¡ªwastes no time closing the distance, her hands up in front of her head in some kind of MMA stance. Her face is expressionless as she rushes forward, and for some reason I can see her breath condensing after every exhale like it''s the middle of winter. Maria doesn''t look cold, though. If anything she''s starting to look a little flushed, more blood being diverted to the surface of her skin in an attempt to cool off. Before the other girl can even get close enough to try and land the first grab, Maria is already sweating. Some kind of heat-controlling power, clearly, but surely that''s not all it does?

    Fairy-Maria immediately flies interference, swooping down towards the other girl''s eyes and trying to blind her with light. Galloway swats at her like an insect, but between mini-Maria''s speed and being half-blind, she misses. Maria pretty much has a free shot to grab her opponent and lock her down.

    But for some reason, instead of doing that, she starts laughing.

    It''s not just the bolder version of Maria either: both her fairy body and her main body start cackling like madwomen, moving away from Galloway as she recovers and attempts to trip Maria''s main body.

    "Hahaha! Oh, you were not kidding, it is sweltering! Woo!" big Maria grins.

    "Sucks to be you!" fairy-Maria laughs. "I feel fine! Should have been an energy construct, idiot!"

    What the hell is going on? Geez, Christine wasn''t kidding about the mental effects. So this power can control the temperature and also make people have a manic episode? Or something?

    Fairy-Maria flashes in front of Galloway''s face again (extremely literally, I suppose) while her other body reaches out to grab her opponent. The moment Maria makes contact, though, she recoils back, shaking her hand out like she just burned it. Or maybe froze it? It could be either, I suppose. Galloway herself certainly doesn''t seem to need to sweat as much to fight off the heat, her breath still condensing out of every exhale before rapidly evaporating back into invisibility an inch away from her face.

    Ah, I get it now. Keeping herself cool while trying to overheat her opponent, huh? If the look on her face is any indication, she''s doing this both physically and metaphorically. Galloway looks unusually calm and collected as she fights, while Maria is of course still giggling even as she winces in pain. It skews the entire playing field, giving Galloway a physical and mental advantage just from being active. I have to wonder what it could accomplish at even more extreme temperatures, if that''s even something she can do. Boiling her opponent alive would obviously be violating the rules of the tournament, but assuming she can do that and her opponent can survive it, what kind of effect would it have on her opponent mentally? I should ask to train with her sometime; I want to see if I can figure out some way to detect and compensate for any powers that affect my mind. I doubt her ability would affect an alien brain in the same way it affects Maria.

    "Hahaha! Ow! Haha!"

    Maria seems to be struggling to breathe properly with her constant laughter, and whatever Galloway is doing with the temperature directly around her body seems to make it impossible for Maria to grab her. She''s definitely going to lose if she doesn''t figure something out, but it doesn''t look like she''s in a great state of mind for making plans.

    "I''ll get her!" fairy-Maria declares, swooping down and latching onto the back of Galloway''s head, yanking her hair tie. "Oooh, this almost feels like air conditioning!"

    "Let me get her, let me!" big Maria demands, though her mania isn''t quite so extreme as to forget the fact that touching Galloway means pain.

    "Hahaha! Come and do it, then!"

    "Fine!"

    A flash of blue lights up the arena, and suddenly a second fairy appears next to big Maria, immediately rushing towards Galloway''s face. Already flailing a bit trying to get the orange fairy off of her head, the newly made blue one collides right with her nose, grabbing her eyebrows and holding on tight as her opponent desperately starts trying to scrape them off. Maria''s larger body blinks in confusion, looking down at her own hands and flexing them, a hint of her manic smile still remaining on her face.

    The expression isn''t the only thing different about her face, though. Whenever Maria has her fairy out, it seems like her eyes get brighter, just a subtle change in color that I could be imagining. With two fairies out, though, the glow is unmistakable. Moreover, the glow is green, entirely different from the usual pretty blue of her irises, and as I adjust my eyes to better see the details from a distance, I notice that her ears are pointier than before as well.

    "Oh, I think I get it," big Maria says, and then there is a flash of green.

    The newly made green fairy rushes off to harass Galloway with the others, big Maria''s eyes now blazing with a yellow light. Her manic laughter returns in force, and almost immediately another flash creates another fairy to join the fray. With four giggling pixies blasting light in her eyes, yanking on her hair, pulling on her clothes, and trying to knock her off-balance, Galloway can''t seem to do anything but flail around, leaving Maria''s main body unharassed.

    The physical body''s ears are long and sharp now, unmistakably elfish, and the purple glow now shining in her eyes seems to be slightly discoloring her entire body, making it seem grayish and ghostly. Most notable of all, however, are the small but brilliantly purple wings of light on her back, each only around the size of her hands but still very present, fluttering experimentally at the air.

    The purple-eyed Maria''s mouth twitches with only a brief smile before reaching out and wrapping one of her hands solidly around the top of Galloway''s bicep. Finishing what her smaller selves have started, she yanks her opponent completely off balance, gets a grip on both of her arms, and lifts her bodily into the air, ignoring the chill that had just previously made her untouchable. Galloway kicks and squirms, but she can''t seem to budge Maria''s grip.

    "That''s match!" Commander declares, seeming quite pleased. "Delaney wins!"

    "WOOOOOO!" every single fairy Maria cheers together, while the main body silently drops Galloway. The strange temperature differences revert to normal, the cause of them rubbing at her sore face and blinking her abused eyes as she kneels down to paw through the grass for her hair tie.

    "Haha, wow, okay wow, we won, that''s cool," blue Maria says, breathing heavily as she comes down from the power-induced mania. "Alright, I guess I''m a fairy now, and you''re a fairy, and you''re a fairy¡­"

    "Quintuple Maria power!" the yellow Maria whoops.

    "Damn, it''s a good thing we''re all color-coded or this would get really confusing," the orange Maria smirks.

    "It does seem awfully convenient, but I suppose that''s superpowers for you," green Maria shrugs. The big Maria just watches this entire conversation silently, the only movement on her blank face being a long, slow blink.

    "Deactivate your power and get off the field, Delaney," Commander orders.

    "Oh! Right, okay, um¡­ do we have to do this in a certain order, or¡­?" Blue hedges.

    "We all have different domains, so does just existing actually count as ''using our power?''" Orange smirks. "My power is just glowing."

    "I think it''s pretty obvious what the intent of the order is," Green says flatly.

    "I''ll go, I''ll go," Yellow sighs, flying into big Maria''s chest and vanishing. The wings on big Maria''s back fizzle out and her eyes turn yellow. "Alright girls, let''s pack into this clown car."

    "I suppose we''ll just reverse the order for now," Green hums. "We can experiment later."

    She reenters the body, followed by Blue, followed by a reluctant Orange. When they do, the main body''s eyes turn green, then blue, but when Orange rejoins the eyes remain blue, simply devoid of any glow. Now back to her normal self, rounded ears and all, Maria shudders slightly and heads back towards Anastasia, Christine, and me.

    "Good match," Galloway pants, holding out a hand for Maria to shake.

    "O-oh, what? Um, thank you, yeah," Maria stammers distractedly, taking Galloway''s hand and shaking it politely. She barely seems to be paying attention, though, staring vacantly at nothing in particular as she resumes her walk towards us. Yeah, she''s probably not doing great. She doesn''t like it when her own power messes with her head, and somebody just mind-whammied her into doing it four times over. I quit idly messing around with my internal organs and prepare myself for damage control.

    "Hey Maria, you did great out there," I greet her with a smile.

    "Uh, yeah," she answers without looking at me. Well, that''s not good. She''s definitely dissociating, so I need to ground her attention on something. The question is whether or not I gently press her to talk about what just happened. If she''s in a fragile state of mind it would be better to distract her with something unrelated, like how I try to get Christine to talk about giant robots whenever she''s having an episode. I don''t think Maria is in quite that kind of situation, though. She seems like she''s actively trying to process what happened, so there''s a good chance she''ll welcome a bit of help with that. And if she doesn''t, well, it''s probably not going to be a bad enough mistake that I can''t course-correct back to distraction.

    "So¡­ are you dealing with five sets of memories now?" I ask bluntly.

    That gets her to look at me, and the expression on her face is still largely blank rather than on the verge of an anxiety attack or something, so I probably took the right route.

    "...Yeah," Maria confirms. "It''s¡­ a lot."

    "All mixing together in a confusing mush, huh?" I prompt.

    "Uh¡­ no," she says. "I mean, kind of, but no. It''s actually all very¡­ discrete? It''s a lot of memories, and they''re my memories, but they''re also¡­ I don''t know. It''s weird. It''s like one set of memories is¡­ more mine than the others. S-sorry, never mind, I probably just sound crazy."

    "Not at all," I reassure her, reaching up to pat her on the shoulder. "It makes perfect sense to me. Memories are allowed to be a little weird, people are just weird."

    She hums a noncommittal response and shrugs, looking glum but at least no longer dissociating as much. Another fight between two people I don''t really care about starts on the field in front of us, but this is way more important so I bump my shoulder into Maria''s side to catch her attention again.

    "When you were out there, you said something about thinking you got it," I press gently. "When you had green eyes, I think?"

    "...My eye color changed?" she asks.

    "Oh, yeah, I guess all of your yous were too busy fighting to really pay much attention," I hum. "But yeah, your eye color changed from blue to green to yellow to purple, and whenever you made a fairy they glowed the same color as your eyes were immediately beforehand. Your physical body also started changing into something fairylike, but those changes reverted when you recombined."

    "...I see," Maria frowns. "That''s less surprising than I feel like it should be, actually."

    "How so?" I ask, my tentacles twisting curiously.

    "I don''t know, it just feels¡­ obvious? Natural? Something about having more mini-fairies making my main body stronger intrinsically makes sense. I have no idea why, but it does. It''s almost like¡­"

    She trails off, looking very much like she regrets ever starting that sentence. Which means I probably shouldn''t push, but now I''m just too curious.

    "It''s almost like what?" I ask, leaning in front of her a little as she tries to glance away from me. "C''mon, discontinuity of consciousness club!"

    "...Don''t think about discontinuity of consciousness club," Maria mutters, and I laugh.

    If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

    "I''m not gonna judge you," I promise her. "Really."

    She sighs, not answering at first, but I can tell she''s working herself up to it so I give her the time she needs. It probably won''t be more than thirty seconds, so I make sure to keep my attention visibly on her rather than getting distracted by the fight. It''s important, in moments like these, to signal that the person you''re talking to is the most significant thing that could be happening. Maria feels vulnerable, exposing that vulnerability to me is an act of trust, and all sorts of little unintentional things can seem like a betrayal of that trust if you''re not careful.

    "It''s almost like¡­ they''re all still in there," Maria says softly. "Like if I start thinking about their memories too much I''ll start thinking as them, rather than me. Like I''ve split apart too much to come back together again. Some of the memories still feel like mine, and all of them at least kind of feel like mine, but there''s a difference now. Or maybe there was always a difference and now it''s just obvious enough for me to see it."

    Huh. Yeah, that sounds pretty stressful. What to say here¡­

    "When you say ''always,'' do you mean ever since getting your power, or even since before then?" I ask.

    "I don''t know, Lia," she groans, and I do my best to focus on her body language to avoid getting distracted by that name. God I hate that name. "I don''t know if I want to know. Either my power is making me go crazy or I''ve always been crazy, and neither is particularly pleasant to think about."

    "Well, maybe you should stop thinking about either of them as being ''crazy,''" I say, raising an eyebrow at her. "I mean, it''s not exactly a medical term, but I feel like you don''t qualify as crazy unless you are failing to comprehend reality in detrimental ways. Those cultists who think vaccines aren''t real are crazy. You''re just weird, and there''s nothing wrong with being a little weird."

    "I guess you''d know," Maria huffs. "But you don''t really seem to care what other people think about you. You act like you''re above all that stuff, and I mean, that confidence is pretty cool, but I don''t think I can just decide to stop worrying about this. Like I just¡­ who even am I? I feel like I''m looking at other people''s memories, but I did those things, right? Like, objectively, some part of me did the things that I remember doing and I''m responsible for that. That''s terrifying. I don''t know what my power is going to do when I use it, but I have to live and act as if I''m in control."

    I suck on the inside of my cheek a little. I think I''m probably going down the wrong track here. That''s a pretty rational fear, not just an unwarranted anxiety, so maybe a practical solution would be more welcome than just encouragement. That normally isn''t the case at all; when people complain about their fears and insecurities they are usually in need of understanding more than material assistance, but I think I might actually have a reasonable solution so it probably wouldn''t hurt to mention it.

    "When you were in a bunch of different bodies, the different yous talked amongst themselves," I remind her. "They had a conversation, and they all seemed to act like relatively normal people as levitating fairies go. The same thing happened when you first showed me your power. The orange you and the other you disagreed with each other, but neither was irrational and both believed themselves to be Maria. They probably have similar fears to you, or at the very least they can probably understand your fears. You can talk things out with them. You can share responsibility. At least, that''s what I would try. I don''t think there''s anything bad about there being more than one Maria. Maria is pretty cool."

    She blushes, but only a little, seeming to be thinking about my words beyond just the compliment.

    "...When the other mes are around, though, do I¡­ I mean, does the Maria you''re talking to right now even exist?" she asks.

    Hmm. Do I sugarcoat it? No, I think she needs to hear it.

    "That''s for you to figure out," I say. "I don''t know what it''s like to be you. But maybe the answer is no. Maybe you do stop existing when you use your power, at least for a little while. Maybe I do too. Maybe we stop existing every time we go to sleep. Maybe we all stopped existing the first time Cross Country teleported us. Maybe the answer to all of these questions is entirely subjective because the self is an illusion created by randomized systems that determined caring very much about who we are and the continuation of that person meant that we were more likely to have sex. Philosophers have been looking for the fundamental particle that defines the self since the dawn of intelligence, and we have yet to concoct even a single satisfying theory. So you and I aren''t going to find the ''correct'' answer to that. No amount of thinking will reach the truth. And that is why we have the first rule of the discontinuity of consciousness club."

    Maria stares at me for a moment and then closes her eyes, taking a deep breath in through her nose and a shaky exhale out through her mouth. Then she nods, turning her attention away from me and towards the battlefield. It looks like the match just ended, meaning that Christine and Anastasia are up next.

    "Okay but what if I have an evil fairy that like, glows octarine and kills people or something," Maria asks somewhat facetiously.

    "Well, I''m pretty sure that''s not how it works, but if it is that would be fine," I shrug. "We''re soldiers. Our job is to kill people."

    "I mean, our job is to kill aliens, right?" Maria hedges.

    I don''t answer. I''m not really sure what I should say. Even if Angels are people, it doesn''t particularly matter because they''re still an existential threat to the survival of the human species. One way or another, we have to get them off our lawn, and if that means we have to use the lawnmower then so be it. Besides, I might even be wrong. Statistically speaking, my cynicism has to be wrong at least some of the time.

    "Well, time to go forfeit, I guess," Christine mutters.

    "Hey, wait a second, you should still try," I protest.

    "Why? Even you can''t believe in me for this one," Christine insists. "I don''t want to fight Ana anyway. I don''t want her to get hurt."

    "Well, she''s not going to get good practice in if you don''t put in any effort," I say. "The point of the exercise isn''t to hurt each other. It''ll be good for both of you!"

    "Yeah Christine, let''s fight!" Anastasia agrees happily.

    "No thanks," Christine grimaces. "You can just take the win, Ana."

    "Booo!" Anastasia protests, puffing out her cheeks.

    "I guess you''ll just have to give her proper encouragement, Ana," I smile. "It''s times like these where instead of just insisting that Christine does something, we have to make sure she''s sufficiently incentivized."

    "Wait, hold on, what the heck are you teaching this kid?" Christine asks, a justifiably worried look on her face.

    "Oh, I get it," Anastasia grins menacingly. "Like you were talking about the candy and the carrot!"

    The carrot and the stick metaphor wasn''t doing the job because Anastasia doesn''t like carrots, but she gets the idea now. I nod approvingly.

    "Exactly," I praise her.

    "Well, I know what to do in that case," Anastasia says. "I don''t think I have any candy, but I know about all sorts of carrots!"

    "I don''t like where this is going," Christine whimpers.

    Anastasia looks up at Christine and gives her the biggest, sweetest, most intimidating smile a child can manage.

    "If you''re a smart girl, you''ll fight me so you don''t have to find out," she says happily, and then heads towards the field when Commander calls their names. Christine stares at me with an expression that''s equal parts accusation and horror.

    "What are you doing to our sweet baby Ana?" she demands.

    I shrug.

    "I don''t know what you mean. I''m just being a good role model," I answer proudly.

    She throws her hands up into the air and stomps off to get her butt kicked. I really hope she does her best; she''s been slowly getting better at using her power and it''s starting to look like a really impressive one. She reluctantly lines up across from Anastasia, and then Commander starts the match.

    "Begin!"

    Anastasia wastes no time tearing one of her wrists open, not even flinching at the pain as blood pours from the wound and twists around her like angry snakes. When enough of it has gathered, she launches it towards Christine, whom I am pleased to see is running towards Anastasia to close the gap. That''s a very dangerous thing to do, but it''s also something Christine has to do if she wants to win. In an environment with a lot of large, heavy objects, Christine might be able to reconfigure them in a way that traps Anastasia, but there''s nothing like that on the open turf of the glorified soccer pitch.

    Still, she needs to avoid the mass of blood rushing her way if she doesn''t want to be immediately caught. Anastasia is of course not launching her attack anywhere near as quickly as she''s able to, since that might risk hurting Christine, but she still has incredibly fine control over the movement of the liquid and only needs to capture Christine inside a large enough glob to hold her down. Christine ducks to the side, barely dodging Anastasia''s first attempt by letting it pass over her head, but as impressive as that is, there''s nothing stopping Anastasia from turning that blood back around and grabbing her from behind. Sure enough, that''s exactly what she does.

    The red whip of blood does an immediate one-eighty, wrapping around Christine''s arms and torso to hold her in place. Christine jerks to a stop, the liquid acting as solid as steel as Christine tries to struggle out of its grip. It wraps around her like a web, growing ever stronger as it is reinforced by the constant trickle from Anastasia''s wrist. Soon enough, Christine can''t do anything but twist her neck from side to side. Hmm. It''s not over already, is it?

    All the blood wrapped around Christine explodes.

    Or, I suppose it would be more accurate to say, all the blood wrapped around Christine is sorted into its component parts. Instead of blood floating in the air, there are clouds of red, yellow, and white dust, pure chemical water, salt, and a dozen other things I can''t identify. Exploded out from her and frozen in place, the separated materials drop to the ground without fanfare, Christine ending her power''s effect almost as quickly as she used it. Anastasia, of course, cannot retake control. The separated components of her blood are not blood.

    "Woah!" Anastasia yelps.

    "You asked for this, squirt!" Christine reminds her. "Get over here and accept your noogie!"

    "Waaah!"

    Anastasia turns and starts running away, and I don''t entirely blame her. I''ve never seen Christine threaten anyone before and it''s a little terrifying from shock value alone. Sure, there''s nothing particularly intimidating about a noogie, but Christine just all but confirmed that her power works on people, and that is a mental image you could put in a horror movie.

    She might be able to put them back together again, too, but that just makes the point about the horror movie count for double. Christine''s power gives her some amount of information on the internal structure of things in her domain, right? She mentioned that we had recording devices in our walls without actually taking the walls apart. So is she constantly aware of the general status of everyone''s internal organs like I am? I can''t believe I''ve never tried to bond with her over that. It feels like such a missed opportunity now.

    Wait, can Christine cure cancer? Like, logically, she could take somebody apart, and then put them back together without any cancer cells, right? I have got to get a rat or something to help her test this with. This might be a big enough deal to get her out of frontline duty, which I know would be a huge relief for her.

    "Got you!" Christine declares, scooping Anastasia up in both arms. "Are you prepared for the consequences of your actions?"

    "No!" Anastasia shrieks, flailing around. "I don''t have any con-sick-quencys!"

    "Sorry kiddo, that one''s definitely not adult prerogative. Everybody''s got the consequencys."

    "Including you!"

    Blood pours out from the inside of Anastasia''s clothes, covering Christine in an instant and forcing her arms apart. Anastasia drops to the ground, putting her little fists on her hips and staring triumphantly up at the bound Christine.

    "We''re too close together for you to overpower me this time, Christine! Ahahahaha!"

    Anastasia belts out an absolutely spot-on witch cackle as Christine struggles against her bonds again, and sure enough she doesn''t seem able to explode the blood this time. When Anastasia and Christine were far apart, Anastasia had to stretch her domain thin in order to reach with her power, but Christine could keep her domain close to remove the blood near her body, giving her a disproportionate advantage. But now that Anastasia can also shrink her domain and still encompass Christine with it, that advantage is negated. Christine had no choice but to get close in order to try and grapple Anastasia, but getting close meant that Anastasia could leverage the full weight of her much more powerful domain. Christine really was doomed from the start.

    Still, that was a pretty fun fight to watch. I know I''m not her mom or anything, but I''m weirdly proud of Christine going out and doing her best. It definitely looks like Anastasia had fun, and I think at the very least, Christine can be proud of that too.

    "Good match, you two," I greet them as they return.

    "Yeah, yeah," Christine dismisses, but she doesn''t seem to be in a bad mood.

    "You did way better than I thought you would, Christine!" Anastasia says.

    "Wow, don''t praise me too much," Christine answers flatly.

    "Okay!"

    I chuckle along with the banter as the next match is prepared. It''s some guy whose power involves making big shadowy hands appear out of the air or something against another guy whom I don''t know at all. Not terribly interesting, though I should probably encourage Anastasia to watch since she''ll be facing whoever wins. I glance down to let her know but she''s already focused. I smile, a little bitterly. She''s going to be a great soldier.

    "You don''t seem very happy," Christine comments. "You''d better not fucking tell me I didn''t try hard enough."

    "No, I said you did good and I meant it," I assure her. "Thank you for doing that. You really surprised me with the blood trick, but I guess in retrospect I should have seen it coming. I think I have a better idea why you''re so reluctant to use your powers, though I''m a bit curious as to why you never tried to go on the offensive back then."

    In the incursion zone, I mean. I know Christine was having a lot of trouble using her abilities, but when she successfully pulled it off it was never to rip apart the aliens who were trying to kill us. It was always to manipulate buildings or other parts of the environment.

    "Well, for starters I''m pretty sure I was under a dissonance effect the entire time," Christine says. "I didn''t really know what it was back then, but¡­ whenever I tried to use my power, my power felt like it was getting weaker. That was doubly true when we were fighting one of the Angels. I wasn''t just experiencing dissonance against them, I was also experiencing it against the Queen."

    Oh. Oh, that''s interesting. She didn''t just have that reaction with the one Angel that attacked us, she had it with both Angels and the Queen, which implies all three of them are part of the same¡­ category of power, I guess? Whatever attribute determines resonance and dissonance, all three of the powered aliens from that incursion had it matched, and so did Christine. And the aliens tried to kidnap Christine. That''s big. I don''t know what that means, but it definitely means something.

    When the Angel I killed was¡­ talking to me, or sending information to me, or whatever we were doing to communicate, I''m pretty sure that at one point it said something about a god. Religion is not something I can imagine a non-sapient species having a concept of, so that stood out to me as clear evidence of imagination, wonder, culture, and other important things. But what if it''s more meaningful than that? What if the aliens understand the categories that match resonance and dissonance patterns and built their culture around those differences? What if they consider each power to come from a specific god?

    ¡­What if they''re right? At the very least, the source of superpowers must be so far above our understanding of the world that it may as well be a god. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and all that. Not to mention the dreams. It seems absurd to not at least investigate how all of these things might be related.

    "That''s match! Wiggins wins."

    Woah, is it over already? It looks like psychic projection hands guy just grabbed his opponent almost immediately and won outright. I suppose it is a pretty good power for capturing and restraining someone. Anastasia is going to have to be careful, though I still bet she''ll win.

    "Small! Morgan! You''re up!" Commander barks. Already onto the second round, huh? Well, it''s an advantage for me, since my body doesn''t really get tired. I wonder what my strategy should be this time around? I have a few ideas on how to catch Cameron without risking a dangerous power interaction, but I''m not entirely sure how appropriate they would be in a casual tournament. I guess I can just ask.

    "Good luck, L¡­ um, good luck!" Anastasia calls out to me as I walk toward the field.

    "My luck has always been terrible," I smile back at her. "Wish me skill."

    "You already have that!"

    I laugh and give her a thankful smile as I make my way into position.

    "Are both of you ready?" Commander asks.

    "I have a quick question, if that''s alright, ma''am," I interject.

    "Go ahead."

    "Is the purpose of this exercise exclusively to help us get used to our abilities, or is it also to help prepare the necessary mentality for a live combat scenario?"

    Commander gives me a look like she expects to regret answering this question.

    "You know what, Morgan?" she says. "Let''s see your idea of helping someone prepare the necessary mentality for a live combat scenario."

    I smile. Well, that makes this easy.

    "Yes ma''am," I acknowledge. "No further questions."

    "If you''re trying to make me surrender by acting freaky, I''ll promise you now that it''s not going to work," Cameron grins confidently at me. "I''ll never be able to make fun of Felix like he deserves if I back out now."

    "That was never my plan the first time around, and it isn''t my plan now," I answer. "Surrender isn''t really an option against our ultimate enemies."

    "Begin!" Commander shouts, and Cameron immediately breaks off from our conversation and starts running to the west side of the field. It''s the same strategy he used in his last fight, and I can hardly blame him for that since it''s clearly a very effective way to use his powers. I''m not so limited, though.

    I pull my shirt off over my head and toss it to the side, removing my breasts from my body before doing the same with my bra. I let my modified octopus skin keep its best imitation of an outfit underneath before removing everything on the lower half of my body as well. There are a number of different ways I think I can beat Cameron, but they all involve me shifting to match his size and strength, at least to some extent. One method in particular, though, lets me do something I''m tired of pretending I can''t do. It lets me show something to everyone here that they need to see, need to understand. This is a place where we learn to fight aliens, and what better way to do that then to make them try?

    I lean forward onto all fours, my head sucking itself inside my body to distribute sensory organs around my core as everything shifts: brain, body, musculature, eyes, ears, organs, all of it shifts from mammalian to alien. It''s honestly not as satisfying as I expected it to be. Compared to the enormous glut of information I now have on earthly life, my understanding of alien biology is comparatively sparse and therefore low in capacity for experimentation. But experimentation isn''t my goal here anyway. Mock battles aren''t a terrible idea, but I had to be thrown into the deep end from day one and I can''t deny that the thought of being able to show that is appealing.

    My opponent uses its power, stepping out of its own shadow substantially larger than it was before. But I still tower over the human, my long crystalline legs backed by high-pressure hydraulic musculature. It looks up at me, and I stare down at its slightly blurry face, taking a moment to interpret the expression of horror that would have been intuitive to me just moments ago. Cameron. A male human, dark skin, black hair, with a power that combines limited teleportation and enhanced size. My task is to defeat it without allowing it to be injured.

    Behemoths cannot speak, so I do not bellow a war cry, but I feel as though if any of my kind were here, they would still hear me declare my victory in advance.

    You can''t do what I had to do. Come on, let me show you.

 24. Stabbing People Is Probably Enrichment

    All around me, hands move towards rifles. Many humans stop themselves, having the basic object permanence to remember who I am, but many others seem to forget, their base fears overriding their logic as they raise their barrels towards me. They are irrelevant, of course. I heal with my power, not with any natural biological process, so the main determinant of what counts as damage to me is the amount of biomass displaced. Bullets are not particularly effective at this, and I doubt these are high enough caliber to pierce directly into my hydraulic pressure tanks, which could do catastrophic damage to me if they burst.

    Even then, though, they would be irrelevant. My task restricts me to the rules and boundaries of this game, and they are outside of it. If they attack me, I will pretend they do not exist.

    Commander barks a swift order at the soldiers, demanding that they hold fire. This frightens my target even further, enough that it barely even moves as I lift up my front legs, reach them forward, and slam them into the earth on either side of its body. It flinches as the dirt kicked up by my legs splatters into its body, harmless by itself but indicative of what would happen if I chose to hit my target directly. Still, it does not run, not even as I bend my knees, bringing my body down closer to my target. Is it really going to be this easy?

    I have no limbs to restrain it with, but that is easily fixable. My Angel''s tendrils erupt from my body''s core, writhing crystalline arms to twist towards my target and wrap it in victory. But this, I suppose, is my target''s limit. It snaps back to attention, remembering its goals, and as my limbs wrap around it, they grab only ash. It teleported.

    I already know where its shadow projects, of course, but by the time I turn my enormous body around my target has already finished emerging from it, even larger than it was before. I rush towards it, knowing that if it gets too large too quickly I will not be able to keep up. Each step of one of my crystalline blades stabs six inches deep into the soft earth, tearing up the ground with every movement. From here, the humans seem smaller than children. Even my target isn''t as large as me yet.

    I already see my target''s hand emerging from its shadow again by the time I reach its old body, so I just barrel through it, more or less detonating it on impact into an explosion of dust. This time, I reach my target right as it emerges, my legs wide and my knees forward so I do not accidentally stab it as I scoop it up in my tentacles, wrapping it up and covering its eyes without slowing down. But even this doesn''t stop it from teleporting away again, emerging yet farther away from the very tip of our long, shared shadow. Every time my target becomes taller, its shadow becomes longer, and now I know it is far too distant from me to be reachable before it can react again.

    But that''s fine. I skid to a stop and shrink myself like a collapsing star, devouring my body down to the human-cephalopod hybrid form I''ve been spending most of the day in. All the way on the far side of the line of soldiers that had been debating whether or not to try and kill me, Cameron rises up out of the ground like Godzilla from the ocean, now at least two stories tall and likely capable of far more. Too far for me to reach, and too large for me to reasonably detain. Ignoring him, I turn to Commander.

    "So matches can end by surrender," I say. "Can they also end by ring out?"

    Cameron, after all, has teleported well outside the designated battlegrounds that we''ve sort of unofficially marked off by surrounding it in current and future members of the military. This was never listed to be against the rules when Commander laid them out, but it has been the unspoken assumption in what I feel like is much the same way that the capacity to surrender is an unspoken assumption. After all, if there was no actual restriction requiring us to fight on the battlefield, anyone with a teleportation or speed power could render themselves immune to losing by simply running away.

    I have a few other ideas on how I might stop Cameron, if it came to that. His big limitation is the fact that, under the current lighting conditions, he can only teleport in a single direction. If I could turn into something like an elephant, tie him up against my body, and then face him either directly away from or directly into the sun so that his shadow is completely covered by my own or completely flush against his own body, would that prevent him from teleporting? There are a bunch of things I could have tried, but ultimately the only surefire method of stopping him would be to stall all the way until the sun sets, and that''s obviously impractical. Any attempt to directly counter his power would be a gamble, and if he uses his powers enough times to be bigger than a Behemoth, I lose. In the end, I decided that gambling on the unspoken rules was a more reliable bet than the specific power interactions of an ability that defies all physics and reason.

    "You are one crazy bitch, you know that Morgan?" Commander says, though there''s a slight smile on her face. "You talk about live combat scenarios, and then you ask me about ring outs?"

    "Simulated live combat scenarios," I correct. "And leaving the assigned field of engagement without orders would be dereliction of duty, right?"

    Commander laughs.

    "Well, let''s see. Small, what do you think?" she asks, shouting up at Cameron. "Were you making a tactical maneuver in the pursuit of victory, or were you breaking ranks?"

    Cameron stares at us, his eyes still wide and his breathing still heavy. An oversized, distorted droplet of sweat drips down off of his forehead, snapping back to a much smaller size and shape halfway to the ground.

    "I¡­" he swallows. "I was running. Ma''am."

    "Well alright then," Commander smirks. "You win, Morgan. But if you pull shit like this again next round I''ll have your ass, understand? You are going to hold and disable your opponent or you are going to lose."

    "Yes ma''am," I agree immediately, although I really want to protest. That first time wasn''t even my fault! She waves me off, so I head back and scoop my clothes up off the ground. Behind me, Cameron''s enormous body disintegrates and a few moments later he walks past the soldiers between us and returns to the line, once again normal-sized.

    "Take it back," my first round opponent tells Cameron.

    "I take it back, man," Cameron sighs, shaking his head. "I take it all back."

    "Jesus Christ, Lia," Christine says. "PTSD is cool and all, but I don''t think you''re supposed to share."

    "What the hell was that?" Maria asks.

    "A Behemoth from the Chicago incursion," I answer, pulling my shorts back on. "I scanned it back when it impaled me. Came in handy a few times."

    "Wait, like an alien?" Maria gapes.

    Is that the part you''re zeroing in on?

    "...Yes, like an alien. Exactly which animal from the zoo did you think these came from?" I ask, forming some of the Angel eyes that occasionally find their way onto my face. "Our invaders are made of flesh and blood, just like us. Their forms were pretty much all I had access to for days."

    "Right, yeah, sorry," Maria grimaces. "That was kind of insensitive of me. Sometimes I forget that you guys were out in¡­ all that."

    "Well I''m glad that we can apparently act normal enough for you to forget," I smile at her. "I guess I might have gone a little overboard, but spooking him off the field was probably my best shot at winning."

    It also really bugs me to watch baby''s first mock battle and having to participate in it as if I didn''t rip an Angel in half and eat its corpse. In a real fight against Cameron, he wouldn''t stand a chance against me. The bigger he gets, the more there is to devour. Obviously I''m not going to just eat somebody for no reason, but in a fight to the death I don''t think he has any way of stopping me. If the rules are the only thing holding me back from winning, of course I''m going to take every possible advantage from the rules, even if that means I have to get Commander to declare new ones.

    I mean, imagine if I don''t win the tournament. Nobody will care that the rules are against me, nobody will care that I got a bad power matchup, they''ll just see the wing ripper losing and assume she was slacking off. If I''m the best, it''s unsurprising and barely notable. If I''m not the best, I''m not taking my training seriously. I have to win just to barely meet par.

    But that''s life, I guess. It moves on, as does the tournament. Peter is up next, against some poor bastard. It''s not a very interesting fight, and it ends pretty quick. Peter spends the entire time just walking leisurely towards his opponent as they run away, slowly cornering them with an arrogant smile on his face. Everything they send at him does absolutely nothing, and Peter could almost certainly end the battle a lot sooner by just deciding to walk a little faster, but he draws it out anyway. Whether that is some kind of restriction on his power or just Peter being Peter isn''t clear, but I would bet on the latter. It''s just the kind of guy he is.

    "Back up already, huh?" Maria says softly to herself. "God, I really don''t want to do this."

    "You''ll be okay," I promise her. "The scariest part about it is just the fact that it''s new. You''ll get used to it. Maybe someday you''ll even like it."

    "I guess I have to get used to it, one way or another," she sighs. "I''m honestly not sure I can bring myself to do it without Galloway''s magic drugs."

    "You can," I promise. "Just don''t overthink it. First rule of¡ª"

    "I know, I know," Maria grumbles, giving me a friendly shove. "When you get out of the army you''re gonna make a killing as a motivational speaker."

    I''m never getting out of the army.

    "You think so?" I ask, leaving the fantasy unchallenged. "Just follow these five easy steps, and you too can become an eldritch monstrosity from the feywilds!"

    "Is that the kind of help you offer?" Maria smirks. "Maybe I shouldn''t be taking advice from you after all."

    "Delaney! Quit flirting and get your ass out here!" Commander barks.

    What? Flirting? Was that flirting? Were we flirting!? Maria turns beet-red and runs off onto the field immediately, leaving me without answers. I block my own blush in the usual way, but my chromatophores betray me and start lighting up my cheeks in all sorts of different colors as the tentacles on my head squirm anxiously.

    "Hey, you uh, should probably put your shirt on," Christine says, leaning in with a smug grin on her face.

    What? Oh. My faux-clothes are faux-melting, shifting and twisting in ways that make it obvious that they aren''t just some undershirt. I guess it''s not really a huge deal because I obviously don''t have anything underneath them, but I awkwardly pull my sports bra over my head, fill it with a pair of breasts, and shrug my shirt on over it. Damnit, damnit, damnit. I hate losing control.

    "Shoes too?" Christine asks, pointing at my still-bare feet. I grow claws, then turn my feet into tiger paws, then into hooves, then into ostrich toes, and then back to normal.

    "I''ll keep them off as long as I can get away with it, I think," I answer. "It''s a good stress reliever."

    "Cool. Very normal response."

    I glare at her sidelong and she shrugs unrepentantly. Man, Christine sure has been getting cheeky now that we''re no longer under constant threat of sudden and horrific demise. Almost makes me wish for the front lines.

    "Delaney! Curry! Are you both ready?" Commander calls out. "Begin!"

    Wait, is his last name really Curry? Isn''t that a food? I wonder how that side of the world is doing, survival-wise. Last I heard, India was holding its own pretty well, but it wasn''t because of the reason the so-called experts expected. I remember some talk about that. The assumption was that the high population density would lead to a larger amount of powered individuals being created per incursion, but apparently that didn''t happen. The number of people with superpowers who get created per incursion tends to fall within the same bell curve whether the incursion happens in the middle of a city or the middle of a desert. The fewer people who live around you, the more likely you are to be personally empowered when the apocalypse comes knocking. I suppose that makes my situation all the more improbable.

    Anyway, Curry and Maria both activate their powers, and all of a sudden there are a lot more Currys and a lot more Marias. The Maria multiplication is expected: the orange fairy pops into existence out of nothing as she is wont to do, and then after a brief but obvious moment of working herself up to it, the blue, green, and yellow fairies follow. Curry''s copies of himself are a lot less colorful, each with the exact same pasty white skin and mop of brown hair as their creator. They seem completely identical, in fact, the two copies splitting off from the main body and stalking towards either side of Maria to get into a better position before the fight starts in earnest.

    "Which one do we go after?" Green asks.

    "Who cares? There''s more of us than there are of them. Let''s get all of them!" Orange insists.

    She rushes off, and after a bit of futile protesting the other fairies split up to follow the plan, Orange going after the opponent on the left, Yellow going after the right, while Blue and Green both head towards the body in the back. Purple¡ªthe current color of the main body¡ªseems to be standing back and trying to keep all of the enemies in her cone of vision at the same time.

    "Hiiiyah!" Yellow shouts, attempting a literal flying kick into the right Curry''s face. She passes directly through him, and soon after Orange finds her target similarly intangible.

    "Which makes you the real one¡­!" Green declares, flashing a burst of light in the final Curry''s face while Blue tries to tackle him. Curry just placidly ignores both of them, though, Blue passing right through his face.

    "Wait, so none of them are real?" Orange shouts.

    "No, he definitely attacked with these last round! Be careful!" Green shouts back, moments before the Curry on the right backhands Yellow hard enough to send her flying before sprinting towards Purple. The left Curry starts to run shortly afterwards, though the last one continues to keep his distance. Purple moves to intercept the one that hit Yellow, trying to grab him as he gets close, but that Curry once again passes right through the attack as left Curry tackles Maria''s knees from behind.

    Purple is knocked to the ground, but she quickly overpowers her opponent and twists around to grab him, her hands passing right through as a different Curry takes over trying to hold her down. He clearly knows a bit of wrestling technique with the way he''s trying to lock her joints down, but Maria is well out of his weight class and that''s letting her keep him on the back foot for now. Still, it seems like every time she tries to attack her arms pass right through, but every time she tries to defend the real attack comes from a different angle.

    I watch it all with a frown on my face, trying to figure out the trick. The bodies themselves are obviously some kind of illusion, so what is it that allows them to make contact? My first guess is that the actual real body is invisible and the power simply helps Curry coordinate with his illusions in very convincing ways. But that''s starting to look less and less likely; Maria is flailing around unpredictably, and now the main body is supported by both Orange and Yellow, each trying to flit around and provide assistance but only ever meeting with something solid when they''re the ones getting hit or thrown around. Soon enough, Curry grabs her and twists her arm in a way that Maria doesn''t seem to be able to force her way out of.

    That''s when I see what looks to be the biggest hint so far, though I''m not sure exactly what it means. While he''s trying to hold Purple down, the fairies successfully make contact with Curry''s head, yanking on his hair and ears in an attempt to pull him away. So when he''s solid, all of him is solid. That''s a pretty big target, which makes the sheer quantity and unpredictability of the attacks he''s been dodging all the more impressive of a feat. Almost too impressive for someone who has only had the power for a bit over a month.

    Suddenly, there''s a flash of purple and Maria tosses her opponent off of her, sending him flying through the air. He seems to take a bad fall, but he gets up entirely unharmed, as if nothing ever happened. A purple fairy now hovers in midair, while Maria''s main body glows slightly pink, lit up by the much larger wings of light now attached to her back.

    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    I was kind of getting this impression earlier, but now I''m sure. For some reason, Maria''s main body becomes more powerful the more fairies she summons. It''s almost too absurd to believe. I thought creating the fairies was her ability by itself! You''d think that would count all on its own, right? If anything, creating an energy construct housing an entirely separate personality seems like the kind of thing that would expend energy, not give you more of it. Surely Maria has an upper limit, right¡­?

    "Woah!" Maria''s main body blinks, experimentally fluttering the wings on her back. "Wait, am I going to be able to fl¡ªhough!"

    Curry tackles her knees from behind, causing Maria to collapse backwards directly on top of him. But of course, he phases right through her and a different him jumps on top of her while she''s still stunned, wrapping his body around one arm and pushing away from her with his legs to hyperextend it. I''m not exactly a martial arts professional, but it looks like a solid arm lock to me. Maria''s impressive strength (possibly super strength considering how glowy she is; glowy usually means better) apparently isn''t enough to beat actual technique and leverage, and while the smaller fairies do their best to harass him they aren''t actually strong enough to break his grip. The fight quickly ends there.

    Maria lost. I feel weirdly bad about that, despite it being fairly predictable given her powers and lack of experience using them. I do my best not to let all the unnecessary, unhelpful emotions impact my thinking without going full Raptor brain. Although that is tempting.

    Maria and the Marias dejectedly walk and float off the field, surprising me somewhat by not immediately recombining into a singular entity. I suppose she probably doesn''t want to deal with the extreme disorientation of having all of her memories smooshed together while she''s also feeling like crap from the loss. Although, I suppose it could also be a matter of different Marias having different opinions on the matter of recombining and overall not really wanting to. Blue and Orange are definitely arguing about something, but I suppose that seems more or less like their default form of interaction with each other.

    I keep doing my best to reassure her and keep her spirits up about her abilities, but if I''m being honest with myself I''m really glad I don''t have her power.

    "¡ªwould just do as I say!"

    "I was trying. I didn''t really have much choice but to try and interpret your constant screaming because you refused to listen to anyone else!"

    "That was you trying? How many times did I have to tell you that it was a timing issue? You were barely paying attention!"

    "Hey, hey!" Yellow says, flitting over to try and break up the argument between Blue and Orange. "We were all trying to win. You can''t expect everyone to be able to keep up with you."

    "She is me!" Orange snaps. "You''re me!"

    "Are we actually?" Green asks. "I mean, we''re certainly not sharing memories right now, and you''re definitely not acting in a way I think is at all appropriate."

    "Well if you''re not me, then who the hell are you!?"

    "I''ve already mentally named all of you after your color," I butt in, injecting a bit of false cheer into my voice. "So that''s Green, you''re Orange, and that''s Blue, Yellow, Purple, and I guess your main body is currently Pink. By the way, hi Pink! I think you''re new?"

    "Ha! Gosh, maybe?" Pink says, a mix of cheer and fear on her face. "I don''t know. I certainly don''t feel like somebody who was just created, I just feel like me. Although I guess¡­ I''m a me with a notably different set of opinions on certain things compared to what I remember? Oh geez, maybe I am new."

    "Well, happy possible birthday to most of you, I guess," I greet them. "If you''re up for answering, it might be helpful to talk about what feels different from your memories? That sounds like it''ll hold a few hints to me."

    Just keep them talking, keep the conversation moving. Focus on the practical, not the existential.

    "Geez, this is really disorienting," Pink hums to herself, scratching her head. "Though actually, you know what? I think I''ve got a good one. We, or I guess maybe somebody else, resolved to never ever talk about this earlier, but right now that just seems stupid."

    She steps forward and puts both of her hands on my shoulders, staring directly at my face. My whole body tenses up, not expecting the contact and not entirely sure how to respond to it.

    "I feel like we''ve been getting real mixed messages from you, Lia," she says. "Have you been flirting with us? Because I really wanna flirt back."

    I open my mouth to respond, but I am immediately cut off by a cacophony of fairies.

    "What!?"

    "Oh my god, oh my god, why did you say that?"

    "She''s already in a relationship, isn''t she!?"

    "I am going to strangle you with my tiny hands!"

    Thinking about it, it''s probably a good thing that all the other Marias cut me off. I''m just sort of standing here with my mouth open and realizing that I don''t have any idea what to say. There are a ton of people staring at us. That''s pretty much been true since Maria walked over here, but now I really feel the attention pressing down on me with as much weight as Maria''s hands on my shoulders. It''s the sort of pressure that''s completely impossible to ignore.

    What the hell do I say? The truth is that I''ve never flirted with anyone in my entire life, at least not on purpose. I can hardly blame Maria for interpreting some of the things I do and say to be flirting, but I only ever realize that after the fact. I can''t just say that, though, because as Green pointed out, Lia is already in a relationship. Lia does have experience flirting, I''ve literally watched her do it, so pretending like this wasn''t intentional doesn''t fit my cover story.

    Does that matter, though? I''ve apparently done a pretty good job mimicking Lia just by using her brain, and the only person who would actually be able to detect contradictions in how I describe my fictional relationship with my sister already knows about it. I can, at the very least, give Maria an answer that is close enough to the truth.

    ¡­Is ''no, I wasn''t flirting'' actually close enough to the truth, though?

    "Sorry for tossing this on you out of nowhere," Pink says when she realizes my thoughts have stalled out a bit. "I get this is neither a good time nor a good place, but I might stop existing in the next few minutes so I wanted to get it out there real fast."

    Even if it wasn''t on purpose, per se, claiming I never intended to flirt with her feels kind of disingenuous. I went out of my way to violate her privacy and confirm that she was sexually attracted to Lia, so it would be a bit audacious to claim no responsibility for my words and actions. Even if it wasn''t why I said anything that I said, I didn''t put in what would have ultimately been a trivial amount of effort to ensure that she never got this impression. At the end of the day, I avoided discouraging her attraction towards me because I liked it.

    Maybe that was some of Lia''s narcissism shining through, her harmful habits mixing with the helpful ones without me noticing. Maybe it''s just my lack of experience handling an overly hormonal brain. Maybe I was so intoxicated by someone who actually thought I looked beautiful instead of hideous that I went out of my way to avoid thinking about how that might impact them. But regardless of why, I have clearly been unthinkingly selfish. Inexcusably so.

    I need to get my head out of my ass and say something, though. The Marias are all starting to look really nervous.

    "That is a surprisingly complicated question to answer," I admit, falling back on being as honest as I can without actually explaining my circumstances. "But I guess I probably was? I certainly think you''re very beautiful."

    The Marias all stare at me in silent unison. Orange even pauses her attempt to smoosh the main body''s windpipe shut.

    "Um, uh, wow, okay," Pink manages, her face becoming even more of her titular color. Wait, did I do it again? Is plainly stating that you think someone is attractive flirting? I was always under the impression that flirting is more obtuse. Well, I guess regardless of whether it was flirting or not, it should have been obvious that my words would have flustered her. Why am I struggling so much with this?

    "I think I should apologize, though," I continue. "I like bantering with you. I like seeing you smile. I like knowing you care about my opinion. I like having funny little in-jokes with you. And there are definitely parts of me that like seeing you flustered when I end up saying something flirtatious. But I have been focusing too much on how that makes me feel, and not enough on how that makes you feel. I''m ashamed to admit I have never seriously considered the question you are asking me now."

    I get more stares. Even with all the experience I have with unwanted looks, it''s a bit uncomfortable. I suppose this is probably how Maria felt back when I was standing around speechless myself.

    "...But you are in a relationship already, aren''t you?" Green asks.

    "Yes, that''s correct," I nod. "Sorry. I shouldn''t have¡ª"

    "Emily said it was an ''open relationship'' though, right?" Christine butts in with a grin on her face.

    "You should date Maria!" Anastasia declares. "You like her more than you like Emily anyway."

    I glower at both of them, my face growing numerous angry, predatory eyes to drive home exactly how much I don''t want their assistance in this conversation. Christine turns around and starts whistling, which Anastasia immediately finds amusing enough to copy. Damnit, Christine, what are you doing to our sweet baby Ana?

    "We should probably have the rest of this conversation somewhere less public," I scowl. "Anastasia, your match is up next anyway. Go to the field."

    "Awww! I wanna listen!" she protests.

    "Go, Ana. Don''t keep Commander waiting."

    "Fiiine," Anastasia pouts, stomping off towards the field. We watch her go, squaring up against¡­ is that psychic projection hands guy? That''s a pretty interesting matchup, actually. In practical terms, his and Anastasia''s abilities do very similar things.

    "...Will we be able to talk about this again, though?" Maria''s still-pink main body asks me. "When we recombine, won''t I just be memories? I remember being whoever we are when we''re one person, looking back at everyone else''s thoughts, and having different feelings about them. I don''t mind going back to that, but I want to make sure that this me is talking to you when we start this again. Not someone else."

    "Those ''someone elses'' are right here, you know," Blue grumbles. "I don''t appreciate you taking my feelings and outing them like this. I didn''t want to say anything."

    "All the more reason that I should be there the next time this is brought up," Pink answers. "If you don''t want me to talk about your feelings, fine. But don''t tell me not to talk about mine."

    This is getting really complicated. The more Maria uses her power, the more it''s clear that her psyche is splitting into distinctly separate people, the implications of which make this entire situation all the more difficult to figure out. Hell, even ignoring my own involvement in all of this, Maria''s mere existence makes me wonder about things like whether or not it''s ethical for her selves to recombine and temporarily lose their individuality. But I think that''s a question better answered by Maria than it is by anyone else. I probably shouldn''t come to any conclusions about it without her direct input.

    "At the very least, I''m happy to agree to talk to you again about this, Pink," I tell her. "Let me know if I''m wrong here, but I get the distinct impression that there''s some continuity between, say, the Orange of right now and the Orange of every other time she''s been a fairy, right? So at the very least, it will be possible to speak with you again, and I''m certain I can convince any other member of the rainbow to let you out if necessary."

    "Are you sure, though?" Pink hedges. "We can be pretty stubborn."

    "Sure, but I can be very convincing," I tell her, giving her a reassuring smile. She blushes a little more and looks away.

    "...I guess that''s true," she mumbles. "Okay. Okay, if people want to recombine, go ahead."

    Purple, who has notably not said a single word throughout all of this, shrugs her shoulders and flies into Maria''s chest, disappearing and changing the color of the main body back to her own. Pink is now gone, sent to wherever a Maria goes when she loses her body. For some reason, that thought brings a flash of memory to the front of my mind, my cave of meat that traps me in my dreams assaulting me during a split second of wakefulness. I try to stop my body from shuddering, but instead a ripple flows down my modified octopus skin, like my flesh was a calm lake that someone dropped a stone into. It''s a profoundly strange sensation, sort of like goosebumps but in a single, quick pulse. Advanced goosebumps. Truly, my power is one to be feared.

    "Wiggins! Patrova! You ready?" Commander calls out. "Begin!"

    Just like last time, just like every time, Anastasia immediately starts by stabbing herself with her claws. I''ll never get used to it, though. The gouge in her arm is longer and deeper than usual, her blood flowing more freely than it did in her skirmish with Christine. My body tenses, a wound of that size instinctively making me feel like we must be in a fight, that there must be aliens around us, trying to kill us. Crystal armor grows on my arms as pitch-black hands as large as Anastasia herself appear on either side of her, ready to clap shut and catch her between their palms like a bug you''d rather release out the back door than kill. My Raptor brain and alien sensory suite assure me that I am cut off from my Queen''s forces, alone, while Anastasia leaps backwards to barely dodge the hands closing around her.

    She sends a snake of blood towards her opponent, but unlike Anastasia, Wiggins does not need to account for travel time with his abilities. The giant hands match the relative position and orientation of his own, like giant shadows peeled off of the ground and into the third dimension. He can make them appear and disappear at will anywhere within his domain, and before Anastasia''s attack can reach him, he does so again, manifesting one hand behind her in the direction she''s dodging and the other above her. She only sees the one above until it''s too late, jumping directly into the other and ending up caught.

    The snake of blood flying towards Wiggins loses stability and splashes into the ground, apparently no longer supported by Anastasia''s domain. This could mean that she has fallen unconscious, but I only get a second to worry about it before the fingers curled around her start getting forced apart. At first I assume she has retracted her domain in order to be able to output more pressure with her blood control, but then I see she seems to be shoving the hand off of her with physical strength alone. I knew her powers changed her body to be stronger than a baseline human''s, but that''s still surprising to me. I can''t help but grin, though.

    "Hell yeah, Ana!" I cheer.

    "Kick his ass into next week!" Christine agrees.

    Anastasia shouts with exertion and the enormous hands start to waver, becoming less opaque for a moment before she fully shoves them off of her. Wiggins'' real hands look like they''re being forcibly moved in the same way that Anastasia is moving the projected hands, which is an interesting little detail. He makes them disappear and reappear again, but his eyebrows raise in surprise as they quickly waver and vanish moments before touching her. I see. His domain isn''t strong enough to affect her at this range while she has hers retracted. He realizes it at the same moment I do, and starts walking closer.

    Anastasia starts walking closer as well, a slowly growing cloak of blood swirling around her. The hands appear and grab for her again, but they still fail to maintain cohesion around her even though the two of them are closer. Does his power require a significant amount of domain penetration, or is Anastasia just that much stronger than him? Honestly, I''d bet on the latter. Her domain doesn''t usually feel super dense, but she usually has it extended pretty far from her body in every direction. She has a lot of range with it, much more than I do, and for some reason I feel like she always ends up stronger than I expect in the middle of a fight. Still, as impressive as this is, it has to end eventually, and sure enough, the next time the hands come for her, Anastasia dodges again.

    I wonder if she has a sense for when she can and can''t disable someone''s power. She''s the only person I''ve found who seems to be even more sensitive about domains than I am, though I guess I haven''t really talked with all that many people about the stuff I feel when they overlap. Nobody else has brought it up either, and it makes me suspect it might not be a common experience.

    One way or another, though, Anastasia''s enhanced body and excellent instincts make her more than a match for all the adults and older kids here. Wiggins tries to trick her into dodging into a hand again, but she just shoves it away with a thrust of blood. The crimson liquid flows around her arms and legs, protecting her and assisting her in her movements. Sometimes, she''ll make a jump and look like she''s flying for a split second, her blood carrying her just a little farther and a little faster than physics would normally allow. She glides from movement to movement, slowly closing the distance as she avoids or deflects her opponent''s attacks. All the while, she bleeds, and every second of it makes her stronger.

    The end of the match is sudden, swift, and decisive. Anastasia leaps directly at her opponent without warning and forms her gathered blood into a giant hand of her own. It''s not quite as large as the ones that have been harrying her this entire time, but it''s enough to wrap around her opponent and lock down both of his hands, disabling his ability and keeping him in place long enough for Commander to declare her victory.

    The rest of us watching in the wings are uncharacteristically silent as she drops her opponent and skips happily back towards us, her blood performing celebratory loops and swirls in the air above her head.

    "Hey! Hey! I did it! I won!" Anastasia cheers, running up to me to fish for well-deserved praise and affection.

    "You did awesome!" I tell her, giving her a congratulatory pat on the head. She leans into it, making a happy noise.

    "Heeey, Anastasia," Christine says, leaning in. "By any chance were you holding back on me during our fight?"

    Anastasia blinks up at her, a confused tilt to her head.

    "Christine, you''ve seen me fight aliens," she says. "I''ve been holding way back on everyone."

    Christine is silent for a moment, probably remembering the pile of bloody Raptor corpses we found her in or any of the other dozens or maybe hundreds of monsters we''ve watched her disembowel.

    "Oh," Christine says. "Right."

    Anastasia wraps her arms around my waist and gives me a big squeeze, looking up into my eyes.

    "You''d better make it to the finals, okay?" she insists. "I wanna fight somebody for real!"

    Wiggins, off in another part of the line, turns away with an embarrassed grimace. Hungry hungry Anastasia is roasting his ego on a fire spit right now, so I can hardly blame him. Still, that does bring up an unfortunate point. I''m going to have to fight Anastasia, assuming we both keep winning. I''m not really sure if I''m comfortable with that.

    "If I win, you have to be a baby tiger for an entire day, and I get to ride you everywhere and you have to do what I say!" Anastasia decides.

    Hmm. I pick her up under the armpits and lift her up to head height, giving her a blank stare as she wiggles and giggles.

    "You will rue the day you challenged me," I declare, and she laughs even harder.

    What the hell, right? Getting to stab people is probably enrichment for her at this point. Which, y''know, is maybe bad, but I can''t say no to her when she''s this excited about it. It''s not like I have to do anything to win other than catch her and hug her really tight, so arguably this is a really healthy bonding activity for a child. Yeah. Let''s go with that.

    "We are the most dysfunctional found family ever," Christine declares. That only makes Anastasia grin wider, though. Of course it does. Christine called us a family. And while we can never replace her mother, her father, her siblings, or her grandparents, we''re still all she has and I can hardly blame her for clinging to us as tightly as she can. We''re a fucked-up little family, but I''m used to those. Hopefully, at the very least, I can do a better job as a parent than any of my foster families tried to do.

    The fact that I''m having these thoughts shortly after deciding to make her lose a combat tournament does not escape me, of course. Fortunately, my foster parents did not set a high bar.

 25. The Only Win That I Deserve

    I suppose I shouldn''t count my chickens before they hatch. Before I get stabbed by my favorite child, I still have to beat Peter. Somehow.

    I leave my clothes on this time as I square up against my asshole foster brother. I have a few ideas on how to beat him, but I have no idea if any of them will actually work. It depends entirely on the details of his power, a caveat that I''m running into a lot today. I wonder if that''s a major reason behind this exercise; powers are esoteric and the exact details of what they can and can''t do are rarely known and often essential. Dealing with that information gap is an important skill to learn.

    "Aww, not getting naked for me?" Peter taunts, hands in his pockets.

    I shapeshift into him (minus the reproductive system; I''m not terribly interested in trying out a dick and I''m definitely not interested in trying out Peter''s), matching his pose and smarmy grin.

    "Careful what you wish for," I taunt back. "Though knowing you, I wouldn''t be surprised if you''re an exhibitionist."

    "It''s a curse to be this beautiful," he sighs. "You''d never understand."

    I narrow my eyes at him. Asshole.

    "Are you two done with your lover''s spat?" Commander drawls. Lover''s spat!? Excuse me? "In positions. Begin!"

    Just like all his other fights, Peter walks leisurely towards me, his hands in his pockets. I guess that''s my first possible avenue of attack. I match his velocity, accelerating a little at a time to see if he adjusts. Why is he walking like that? Is it a requirement of his power, or just him being an asshole?

    "You''ll never actually win if you just keep walking away," he points out, maintaining his slow speed.

    "Not true," I counter. "You''ll get tired eventually. I won''t."

    "Morgan, I swear to Christ, if you make me implement a timer on top of everything else I will not be happy," Commander snaps.

    Okay. Not going with that plan, then. I slow back down, letting Peter corner me bit by bit. Once he''s as close to the edge as I can safely bring him, I shift myself modified tiger musculature and leap over his head, sprinting to the far side of the arena as quickly as possible. Peter gives me a bewildered and slightly amused look, but I just ignore him, shapeshift into an enormous badger, and start to dig.

    I could probably get a significantly more efficient digging physiology than this, but I haven''t exactly practiced this before now. Wasp acid could potentially help with burning through the loose dirt, but I don''t know what kind of toxic gas that might release near everyone else so I just dig as fast and hard as I can, flinging the dirt in Peter''s general direction.

    "Damn, you found my weakness," Peter calls out to me. "Getting my outfit dirty. Woe, I am ruined."

    He actually has the audacity to wait for me to finish, standing around until I stop flinging dirt around the time I make a hole a foot or two deeper than he is tall. It takes a few minutes, and I assume by his indifference that it''s not really a big problem for him.

    Still. I have to see.

    He peers over the edge of the hole. I stare back up at him.

    "What exactly was the plan here?" he asks. "You know that if I land on you you''ll just splatter like paste, right?"

    "Try it, then," I challenge him.

    He shrugs.

    "Okay."

    I shrink as he hops down, staying flush to the side of the pit and scampering up in moments. Thin and light, I carry myself up with long claws stabbed into the dirt, watching carefully as Peter lands. It''s entirely normal. His feet impact the ground as would be expected, he bends his knees to absorb the force, and he even winces slightly after the seven- or eight-foot fall. The ground is extremely soft from all the loose dirt I threw around and he isn''t injured, but that''s still a long fall for a human. Enough to hurt.

    And he had to take that fall as a human, because otherwise he''d probably fall straight through the ground.

    "Slippery little bitch, aren''t you?" he says, gritting his teeth.

    "You''re the one walking around like it''s a Sunday stroll," I point out.

    "I guess I''ll have to start actually trying then, won''t I?"

    "I guess you will."

    Peter can probably reach out of the pit with his arms, but I doubt he works out enough to pull himself up from that position. Instead, he walks into the wall, lifting his knee up like he''s ascending a staircase and simply carving one into the dirt with nothing but his body. One leg up, push in and through the dirt, allow himself to connect with it normally when his foot is the right height, then take another step up and repeat. Interesting. So he can selectively decide which parts of his body casually shove away matter and which parts don''t, changing it whenever he chooses. He seems to always be affected by gravity, so his feet are a likely weak point. I squat in front of where I expect his impromptu staircase will end, waiting for him to make it to me.

    "You know I normally take it slow so I don''t accidentally kill someone, right?" Peter grumbles. "You literally can''t sto¡ªagh!"

    I whip out a tentacle from my arm and wrap it around his foot the moment before it touches earth, successfully making contact and yanking him off-balance. He topples backwards, so I keep my grip on him to prevent him from falling headfirst down the stairs he just made. His power compacted it pretty hard.

    To my surprise, though, he doesn''t crash into the dirt at all, instead continuing to swing downwards and obliterating the ground beneath us as his body passes through it. Shit! I lose my footing, landing on top of him in a disorganized heap when he finally lets the ground act as ground to him again.

    "Fuck!" he growls. "You know what, this works fine, actually!"

    He grabs my neck, his grip immutable as he shoves me off of him and down onto my back. My domain flares up in strength as it connects with his resonance-causing power, but his powers up by the exact same amount.

    "There we go," he sighs. "Only a matter of time, see? I''ll give you credit, that was a little clever, but there''s really no need to draw this out, is there? Let''s just get this over with so we can¡ªJesus!"

    I unform the part of my neck that he''s holding, getting quite a bit of blood on him in the process but that''s just how it is sometimes. I quickly scramble back to my feet, but we''re in a weird-shaped pit so I immediately find myself cornered. Hmm. Well, one last plan, then.

    "You have a lot of confidence in your ability for someone who''s never even been in a real fight," I tell him. "Your power is good, don''t get me wrong, but you can''t just treat this like a foregone conclusion."

    "Then fucking beat me already," Peter says, shaking his hand out to fling the blood off of it. Every last drop is denied contact with his skin. "You think I wanna be here in the muck, fighting with you? Like don''t get me wrong, I enjoy seeing a woman do some mud wrestling, but I was sort of hoping this would be over by now?"

    I sigh, stepping towards him.

    "You know what your problem is, Peter?" I ask.

    "Oh, I am sure you are about to tell me."

    "You don''t take anything seriously except running away."

    I shrink my domain down to the confines of my body. I don''t know if this will work, but playing this perfectly safe just isn''t in the cards. If Commander decides that he can''t hold me and I can''t hold him, she''ll probably make me lose on the judge decision. So once I pull my domain in as close to my skin as I can, I start shrinking it even further.

    I lose sensation in my legs, perfect knowledge of their internal and external condition replaced with nothing but my pathetic mundane sense of touch. It''s funny how quickly I got used to the former but not the latter, given the difference in sheer magnitude of information density. Qualia is just confusing, I suppose. I much prefer knowledge.

    Up farther and farther, the edge of my domain ascends past my waist. I can no longer feel the health of my gut biome, no longer know exactly where the waste is in my intestinal tract to plan out bathroom trips. It ascends past my stomach, no longer telling me how full I am, how much more I should eat to expand it to its limit. Higher still, I can no longer feel the movements of my heart. I take my domain and push it outwards, concentrating it in my arms.

    Then I pull my domain out from my head, and I collapse like a puppet with broken strings.

    All of a sudden, I feel nothing. Not sight, not sound, not touch, not smell. Only a cloying, humid warmth as my body falls. There''s nothing but the sensation of thoughtless meat. I snap my domain back outwards, encompassing my head again and catching myself before I hit the ground, breathing heavily. What? What the fuck was that? Do¡­ do I die without my domain? Is that normal?

    No time to think about it. I very firmly keep my domain restricted to the space between my brain and my arm while otherwise shrinking it down to as small a size as it can go, leaving the rest of my body completely unprotected. But I don''t really care, do I? I can just remake it later. All that matters now is being strong enough to hold him down.

    My arm bulges with muscle, latching onto his wrist as the density of my domain shoves his aside. His power surges but mine does as well, keeping my advantage as I force my complete dominance into his flesh. He starts to tug his arm away¡­ and freezes in response to the pain as I feel his tissue start to tear itself apart.

    As far as his domain is concerned, this arm is no longer part of him, and it is therefore subject to the consequences of getting in his way.

    According to our other training class, to dominate another domain to this extent requires a bit over triple the density of the opposing domain. And ''density'' is just an explanatory term; dividing the domain volume by a given value doesn''t multiply domain density by that amount. The change in power is much more gradual, though the exact strength can only really be determined by heuristics.

    But it''s enough. I know Peter, and he doesn''t study. He doesn''t train. He''s used to being smart enough and skilled enough by default that he doesn''t need to. But when things get serious, talent alone is never enough.

    So instead of challenging his weaknesses, he runs.

    "...That''s the match," Commander announces. "Morgan wins."

    Good. I''d never let myself live it down if I lost to him. I took some damage, so I''d better heal that before letting go of¡­ wait. No, that''s¡­ not me. That''s Peter''s arm. Isn''t it?

    "Uh, mind letting go?" Peter asks, and I drop his wrist, letting my domain snap back to its normal skin-covering configuration. That was¡­ odd. I''ve never gotten confused like that before. I guess having my domain only covering part of my body mixed my instincts up a little. I''m not used to having a sense of touch but not a sense of biology. I probably¡ª

    "Morgan, get off the field," Commander orders.

    "Oh, right," I say automatically. "I mean, yes ma''am."

    I look at my arm as I walk back into line, flexing it and shifting it in a dozen different ways to remind myself of the feel of it. It would be embarrassing¡ªand potentially fatal¡ªto try and shapeshift something but end up doing nothing because I got confused about whose body was whose.

    Of course, in the back of my mind I can''t help but ask: is this body mine? And if not, what is it? What am I? Why did that power insist that I didn''t exist until the day I got my own? I''m not any closer to finding answers to these questions, but I at least know a little more about where to start looking.

    "Woo! You kicked his butt!" Anastasia cheers as I return. "You were like ''gotcha!'' and he was all like ''waaagh!''"

    She flails her arms and pantomimes falling over backwards, eliciting a slight chuckle from me.

    "Well, I couldn''t let you face someone that lame in the finals, could I?" I manage to smile.

    "Is he okay, though?" Maria asks. "He was clutching his arm like it really hurt."

    "It probably did," I shrug. "He''s going to have a nasty ring-shaped bruise. In retrospect I probably shouldn''t have tried to win that way, since it risked him pulling his own arm off if he panicked."

    She blinks.

    "Oh, uh. Okay."

    Right. That was probably a little too nonchalant.

    "Anyway, I actually have a question," I quickly deflect. "Has anyone here disconnected their domain from their body before?"

    "Oh, yeah, I do it all the time," Christine nods.

    "Uh, you do?" I ask.

    "Yeah, pretty much any time you''re not around," she nods. "I''m not really a huge fan of having constant physiological awareness of my gross little meat mech."

    "Your what?"

    "...My body," she clarifies. "I just keep my domain on me when you''re nearby because I don''t want you to have awareness of it either."

    "Huh," I say. "And it''s totally disconnected? Like, from your brain and everything?"

    "Yeah, are you kidding?" Christine grimaces. "I don''t want my power anywhere near my brain. Can you imagine what would happen if I took it apart?"

    "Yeah," I say, imagining that. There are a number of ways you could deconstruct a brain the way Christine''s power does. Her power seems to preserve separated objects in such a way that they can be recombined as if they were never separated in the first place, so it''s not unreasonable to assume that she''d be fine if she took herself apart and put herself back together again. The question is mostly whether or not Christine could put herself back together. Can a separated brain think? Can it conceptualize itself enough to order itself to recombine? With certain methods of separating itself, the answer is almost certainly yes, but how many times can you break it before you count as dead? Worse, how many times could you break it before rendering yourself permanently trapped in an exploded state, alive but functionally braindead beyond maintaining your power?

    "O-okay, well stop imagining it, that''s weird," Christine says. "Anyway, why do you ask?"

    "Because I tried to separate my domain from my brain and it made my whole body just¡­ turn off. I lost all sensation and would have collapsed if I hadn''t put the domain back."

    "Huh," Christine says. "Don''t do that then."

    Thanks Christine, very helpful.

    "Curry! Patrova! You''re up!" Commander barks, and Anastasia jolts to attention.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    "That''s me!" she grins.

    "Avenge me, Ana!" Maria says, pumping a fist. For a moment there, I swear her eyes are yellow before she blinks.

    "Yeah! I''m gonna kick his butt!" Ana agrees, pumping a fist back and then slamming her arm down to give Maria a high-five. She bounds out towards the field, clawed fingers twitching as she gets into position facing her opponent. He stares back at her, a disquieted look on his face.

    "...Commander," he says, "I''m not sure I''m comfortable fighting a child."

    "Well, too fuckin'' bad," Commander snaps back. "It''s the goddamn apocalypse. We don''t have time for the laziness you call ''principles.'' You will spar and you will learn, recruit."

    "I''m just not confident I can avoid hurting her, Commander."

    "Ha!" Commander laughs loudly. "Oh, I wouldn''t worry about that, Curry. She''s gonna kick your ass. Square up."

    He blinks in surprise, but the last two words are said with such finality that he settles into a combat stance more or less automatically. His face seems to set with determination after a moment, perhaps motivated by Commander''s assertion of his weakness.

    "Begin!"

    Anastasia stabs her wrist as she''s done at the start of every fight, the wound from the last duel having healed shortly after the fight''s conclusion. Blood trickles out around her claws and gushes forth when she removes them, swirling above her palm as Curry splits into his duplicates, moving to surround her just like he did as Maria.

    "Woah," Anastasia says. "They''re all real, huh?"

    "I''m afraid there''s only one of me," Curry answers.

    "That''s true too," Anastasia agrees. "Neat!"

    She splits her collection of blood in half, firing at the two closest Curry copies. One target dodges, but the shot on the other appears to connect¡­ and of course, pass harmlessly through. Anastasia frowns, the blood bolts twisting around in the air and striking through their targets a second time on the way back, again to no avail.

    The blood rejoins her, orbiting around her as Anastasia starts to run towards the Curry staying in the back. She opens her wound wider along the way, more blood spilling out to join the rest into a thin, spinning disc whirling around her like a cross between a hula-hoop and a sawblade. One of the Curry bodies reaches out to try and grab her, but the disc quickly reorients itself to intercept with the hand and Curry just passes through.

    "Can you do anything else cool?" Anastasia asks him. He just frowns at her. "Oh. Huh. Well, okay."

    The disc suddenly fires towards the furthest Curry, deforming in the air as it twists to wrap around him. I expect it to pass through him like things always do, but to both my surprise and his it wraps around his shoulders and pins his arms to his sides, locking him in place.

    "If you could just make like, two or three more, this would be really hard," Anastasia tells him. Behind her, the two still-free Currys try to grab her and completely fail, remaining intangible.

    "Patrova wins," Commander calls, and Anastasia releases her opponent. Shortly afterwards, chaotic, twisting strings of crimson snake out of the intangible clones, whipping around with enough strength to cut something in half.

    Ah, I get it. She distracted him with the big, flashy mass of blood while sneaking much smaller weapons down her body and into the grass, where they slithered into the illusions. I guess he couldn''t become one of the illusions if there was something in it?

    "You can take five, Patrova," Commander tells her. "Then be back up here for the final match!"

    "Okey-dokey!" Anastasia agrees.

    "What was that?" Commander snaps.

    "Okey-dokey, ma''am!" Anastasia corrects.

    "...Better."

    Anastasia giggles and runs back towards us, bringing along her collection of blood. She didn''t do that the last few times, I note. Not gonna go easy on me, is she?

    "Woo! Nice job, Ana!" Maria cheers.

    "You totally could have beaten him," Anastasia answers. "He''s just a cat in a box."

    Oh?

    "What do you mean by that, Ana?" I ask. "I''m gonna guess you figured out how his power works?"

    "Yeah," she nods. "He''s all of them and one of them. Like. Um¡­ how do I say this¡­ so if a cat is in a box and it''s sleeping, maybe it''s not sleeping. Maybe it''s dead! And you don''t know until you open the box. He''s only one of them, but he''s all of them until you open the box."

    Hmm. I might get it.

    "How exactly do you ''open the box'' in this analogy?" I ask.

    "You check all of them," Anastasia shrugs. "I don''t think he controls it, he''s just whichever him is the best for him to be at the time. So you just have to be killing the other two while you grab the third. It''s way better to be grabbed than dead! Not that I''d kill him. You''d have to kill all three at the same time to do that. Or more, if he could make more than three! I bet he can if he tries hard enough."

    "That''s really neat, Ana," I tell her. "How did you figure all that out?"

    "Well I watched all his fights," she answers. "But then when I felt his domain, it was really obvious. He was in one place and three places. He was both at the same time. That was the only explanation that made sense anymore."

    "You''ve got a really good intuition," I tell her, rubbing her head. She beams with pride. "Do you think it''ll be enough to beat me, though?"

    "I coulda beaten you while we were escaping the Queen!" she insists. "But now¡­ I don''t know. You''ve eaten a lot of food! You''re nowhere close to running out of energy, right?"

    "Yeah," I nod. "Back then I felt like my reserves barely had a single meal in them at a time. Now it feels like I ate an entire house. I don''t think you can make me burn through it, even if you chopped me to bits."

    "It''s not like I was ever going to do that!" Anastasia pouts at me. "Capture without hurting, right? That''s the rules!"

    "That''s the rules," I agree. You hurt yourself enough already.

    "Then I''ll just have to overpower you!" she insists. "You''re gonna get got!"

    "We''ll see," I smile. "You''d better watch out, though, or I''ll trap you in an inescapable cuddle!"

    I grow a few more tentacles and wiggle them around for emphasis, causing her to laugh. God, she''s such a wonderful kid. I just want her to be happy. I can''t let her win, though. I need to be more valuable than her, or I won''t be able to pressure the military into keeping her safe.

    "Alright, finalists! Get your asses up here!" Commander orders. Geez, already? Well, I guess that''s fine. Anastasia''s wound from the last fight is already scabbed over, and she seems excited to get started. The blood floating around her head rushes out and circles me once as her domain blends happily with mine. When we start walking onto the field, though, that overlap becomes the usual fight for dominance instead. We''re competitors, after all.

    "Alright, you two! Welcome to the finals," Commander declares. "Now, which one of you will take home the grand prize?"

    "Prize!?" Anastasia chirps. "There''s prizes!?"

    "Are you ready!?" Commander continues without answering. I respond by yanking my shirt and bra off, replacing the skin underneath with crystalline scales. I shapeshift my feet as I lift one leg, then the other, letting my shoes and socks fall clean off before letting my shorts follow them. I don''t need pants because I don''t need legs, not when I can just sink the core of my body into a ball and extrude familiar blue tendrils out in every direction.

    Anastasia tenses as she watches me shift into the Angel I killed, the cheer falling from her face. She brings her arms together, each set of claws resting just above the other arm''s wrist, waiting for the call.

    It is odd, finally using the Angel''s full brain. I chose the form for a few reasons¡ªbecause it''s fast and good at grabbing things, because it would motivate Anastasia, and because I want to remind the members of the military watching us what I''ve accomplished. But I also chose it because I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn''t afraid of it. That I''m through worrying if one nervous system or another would cause me to lose myself. That I can use every set of instincts at my disposal and not need to fear.

    And what a set of instincts they are. The Raptor was so straightforward by comparison, so focused. Have a task, optimize for task, complete task. The Angel is the opposite of this: the moment I make the shift, my awareness suddenly explodes in dozens of different directions, tracking every single individual living thing around me at all times. It''s overwhelming and unpleasant, but¡­ surprisingly manageable. My constellation of eyes flicks between targets with instinctive ease, drinking in every action, every movement, every ally, and every threat. Like I was made to know.

    "Morgan! Patrova! Begin!"

    There''s only one target I need to focus my attention on: the small Emissary, deadly and dangerous but here only to test and be tested as allies. More than allies? Way more than allies, but I don''t have time to investigate why that feels so strange. I must capture it before it captures me.

    I roll forwards, tendrils stretching and replacing each other as legs one after the other. Reciprocation''s Emissary responds by violently pulling its arms apart, cutting long, deep gouges down the length of its wrists and palms. Blood pours out, and the Emissary (Anastasia, I remind myself. What''s all this Emissary stuff?) quickly forms it into a web to block my advance.

    I charge right through it, trusting my domain to destabilize her control enough for my momentum to break through. Her eyebrows raise with surprise and she pulls the blood back to herself, letting the newly-bled supply support her as she leaps out of my path. I extend a tentacle to grab her, but I barely miss¡ªno! I grow a second tentacle out of the tip of the first, the flesh exploding into place and tightening around her waist. Got her!

    Anastasia''s blood mass finishes catching up with her in that same moment, though, her own domain shrinking and strengthening as the distance closes. Blood flows into the gaps between my scales, filling the tiny spaces within my grip. With a grunt of effort, she forces my limb away from her, and though I try to pull her in and wrap her up even further, I''m too slow. She breaks free, her blood yanking her off in a different direction and counterattacking at the same time.

    Red washes over my eyes, blocking my vision, but I can still feel her domain. I leap away from where I think she is in a quick reversal of momentum, the blood covering my body suddenly pulled off an instant before I can bring it out of her reach and render it inert.

    She''s going to keep gathering it, keep getting stronger, and I won''t consider myself to have won if she ends up passing out from anemia. I have to take her down fast. I unshift my crystal scales, pulling them back inside me and into nothingness as I shift my skin to produce and secrete a sticky mucus instead, to improve the surface area and grip of my next capture.

    Anastasia isn''t just waiting around for me to be ready, though: she rushes towards me, blood wrapped around her chest and arms like a harness, accelerating her towards me at high speeds. I reach out to intercept her, but a crimson barrier shoves my tendril aside and starts swimming up to my core, resisting my attempts to break free a second time.

    "Got you now!" Anastasia declares.

    Like I''ll give up from something as small as this. I rapidly shrink my body, slipping out of Anastasia''s grip as I turn into a little tiger cub and leap directly at her. I shift back into a mass of mucus-covered tentacles in midair, wrapping around her and squeezing tight to lock her in place. With a much squishier, sticker configuration, my body clings too tightly to let her blood find a place to slip between us and break my grip. She does her best to wedge it in anyway, crimson fingers grabbing and pulling all over my body, but I just keep holding on even tighter, steadily growing my frame and improving my musculature to keep her locked down.

    Then I feel her flinch, and blood starts pooling between us and forcing me away. What just¡­ oh, Division damnit. I can feel it through my biology sense. She dug into her own body to tunnel beneath me and get herself leverage, covering the entire front side of herself in wounds. The blood doesn''t just push me away, there''s now enough of it to encompass me like a bubble, completely surrounding me and lifting me into the air. Anastasia pants, hunched slightly over on the ground as blood trickles up into the air from a dozen different wounds, reinforcing my prison.

    I thrash around to no avail, so I try shrinking again and immediately get recaptured when I try to make space. Anastasia''s domain suddenly feels stronger than it did before, her power rising as she accumulates more damage. The bubble of blood is larger than she is now, large enough to drown me, her body producing the liquid at impossible rates but clearly at the uppermost edge of its limit. I just have to escape!

    I shift into a dolphin, then a shark, flailing around to try and escape before I finally settle on the body of a swordfish, kicking my tail as hard as I can and swimming out of the bubble in a powerful burst of speed. The blood moves to follow me, though, catching me out of the air and increasing its pressure. I change tactics, growing into an elephant to simply become too big to encompass. Anastasia adjusts immediately, though, splitting her bubble up into four tendrils that wrap around and lock up my joints. So I unform my body from the feet up, starting the growth of my new form from the tip of the elephant''s trunk, dropping a Raptor out of the air as the elephant is absorbed up into my tail.

    Anastasia takes a step back, her eyes going wide as she motions with her arms, her blood shackles twisting into spikes that intercept and impale me in midair. The sudden pain and injury shocks me, and it only multiplies as the spikes widen into cutting blades inside my body, shearing me in half. The back half of my Raptor body falls dead, and noticing the sudden shift in tone I change the front half into a Barbie-doll-censored version of Lia''s body, landing in front of Anastasia and wrapping her into a hug.

    "Hey, hey!" I breathe, trying to calm her down. Is she hyperventilating? Her eyes aren''t focused. She''s lost too much blood. "It''s just me, it''s okay, you''re okay."

    "L-Lia?" She asks blearily, her blood swarming around us like an angry hive of wasps looking for something to sting.

    "I''m here. Lia''s here," I promise her, holding back a wince.

    "Liar," she whispers. "You hate it when people call you that."

    I freeze for a second. I can''t help it. I flounder for something to distract her with, but it''s too late. She felt it. And honestly, I hate how that has become my first reaction to everything.

    "...Yeah, you''re right," I whisper back as quietly as I can manage. I don''t have a choice. Any other answer would destroy the trust between us forever. "But I''m still here for you, okay? No matter what I look like and no matter what my name is. I''m still me."

    She starts to cry, squeezing me tighter and burying her face in my shoulder. What an end to the tournament. But I suppose this is the only win that I deserve.

    "Did I get the monsters?"

    "You did, hon," I assure her.

    She gets halfway through another nod before passing out, the blood dropping out of the sky and drenching both of us in red. I flinch under the impact, but my focus is on her body, forcing my domain through her somehow-empowered one to check up on her physical condition. To my relief, it looks like she just pushed herself too hard. Her wounds are shallow and her body is rapidly healing her while replenishing the blood she lost. Her domain steadily weakens as her wounds close, confirming my suspicion about where that surge in power came from.

    I don''t know how, but I am going to find a way to strangle whatever god that thought to give this power to a child.

    Also, note to self: Anastasia is still traumatized by the sight of aliens. Because of course she is, you fucking dumbass.

    "Well," Commander says, sounding a bit frazzled for the first time since I met her. "I guess you win, Morgan."

    I lift Anastasia up in my arms, trying not to think about how effortlessly light she is. Around us, everyone stares our way in stunned silence. Are they awed? Impressed? Scared? Judgemental? I don''t know, and frankly I don''t really care to know.

    "Apologies," I say. "I think we might have gone a little overboard."

    "You think? God, what are you idiots standing around for!? Get her to the infirmary!" Commander snaps at a couple of the soldiers nearby, who jolt to attention and grab a nearby stretcher.

    "She''ll be alright," I promise. "Her body heals extremely fast."

    I of course help load her onto the stretcher anyway. There''s absolutely no reason not to get her medical treatment, and while I''d love to take her there myself I suspect Commander will want a word with me. As they take her away, I briefly shift my brain back into the Angel''s, patting Anastasia''s sleeping domain with my own.

    Reciprocation''s Emissary. The title feels right. What does it mean? I hope it''s not the name of the god I''ve just declared beef with. Getting aggressive against a deity named ''Reciprocation'' sounds like it could earn me a Darwin award.

    Oh, well. I meant it.

    I head towards my clothes after making sure Anastasia will be safe, shapeshifting my arm into a modified Raptor tail-maw to pick up and swallow the back half of my body that I dropped earlier. At the same time, I adjust my skin enough to drink the blood on me through it, getting myself nice and clean before I pull my clothes back on.

    "The hell did you do to her, Morgan?" Commander demands.

    I finish standing up from putting my shorts back on, swallowing my corpse and shifting my arm back. I take a deep breath and look her in the eyes, but all I see is red.

    "...You''ve got something screwed up in your head to have the nerve to say that to me, ma''am." I tell her.

    "Excuse me?" she growls dangerously, but I''m not letting her get away with that. Not now.

    "What the fuck did you expect to happen!?" I snap. "You were watching the match. I never hurt her once. She did it all to herself, because that''s what her power is, and every fucking time she uses it you just stand there and smile. What the hell do you want from me, huh!? Tell her to hold back? Encourage her to practice less? You''re sending her back out there to die, Locke. If you wanna tell me she took it too far, then look me in the eye and tell me she won''t need to. Tell me she doesn''t have to fight!"

    "You''re out of line, recruit," Commander warns.

    "I''m not even in Basic Training yet," I fire back. "You''re not my CO, you''re just my keeper."

    Her domain slams into mine, yearning and loving and promising and demanding. But we''re too far away, her power takes too much penetration, and she told us to work on domain strength so I''ve damn well been working on domain strength. I weather the assault unaffected, just continuing to stare her down.

    She scowls at me, but after taking a deep breath she retracts her attempt to control me, waving me off.

    "Fine," she says. "I take it back. I was watching. You followed the rules."

    You''re goddamn right. I relax a bit, crushing the anger back down now that it''s no longer useful. Honestly, I doubt that outburst was a good idea, but it went about as well as it could have.

    "I see it now, at least," Commander says idly.

    "See what, ma''am?"

    "How you became a wing ripper."

    Oh. Of course. I got away with it because I''m strong. She''s being nice because she can''t control me anymore.

    "So what do I win?" I ask.

    "Hmm?"

    "What do I win?" I ask. "You said there was a grand prize."

    "Oh, right. Come here," she says, waving me over. I frown, approaching carefully as she pulls out a wallet and hands me¡­

    "...Is this a Waffle House gift card?" I ask.

    "Congratulations," she drawls.

    "I¡­ I can''t even use this."

    "Eh, you''re getting close to graduating our little class here," she says. "There will be a bit of a break when you do so you can visit your loved ones and relax a bit before Basic. At which point you''d better pray you never have another outburst like that or your whole platoon will be hating you more with every lap you''ll all have to run."

    "I''m surprised you''d let us out of your sight like that," I admit.

    "Come on, Morgan! Surely you''re smart enough to know how hard we''ll fall on your ass if you try to make a run for it. You''re a lotta things¡ªliterally¡ªbut stupid ain''t one."

    "I suppose that''s one of the many things you teach us here, isn''t it?" I sigh.

    "Now you''re getting it," she grins. "Nice job winning our little tournament. We''ll be expecting great things from you, wing ripper."

    I give her a firm nod.

    "I''ll earn the title as many times as it takes."

    She nods back.

    "That''s what we want to hear. Now get gone, class dismissed."

    I nod one more time, put the gift card in my pocket, and walk off. I hadn''t really considered that we''d get a bit of time off. It''s surprisingly intimidating, all things considered. I''ll have to play the part in front of Lia''s family after all this time, and I''m definitely not looking forward to that.

    But more importantly, I''ll get to see Emily again, face-to-face. And I''m finally going to force her to tell me what her deal is, no matter what it takes.

 26. I Could Be Normal, If I Wanted To

    People with flashy, dangerous superpowers get a very different sort of attention than ugly disabled girls. I feel like that''s a pretty obvious statement to make, but I''m still not used to the difference. I''m much more familiar with the creeping, cloying sort of attention that comes from people who only stare when they think you can''t see them, the guilt making their body tense because they know they shouldn''t be letting their gaze linger for so long. But of course, then you have the overcorrectors, the people so awkwardly conspicuous with their attempts to avoid staring that they end up causing exactly the same problem.

    Either way, I don''t really get treated like a person.

    This new kind of attention is very similar in that regard. I can see it in the stunned faces of everyone watching me, the hint of fear in their eyes as I get closer to where they stand. I''m not a person to them in this moment, not Lia Morgan and certainly not Julietta Monroe. I''m a marvel, a terror, a threat reminding them that they are small fish in what is ultimately a very small pond. It lacks the pity, disgust, and even the shame of the attention I''m used to, the social part of their minds not currently functional enough to remind them that they should look away. I suppose I''ll say that this new kind of staring is better than the old kind, but only just.

    Still, I''ve long since stopped expecting others to be better about this. I refused to let it get to me then, and I refuse to let it get to me now. My options have always been anger or apathy, and anger has traditionally not been the healthy choice for me to make.

    "Holy shit, Lia, what was that!?" Christine gapes at me. "What the fuck was that!?"

    It does hurt a little when the people I care about treat me that way, though. For all my complaints, I suppose I do care a lot about Christine.

    "What was what, exactly?" I ask, my tentacles writhing before splitting back into hair. "The fight, or the talk with Commander?"

    "Yes!" she responds. "You never did anything like that back in you-know-where!"

    "I only had access to a few different bodies, and I wasn''t terribly good at modifying them yet," I shrug. "I''m glad I got to use more of my skills this time around, but I wish Anastasia hadn''t pushed herself so hard. As for Commander¡­"

    I scratch my cheek, slightly embarrassed.

    "...I guess I got a little angry. It won''t happen again."

    She stares at me some more, her expression blank.

    "I''m really lucky that you found me, aren''t I?" she asks. "Not just that I was found. But that you found me."

    I shrug, not really knowing what to say to that.

    "Would you and Maria check up on Ana in the infirmary for me?" I ask. "I still have to go to therapy."

    "U-uh, yeah!" Maria chimes in. "We''d be happy to!"

    "Thanks," I nod, and then start walking off the field back to the main complex. I have absolutely no idea what I''m going to talk about in therapy. I usually have to bullshit something or another,  but I still feel a little off balance. I don''t have a good plan in mind for what to say when I finally find myself sitting down in his office.

    "Hello, Ms. Morgan," Dr. Morrison greets me. "How are you doing today?"

    I rest my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands.

    "I don''t like it when people hurt children," I tell him.

    He blinks.

    "An understandable sentiment," he says, rallying quickly. "I think just about everybody could agree with that."

    "No, I don''t think they can," I say. "I don''t think most people agree on what hurting a child even is, let alone if and when you should do it. Because let''s be honest here: we as a society have decided that we should do it. Frequently."

    "People often make decisions when backed against a wall that they regret after returning to safety," Dr. Morrison says. "Sometimes there is no right answer. Sometimes, there is a right answer, and we simply fail to find it. In both of these situations, all we can do is allow ourselves forgiveness and learn from our mistakes."

    "No," I counter simply.

    "No?"

    "I don''t think I have to forgive anybody," I tell him. "If the choice is between anger and apathy, then on this I choose anger."

    "Forgiveness is not apathy," Dr. Morrison insists.

    "Then I''ve never forgiven anyone in my life."

    The conversation collapses after that, sputtering and stalling until the topic is ultimately changed to something else entirely. I leave his office, as I always have, feeling like I have completely wasted my time. My first stop is, of course, the infirmary, where I quickly find Christine and Maria chatting with a lively looking Anastasia, the IV drip stuck in her arm being the only sign of her former condition.

    "You''re here!" she beams when she spots me.

    "Of course I am!" I grin back. "How''s my little second-place finisher?"

    She groans, loud and long.

    "Embaaarrassed! I can''t believe I lost in such a lame way! I knew I should have kept all the blood between my other matches too, I just thought it would be cheating!"

    "There''s no sportsmanship in war, I''m afraid," I say, mussing up her hair some more. Her braid has long since been ruined. "I guess your dreams of a full day of tiger training will have to wait."

    "Nooooooooo! Can we just do a little? Just a little?"

    "I don''t know¡­"

    "Pleeeeease?" she begs, pulling out an expert-level puppy dog face. Now that''s a well-practiced manipulation tactic! I guess I should reward her for all the hard work she''s put into it.

    "Well¡­ okay," I acquiesce, holding my hand out over her bed and repeating the trick where I start forming the new body at the end of the limb rather than modifying the corresponding parts into new versions. Shapeshifting is noticeably faster if I adjust my legs into tiger legs, my hands into tiger paws, my mouth into a tiger mouth, and so on, but I can still form an entirely new body more or less ex nihilo without using up any more materials than any other method. Unshifting mass seems to put it back into my reserves rather than waste it, which is delightfully convenient. My clothes drop to the floor as the body that was once inside them simply slurps itself up into my tail, which twitches left and right as all four of my paws drop onto Anastasia''s bed.

    She squeals with delight, immediately leaning forward to grab me and scoop me up into her arms. I let out a startled yowl, flailing around a bit but ultimately letting her manhandle me into a firm cuddle. Christine, meanwhile, kneels down and kindly picks my clothes up off the floor. I guess she''s used to this now.

    "Is everything alright in here?" a nurse asks, peeking her head in at the noise.

    "Tiger!" Anastasia answers succinctly, presenting me like Simba at Pride Rock. I dutifully meow.

    "I¡­ see," the nurse says with a strained poker face. "Please keep still, dear. With wounds like yours¡ª"

    "They''re healed already!" Anastasia insists, and I can feel that she isn''t lying. "Can I go eat dinner?"

    "...I''ll get the doctor," the nurse answers, bravely deciding to make this someone else''s problem.

    Anastasia once again retracts me into a tight cuddle against her chest, her claws dispensing careful scritches behind my ears and down my back. I squirm around a bit until I am maximally comfortable, and then settle in to purr. It''s more than a little embarrassing, but after everything I did today I don''t have much of an incentive to let embarrassment decide things for me. This feels awesome. Anastasia is happy. What more do I need?

    The doctor eventually returns and discharges Anastasia with orders to not strain herself for the rest of the day. We head to the cafeteria, Anastasia holding me in her arms the entire way. I used to be a little afraid of shapeshifting into something this small. After all, I can''t fit an adult brain¡ªhuman or alien¡ªinto a kitten''s body. But now I''m not even trying to; this tiger cub has the brain of a tiger cub, something that should be entirely subsapient, yet here I am, thinking all of my usual Julietta thoughts. The kitten''s brain is definitely affecting me in much the same way all my other brains affect me¡ªsmall, quick movements along the ground or in the air catch my attention in an instant, my whole body tightening with excitement¡ªbut it clearly isn''t performing the core processing behind my conscious mind. So that leads me to a rather obvious question: what is?

    I don''t know. I''ll figure it out sometime I''m not melting from expertly delivered head scratches. And no matter how it works, it''s a huge relief to know that it does work. No matter how much I change, I''m still me.

    We eat together (and I selflessly allow Anastasia to feed me with a little spoon) before we all head back to my and Christine''s room. Christine and Maria have both been largely silent this whole time, which is normal for Christine but definitely a little odd for Maria. I suppose it''s entirely understandable, given the circumstances, but I''d still like to know if there''s anything I can do to help and I doubt anything meaningful will be accomplished while I''m a tiger. Once Anastasia sits down on my bed, I hop out of her arms, shapeshift into the PG version of Lia''s body, and hold up one hand. Without a word, Christine tosses my clothes at me in one big wad, which I catch and start to dress myself in.

    "Awww!" Anastasia whines. Purely to make her feel better and absolutely not for any other reason, I shapeshift my ears into big tiger ears and lean over to let her keep scratching me.

    "Are you doing okay, Maria?" I ask. "Marias, maybe?"

    She tenses up, glancing my way. Her eyes flash orange, then green, then pink, then back to blue, all in under a second.

    "I''m fine. But yes, it''s¡­ much louder in here," she says, motioning to her own head. "It''s a lot to take in at once."

    "If it''s too loud, you could always externalize some of it," I say. "Or some of them, as the case may be."

    "That would be just as loud, the only difference would be everyone else hearing it too," she disagrees, a self-deprecating fake smile worming its way onto her face. It reminds me of Emily, honestly. Which¡­ I guess is something I still need to talk with her about.

    "Would you like to take a short walk?" I ask, retracting my ears back into humanoid versions as I stand up, much to Anastasia''s dismay. "I might be able to clear up at least a little bit of the mess in there, I think."

    "Oh! I''ll come too!" Anastasia declares.

    "Nope, you''re with me, kiddo," Christine heroically interjects, picking up on my intentions. "Allow me to regale you with the story of Char Aznable, a man who has never betrayed anyone in his entire life."

    I direct Christine a thank-you nod, then smile at Maria as we step out into the hall.

    "So," I say. "The flirting."

    Maria gives me a startled look.

    "¡­I thought you needed more time to think about that," she says.

    "Yeah, and I''ve had time? It''s been over an hour."

    Maria doesn''t seem to have any idea what to say about that, so I decide to just continue.

    "We don''t have to do this right now if you don''t want to, but it could be a good opportunity to get Pink out and test the body-swapping thing you''ve been doing."

    "...Body-swapping?" she asks.

    "Your eyes change color," I inform her. "I assume it corresponds to people other than Blue taking temporary control."

    "I¡­ I guess that has happened, now that you mention it," she says hesitantly. "I and a lot of the others don''t necessarily think we''re different people, per se, so much as different aspects of the same Maria. But Orange insists she''s independent from us, and we keep having different opinions about the same things."

    "I don''t know if that means anything," I shrug. "Everybody has nuanced opinions. You can like something and not like it without being more than one person. But if there''s somebody in your head insisting they are a different person, I feel like it would be pretty weird not to listen to them. Especially since, y''know, you can literally manifest her as a separate entity who makes her own decisions."

    "I guess you have a point," she sighs. "I don''t really want to be an entirely separate person from the others. It feels¡­ wrong. Like I''m missing things that always used to be there."

    "Well, I don''t know how much I can help you with that," I admit. "But I know that I worry a lot about what I am and how I work and what that might mean about me. And I really think all of those things would be nice to know, you know? Just so I don''t have to worry about them anymore. But when I get those answers¡­ I''m starting to figure out that it doesn''t actually change who I am. You''re a joy to be around, and whether there''s one of you or two of you or twenty of you, I don''t see that changing."

    She stares at me for a little while and then sighs, her eyes flicking pink.

    "So?" she asks. "What are we, then?"

    "We''re friends," I tell her. "And for the foreseeable future, I''d like to remain that way. Sorry."

    Her whole body tenses, a grimace on her face as she swallows down the emotions warring for dominance inside of her.

    "...Because you already have a girlfriend?" she asks.

    "Emily is extremely important to me," I tell her honestly, "but I don''t think I want her as a girlfriend either. I am¡­ not uninterested in romance, but with everything going on with my body, my head, the world, and the child I''m effectively raising, I don''t really know how to handle it. I''m¡­"

    I don''t feel like I''m in control of myself. I don''t think I''ve experienced attraction for long enough to be confident that I can respond maturely to it. I like Maria a lot for who she is, but I''m used to that being all there is to it. If I''m honest with myself, I''m afraid of my own sexuality. Of suddenly being forced to feel this enormous new aspect of interpersonal relationships and being expected to act like I have any experience with it, any ability at all to know what the fuck I''m supposed to do. My whole life, I''ve been thankful for getting to skip out on puberty. For being able to laugh as everyone else around me acts like idiots whenever their genitals take over for their brain.

    Now I''m in their shoes, and it doesn''t seem quite as funny anymore. Most people have their entire childhood to sort this stuff out. I never got a childhood at all. I have no idea what I''m doing, and Maria deserves better than that.

    "...I guess I''ve got a lot of stuff to say that I don''t want to say in the hallway of a military base," I continue lamely. "But I want you to know it''s not a lack of interest, or a lack of anything on your part whatsoever. There''s a big part of me that wants to give you a very different answer. But I don''t think that decision is right for me at this time."

    She stares at me for a few moments, and then she suddenly catches me off-guard by bursting into laughter. A blush blooms on my cheeks, and I''m too flustered to even think about stopping it.

    "W-was that funny?" I ask. "I didn''t intend it to be funny!"Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

    "It was just a very, very you answer," Pink chuckles, a broad grin on her face. There''s also a bit of moisture in her eyes, though I''m not sure whether or not it''s just from the laughter.

    "Um? Thank you?"

    "It''s a compliment," she confirms. "It''s just¡­ what do I say to that, you know? You usually talk like a normal person, but it feels like whenever things get serious a switch flips and you start busting out a doctoral thesis. Like, in just one hour you''ve cataloged your entire emotional spectrum and calculated the best way to let me down easy in two paragraphs. There''s no way I could have an argument prepared to match that."

    "Um, well, the objective is for you to not have any reason to argue," I explain. "You were asking me about my feelings. If my answer provokes an argument, it means I have miscommunicated severely enough to offend you, or possibly even changed the topic entirely. Of course I would avoid doing that. Is that¡­ bad?"

    "No, it''s not bad at all," she says. "It''s just very you. Weird, but effective."

    "Well, as long as it''s effective, I guess I don''t much care if it''s weird," I admit.

    "We know, Lia," she answers with a smile. "Everybody knows."

    I blink. For some reason, I feel slightly offended.

    "...I could be normal, if I wanted to," I insist. "I know how to do that. I''m good at it, even. It just isn''t the optimal strategy anymore."

    "Sure, Lia," she patronizes me, causing my blush to grow deeper. "Well, thanks for taking this off my plate. You make a really good point, honestly. We have to figure ourselves out in here before it would be a good idea to get deep into a relationship. But when you figure yourself out a little more, and when I¡­ when we figure ourselves out a little more, would you be open to reconsidering?"

    "Well, when the circumstances are different, you should always¡­ I mean, yes. Yes, I would be open to reconsidering."

    "Very normal answer," she grins. "And¡­ thank you. Thank you for treating us like what''s happening is¡­ just not a big deal? I''m so afraid that people will think I''m insane, you know? Because I''m afraid I''m insane. I''m scared, because people aren''t supposed to be like this. But you act like it isn''t even a problem, and that makes me feel¡­ I don''t know, like it might not be."

    I stare at her, taking in her nervous fidgets. This whole conversation was a point of vulnerability for her, so traditionally the proper response for forging stronger bonds is to reciprocate. That potentially puts me at risk, but¡­ well, I''m going to tell her when I have an opportunity. I want her to know. So a little bit of vulnerability right now isn''t likely to be the end of the world.

    "I have a lot more experience than you might think when it comes to being something people aren''t ''supposed'' to be," I tell her. "But for every rule about what someone can''t be because it would be evil or hurtful, there are countless more formed solely from callous disgust. I''m far from immune to it. I''ve looked in the mirror and thought that the person staring back was too weak, too gross, too useless to be worthy of existence. That''s why I can recognize the look on other people''s faces so easily. If I let myself become one of those people to someone else, I''m not sure what I''d do."

    She stares at me, her smile turning a little sad as she starts trying to work through how to respond.

    "I mean, I''d like to point out that you''re drop-dead gorgeous, but I know how that¡­"

    She slowly cuts herself off, noticing the very, very slight shake of my head.

    "...Lia?"

    Again, my only response is a very slight shake of the head.

    She mouths ''oh,'' but thankfully stops herself before vocalizing anything. The clear shock on her face probably helped keep her quiet.

    "I''d love to talk more later, but I should probably get back to my room for now," I tell her. "Do you think they''ll put us in the same boot camp?"

    It takes her another moment to respond, her mental gears struggling to shift without a clutch.

    "...Why wouldn''t they?" she asks.

    "To reduce the chance of runners," I explain. "A bunch of people with superpowers who all know each other are much more likely to try their odds with villainy because having allies makes you harder to scare and being harder to scare makes you harder to keep in line. I imagine they''ll be splitting us up as much as possible, but I''m not sure if there will be enough new basic training courses starting up at exactly the same time at different bases to split us up completely. It''ll be good to know how much they trust us, though."

    "What do you mean?"

    "Well, let''s say there are two supers per camp. If the one you''re paired with is a belligerent piece of shit, you''re probably there because the brass trusts you to keep her in line. But if the other super is a stuck-up brown-noser, you know that she''s there to keep you in line."

    "Huh," Maria says. "Kind of cynical, but it makes sense."

    "An ideal I always aspire to keep my thoughts to," I smile at her. "I''m pretty sure some people still think I''m an Angel in disguise, so I try to keep my finger on the pulse of this stuff."

    "...You aren''t an Angel in disguise, right?" she asks, and I can tell it is only mostly a joke.

    "If I was, would you care as long as I don''t kill anybody?"

    That seems to throw her for a loop.

    "I¡­ don''t have any idea how to respond to that," she admits. "I guess¡­ no? Though that would come with a lot of other questions and caveats. You''re not though, right? This is all just hypothetical?"

    "I am not, and this is all just hypothetical," I confirm. "As far as I know, I was born a full-blooded human being from my mother''s womb."

    "Why do you keep putting qualifiers on all this?"

    "Because I can grow hydraulic-powered tentacles out of my face."

    "...Okay, fair," she admits. "Well, I guess I should get going too. See you tomorrow, though?"

    "See you then," I confirm.

    And I do. I see her the next day, and the next day, and the day after. Our training continues, but before I know it, it ends. It''s an occasion surprisingly devoid of fanfare, not that I can blame the military for wanting to keep ceremonies few and far between while we are pressed for time, resources, and bodies. But the process of outflowing us is a complex one, as it involves not just our first real break since Chicago exploded, but also our first opportunity to leave the direct watchful eye of the military and see our families again. For me, of course, this opportunity is a mixed bag.

    Our break will only be three days long. For its duration, we will be required to stay in Columbus, Georgia, a city just twenty minutes north of the base. If our families want to meet with us at that time, they will have to come to us¡­ but Lia''s parents, of course, have absolutely no trouble making a plane flight happen on very short notice.

    My call with them is brief and cold. Lia''s mother wants facts, times, and information, with only a cursory how-are-you to I''m-fine exchange to adhere to the minimum societal expectation of mother-daughter relationships. If she notices that I am an imposter impersonating her flesh and blood, she certainly never mentions it.

    The call with Emily, meanwhile, is somehow much more lively and much more annoying.

    "Hello?"

    "Hello Emily, it''s¡ª"

    "Emily! Hey! Guess which fucker lived!"

    Peter yells as I try to address her, shoving himself into my personal space despite the fact that I''ve put the phone on speaker.

    "Peter!?" Emily shouts. "You fucking cunt, you left us to die!"

    "You know, it''s funny. Lia said exactly the same thing."

    "How the hell did you live!? Like literally, how the actual hell?"

    "Come on, Emily! Don''t be like that. I''m your last surviving family member," he says, grinning directly at me.

    "He got superpowers," I explain. "They''re almost as annoying as he is. Anyway, we''ll be free to take a brief break tomorrow and I can''t actually stop him from coming with us."

    "You just can''t come between familial bonds, Lia," he says smugly.

    "...Anyway, are you living in Columbus right now?" I ask.

    "Yep," she confirms. "I wanted to stay close."

    "Well, that''s perfect," I say. "I''ll bring Christine, Ana, and unfortunately Peter. Where do you want to meet up?"

    "Well, if we''re going to have the talk, I''d prefer to get food first. I''ve learned to never give anyone bad news on an empty stomach," Emily says.

    "Damn, you''re getting dumped, Lia," Peter says.

    "Not until my parents pay her way out of the military, I''m not," I answer flatly. "But they won''t be flying in until the last day, so I''m afraid I''ll have to take you out somewhere a lot less fancy than usual."

    "What, you don''t have a fancy superhero salary yet?"

    "I don''t even think I''m legally part of the military yet," I say. "Except maybe as a material asset."

    "Well," Emily says, and I can hear her smirk over the phone, "you certainly have some hefty material assets."

    Peter busts out laughing, thankfully saving me from having to try to think of a response. Somehow I doubt he''s laughing at the double entendre so much as the fact that I just got brazenly hit on by my sister. I suppose it fits our cover story.

    "...I''ll meet you at your new apartment, then?" I ask.

    "Yep. See you tomorrow."

    When tomorrow comes, our escort into the city is surprisingly light. I''m a little stumped regarding why. They either have tremendous confidence that none of us will run, tremendous confidence that they can catch us if we do, or some¡­ external factor making this the more optimal play. Do they have a power that tracks us? How could they do that if we leave the power''s domain? I can''t think of another explanation for their weird confidence, though. If I wanted to sneak away I could turn into a sparrow, fly a few states over, and steal any face I want. Allowing me to leave their direct supervision just seems weird.

    Still, I suppose it doesn''t really matter either way. I''m not planning to desert, so their countermeasures against desertion are not terribly important. What matters is that after loading us up into black-windowed trucks and taking us on a relatively short drive, Peter, Christine, Anastasia, and I are all unleashed upon the unsuspecting population of Columbus, Georgia.

    It''s¡­ remarkably strange, and surprisingly stressful being in an urban environment again. We''re dropped off at six thirty in the morning, so while the town is still largely waking up it''s far from empty. Every movement in the distance triggers my fight-or-flight response, forcing me to switch over to Raptor brain just to assure myself that there are no other aliens nearby. Anastasia nearly cuts herself a few times on instinct, so for the rest of the walk to Emily''s apartment I make a point of holding her hand.

    "Yer lookin'' a little twitchy there," Peter says, but his smile collapses halfway to forming when I grow a constellation of eyes to glare at him with.

    "You do not get to joke about this," I threaten him. "Not now, not ever."

    He pouts a little and shrugs it off, but keeps his mouth shut until we reach the address. Emily''s apartment building is remarkably unimpressive, but I can tell we have the right address the moment I see it leads to a ground-floor studio with a small patio on the opposite side from its entrance, both doors leading to clean escape routes. It''s just like the sort of place she would look for when we were finding houses to hole up in; she just doesn''t need an entire house when she''s living by herself.

    The door opens almost immediately after I knock, Emily staring at us in that half-vacant way of hers for a solid five seconds before she lets out a stress-filled sigh.

    "...Hey," she greets us. "It''s good to see you''re alright."

    "Likewise, Em," I nod to her. "Let''s go get some breakfast."

    "Emily, Emily!" Anastasia says, jumping up and down with her hands in the air.

    "Hey, Ana," she smiles, managing to hoist the kid up into her arms for a hug. "How have you been holding up during training?"

    "It''s been fun!" Anastasia declares. "I''m gonna tear the aliens apart next time I see them, I''m way stronger now! And and and they took big sister to the zoo and now she can turn into all kinds of things like baby tigers and big elephants and birds probably and she really likes octopuses."

    "That''s true, I do," I nod approvingly.

    "Big sister, huh?" Emily smiles. "Do I get to be a big sister?"

    "Hey, yeah, what about me?" Peter butts in. "Do I get to be big sister?"

    "Be quiet, meanie," Anastasia snaps at him. "I''m talking to my family."

    "Ha!" Christine laughs. "You tell him, Ana."

    "...Okay, I appear to have been owned, but do keep in mind that Emily is literally my only surviving family member," Peter says. "Y''know, unless Lia is actually just Julietta in disguise or something."

    I glare at him sidelong, and he pretends to ignore me. Bastard. I guess it''s not the biggest deal in the world, but I''m planning on explaining it after interrogating Emily about her powers because I feel like my secret is just going to look a lot less important by comparison and I am absolutely not above using Emily as a fall guy for my reputation considering that she''s the person insisting that I risk it.

    "...Who''s Julietta?" Christine asks, and I fail to suppress a full-body twitch as my power twists and tightens my flesh before snapping everything back into place.

    "The absolute last fucking name that Peter should have the audacity to let leave his lips," Emily growls, and I genuinely can''t tell if she''s hamming it up as part of the act or she''s actually pissed at him treading over it. "Seriously, Peter, I know you''re legally my only living relative, but you''re dead to me after the shit you pulled. I don''t know why you bothered to come here."

    "Sentimentality, I guess?" he shrugs. "That''s what they call it when you care about someone''s well-being but not enough to stick your neck out for them, isn''t it? You''re the expert, so I figure I should ask."

    "You motherf¡ªhow dare you! I dragged Julietta''s ass out from the wreckage, on my shoulder, and through the fucking incursion zone on foot until we got attacked by a goddamn Behemoth!"

    "But did you really do it for her sake, Em?" Peter asks. "''Cause that''s what I''m curious about. That''s why I''m here. I''m very interested in hearing the story of how you all made it out alive, because I know I haven''t heard the truth yet and I get the impression none of the girls here have either. Say what you will, I know I''m an asshole. But I know my sisters, too, and you''re way more like me than you ever were like Julietta."

    God damn. I stare at him, not entirely sure whether to be pissed off or vaguely impressed. ¡­No, scratch that, I''m pissed off. I won''t lie and act like I haven''t been getting bad vibes from Emily for a while now, but I don''t see where this fucker gets off acting like it''s his business. I open my mouth to tell him to take a long hike off a short bridge, but Anastasia speaks up first.

    "Do you think you would die if I drowned you?" she asks.

    What. The fuck. What has he done to my sweet baby Ana?

    "Not that I''d do that," she continues as the rest of us stare at her in shock. "But I''ve been wondering about it. It''s something that could be good to know. Tac-tick-ally. We should definitely test it sometime, mister Peter. Like maybe next time you say anything mean to my family ever."

    Peter''s face never loses that unflappable confidence, but I can feel that his body grows tense.

    "If they''re your sisters, then I''m your brother, kiddo," Peter shrugs. "You don''t always get to pick your family, I''m afraid."

    Anastasia''s expression doesn''t waver.

    "Yes I do."

    Peter returns her stare for a little while, but then he clicks his tongue and looks away first.

    "...I''ll stay quiet, then," he tells her. "Pinky promise."

    He holds out the offered digit, and after scowling suspiciously at it, Anastasia wraps her pinky finger around his, the two of them shaking on it with an unbreakable playground bond.

    "Well!" Emily declares. "Thank you for that, Ana. I''ll have to pick your brain on good ways to shut him up later."

    "Being absolutely bloody terrifying probably helps," Christine says. "Pun intended."

    Emily facepalms as Anastasia giggles, and I even manage to let out a few genuine chuckles. I had sort of expected this reunion with Emily to be tense, but not like that. I wonder what has Peter so worked up. He normally takes his potshots fairly opportunistically, performing for the amusement of himself or an audience. But it almost sounded like he was honestly invested there, and that raises a few questions. Do he and Emily have something going on that I don''t know about? Did he suspect her of having powers before I figured it out? I wouldn''t put it past him.

    ¡­But also, I''d rather just stop fucking thinking about him at this point and just have a nice meal with someone who, despite all her flaws, I still care about quite a bit. Emily looks like she''s had something of a rough time while we''ve been away; I was not expecting those of us returning from military murder training to have better mental health after all this time, but hopefully she''ll let me help out with whatever problems are keeping her up at night lately.

    We head back out towards the main street, doing our best to consciously avoid falling into the formation we would use in Chicago. Despite that clinging to the back of our minds, it''s a relaxing walk. Anastasia is clearly overjoyed to see Emily again, and Christine''s fairly obvious crush on her is cute in its own way. I''m not really sure what to say to her after all this time¡ªnot outside the context of the many, many questions I''m saving for after breakfast¡ªbut I''m not the sort of person who needs to fill the air with words in order to enjoy someone''s company.

    About half of my attention is spent on making sure I keep a human enough form to not scare nearby pedestrians, while the other half is spent watching my¡­ family. Hah. I guess they are my family. I''ve been treating them that way ever since Anastasia decided that''s what she wanted, and somewhere along the line it became true. I''ve had plenty of different families, so what''s one more?

    Of course, I''m used to ''family'' meaning a pair of ineffectual adults and a gaggle of apathetic children, all of which needed to be managed by me but none of which were willing to put up with me acting like I was in charge. A family was something I carved out a place in with my bare hands, learning to manage the insecurities and neuroses of unreliable people whom I had no choice but to rely on. It has, in retrospect, probably earned me a few insecurities and neuroses of my own.

    In that light, a family that actually chose me sounds unexpectedly nice. I just¡­ I don''t know if we''ll get another chance to be a family. We''ll be going to war. There''s no guarantee we''ll even see each other after this. I¡­ no. I have to find a way to ensure they don''t split us apart. I will find a way. If I can just prove myself to be valuable enough¡­

    "There''s one," Christine says, pointing down the road. "And, uh, there''s one. ¡­And there''s one."

    "Wait, what restaurant has three different buildings in the same¡­ oh my god, you are taking me to Waffle House," Emily says.

    "We''re in Georgia," Christine says. "Of course she''s taking you to Waffle House."

    "I won a gift card," I inform her.

    "How do they even keep that many different locations in business?" Emily asks. "Most other food chains went bankrupt and they haven''t even closed a single store."

    "I don''t understand what''s confusing about that," Christine says. "It''s Waffle House."

    We make our way to the closest location and open the doors, finding it surprisingly empty. I don''t even see any staff members, which is particularly weird, but maybe they''re in the back of the store or in the bathroom because I do see a single customer eating their meal in one of the booths. The lights are on, the music''s on, and everything seems open.

    "Ah, you made it."

    The five of us turn towards the store''s only other patron, an androgynous-looking person with brown hair in a styled pixie cut that looks fresh out of the barber. They''re eating¡­ not a waffle, surprisingly, but instead some kind of breakfast sandwich, which they set down on their plate as they turn towards us, legs stretching out of the booth and into the aisle. I glance at the others, but no one seems to have any idea who this person is. Yet they look at us with a disturbing familiarity, a too-knowing smile on their face. I genuinely cannot tell if it actually contains any joy.

    "Hello Peter, Emily, Christine, Ana," they say, their eyes roving over each and every one of the others before settling on me.

    "Hey Jules."

 27. Chosen

    I freeze, running my prior assessment of this person over in my head again. Jules? Only Peter, Lia, and some of Peter''s annoying friends call me Jules, and this person doesn''t look like any of them. Hell, all of Peter''s friends have a good chance of being dead, and I know Lia''s dead. Peter seems just as baffled by all of this as I am, as well. Which means that someone we don''t know has figured out my identity and my least favorite pet name without ever meeting any of us face-to-face.

    So they have powers. Ones that let them gather information. They could know anything, but that doesn''t mean I should give away any information for free.

    "I don''t believe we''ve been introduced," I answer the greeting neutrally. They laugh.

    "Here I am trying to catch you off-balance and you just go and grow another leg," they say, shaking their head. "You can call me In-Joke."

    I feel Emily''s face bleach white, adrenaline flooding her system as she takes a step back. In-Joke slowly locks eyes with her, giving her a lazy smile that freezes her in place.

    "Yes, hello, it''s me. Lovely to meet the real you, etcetera etcetera," they say, wiggling their fingers with a little wave. "Now be a good girl and stay quiet, I''m checking in on my investments."

    "Um," Christine says.

    "W-we need to¡ª" Emily starts, but with a single look the supervillain (I think it''s pretty obvious now that this is a supervillain) causes her to completely stop breathing. They don''t even use their power to do it; they haven''t reached out their domain to ours, haven''t made a single aggressive move that I can detect, but nonetheless Emily freezes like she has a gun to her head until In-Joke looks away, her breathing restarting shallowly and silently.

    "When I want to talk to your power," In-Joke says, "I''ll let it know."

    I step between them and Emily, half to reassure her and half to prepare for violence.

    "If you''re just here to threaten us then I''m afraid we''re going to find somewhere else to eat," I say flatly.

    "Sorry, sorry," they wave me off with a sickening smile. "There''s no need to worry, she''ll behave and this won''t come to violence. She was a husk of a person before I ever met her, so leading her wherever you want her to go is a fairly simple trick. It just takes conviction."

    "Absolutely no part of that makes me want to continue this conversation with you," I answer bluntly. "Considering that you went through the effort of figuring out where we''d be, I imagine you''d rather it amount to something."

    "Oh? And what makes you think you get a choice in whether or not this amounts to something?"

    "My confidence is one of my more attractive qualities," I answer, and their smile widens.

    Okay. That one actually looks more happy than crazy, so I seem to be on the right track here. With a name like ''In-Joke'', this is clearly the sort of villain who likes to banter. Not that I have any experience chatting with supervillains, but I definitely have experience talking with the sort of people who hear the word ''supervillain'' and unironically go ''yeah, I wanna be that.'' This person doesn''t look any older than I am, so I''m ultimately just dealing with an incredibly edgy teenager with the power to back it up. At least, judging by Emily''s reaction they do. But both the name and the way they''re acting imply that their power is based around information, not combat. A purely informational power wouldn''t have Emily this scared, so their power somehow lets them know things and lets them kill people, or¡­

    "You''re a part of a villain group, I take it?" I ask. It''s the easiest explanation. This person is either a powerhouse who simply got their information from an ally, or an informational specialist who has the backup of an ally powerful enough to terrify Emily.

    "God, I love not having to explain this shit," they sigh indulgently. "Exactly, Jules. Got it in one. Your little Emily there is a member as well, at least in the sense that she does whatever we want, whenever we want."

    "You called us ''investments'' earlier," I comment. "Were you the one giving Emily directions through the incursion zone?"

    "Ha! From a certain point of view, yes," they confirm. "I can''t take too much of the credit for that, but we nudged things here and there to help the five of you out."

    "Well if that''s true, I appreciate that," I say.  "What is this group of yours, if you don''t mind me asking?"

    Keep them talking, let them keep giving us information without requiring us to give anything in return.

    "We are the Defenders of Nothing," they answer with a smile.

    "Huh," Peter says. "Sounds edgy as hell."

    "Actually, it''s hilarious," In-Joke grins. "You don''t get it yet, but you will."

    They seem to be staring right at me when they say that. They seem almost¡­ hungry.

    "What makes you say that?" I continue probing.

    They chuckle.

    "I know what you''re doing, Jules," they insist. "It''s painfully familiar. But there''s no reason to play your cards so close to Lia''s chest. I already know everything you could possibly want to hide. Do they?"

    In-Joke glances between Christine and Anastasia, the latter of who glowers back at them and the former of who is frowning at me.

    "To varying extents," I answer simply. "If you''re planning to extort me, I''m afraid there isn''t much you can get out of telling them a secret I was intending to tell them anyway."

    "Really?" They press with a smile. They seem to always be smiling, to some degree or another. Keeping track of the ratio of joy to mania seems like it might be an important survival technique in the future. "You don''t care if I tell them your real name is Julietta Monroe?"

    "Nope," I answer. "My family''s allowed to know. I might care if you tell the government, but I get the impression you and them aren''t on speaking terms."

    I, of course, am in fact extremely frustrated that this jerk is revealing my name now rather than letting me do it on my own terms, but I can''t let them use it to hold power over me in this interaction. It''s better to give it up now and eat the loss in order to deny them the asset. I glance over to Christine, since she''s the only one who seems upset by this, and make an apologetic expression. She huffs, seeming irritated, but not to a degree that I don''t think can be fixed the next time we get a chance for an honest conversation.

    "Well, I guess you''ve got me there," In-Joke shrugs. "I''m happy your little family is getting along so well."

    What was that? Bitterness? Potentially a trigger I''ll need to tiptoe around. This is cool. This is super cool. Right when we finally get an opportunity to take a break, some crazy psychic ambushes us in a fucking Waffle House and starts nebulously threatening us to comply with demands they haven''t even made yet. I was really hoping to get over the whole ''PTSD from urban areas'' thing, but it''s definitely not happening this week.

    Anastasia lifts one hand up to grab my shirt, ensuring she has my attention as she starts expanding her domain towards this family outing interloper. You know what? Yeah. I think we''re past any pretense of politeness. Rather than stop her, I back her up, our domains mixing together and creeping towards the creep as one. We have no idea when we''ll actually reach our target''s domain, so we take it slow, not wanting to accidentally give them a moment of vulnerability by overextending. But we don''t actually hit the domain until we''re overlapping with In-Joke''s skin, our enemy fully on the defensive.

    That''s about the only conscious thought I can register before the sensation of the domain overwhelms me.

    Like blood draining from my face, some important pressure leaves me. My domain recoils without moving, having reached out to touch a mirror only for the reflection to steal the heat from its bones. Yet the reflection, fittingly, suffers an identical effect, weakening as I am weakened, chastised as I am chastised. Immediately, I fear that this is their power, some ability to sap strength away from their enemies, but I can still feel Anastasia and she suffers no such effect. She remains as strong as she always was, though In-Joke and I both weaken.

    Dissonance. The two of us have dissonance.

    And yet, somehow I feel we resonate. There''s something disturbingly familiar in the domain I now touch, both in feeling and in power. In-Joke completely and utterly eclipses our strength. If the dissonance effect has weakened me by taking ten from twenty, it has weakened them by taking ten from a hundred. Even with Anastasia at my side, the relative balance of power is not in our favor. But the thing that makes this strength feel familiar is the nature of the domain itself. It is endless iteration, an infinity explored so that all potential outcomes can be known, adored, embodied. It is the question and the answer, and it asks: what if.

    It feels like a dream.

    "There she is," In-Joke breathes, their voice almost a whisper. "Our god''s favorite daughter."

    "What?" is the most eloquent thing I can think to ask.

    "Didn''t you know, Julietta?" they chuckle. "You''re the most interesting girl in the world. That''s why the Defenders of Nothing want to extend you and your family an offer. Emily''s already saying yes, whether she likes it or not, but the rest of you can get in on the action and away from the watchful eyes of the military, if you so choose."

    "And in return, we work for you," I say, doing my best to rally myself after that brush with their domain. Anastasia and I both retreat back into a defensive position; neither of us wants to force a confrontation with someone more powerful than an Angel. "What might that entail, I wonder?"

    "Less than you might think," In-Joke smiles. "It''s in the name, after all. Our organization has no grand, unifying goal. Working together is just the only way we have to stay free. The rest of the world has banded together to force us into slavery for having the gall to be more interesting than they are. We''re just banding together back. Making a safe space for powered people uninterested in dancing to everyone else''s tune."

    "¡­So you''re not fighting aliens?" Anastasia asks.

    "Not when they aren''t getting in our way," they answer. "The whole point is not having to fight, after all."

    "Even though you''re so powerful?" Anastasia presses.

    In-Joke breaks out into laughter, sudden and loud. Most of the others flinch at the sound, while I do my best to figure out the joke.

    "I''m the weakest super in the world," they say. "The fact that I could kill every single one of you is just a minor detail. There are countless ways to do that. Some as easy as saying a single name."

    Emily shivers like she''s been dumped naked in the snow, her hands held tightly over her mouth as she starts to hyperventilate. Okay, time to wrap things up here, one way or another. That''s one too many death threats for me to ever consider this person a friend.

    "I''m going to have to decline your invitation," I say plainly. "Your organization doesn''t sound like one I''d like to be involved with."

    "Even after I put all that work into making sure you stayed alive?" they pout. "I could just as easily turn that effort into the opposite."

    "Are you going to?" I challenge. "Because I''m done talking. Make your ultimatum if you have one, or get out."

    For the first time, their expression twists into something other than a smile, though what it becomes is a matter of some interpretation. Their face twitches, moving between shock and anger and resignment and fear and so many other things so quickly that it seems almost impossible that they could truly be feeling all of them. It looks as if their face was nothing but a program they were running that just glitched out. And yet¡­ other things make it seem more genuine. The way their breathing quickens, the way their whole body shakes, the way one hand slowly moves up inside their jacket and seems to fiddle with something, making a click, click, click. It doesn''t seem like an act. It just seems like they are deeply, deeply unstable.

    "U-um, I suppose I pushed too hard?" they mutter quietly to themselves, not seeming to notice or care that we can hear them. "I should just¡­ no, wait. Not this time. Right? Probably. Could risk it? No."

    "I''ll join you," Peter suddenly says. In-Joke blinks, seeming to remember that we''re here.

    "What?" they ask. "Oh. You. Sure, whatever."

    "¡­Well now I don''t want to," Peter scowls.

    "Fine, fine, yes, you are very wonderful and special and actually I care about you very very much because of how wonderful and special you are. Join us or don''t. I''ll ask the rest of you later. I guess it doesn''t really matter either way? Probably? But¡­ hnng."

    They start walking towards us. We tense up, ready for a fight, but they ignore us and simply walk past, pushing open the exit door and walking out.

    "What the fuck was¡ª" Christine starts, but then In-Joke suddenly turns around and opens the door again.

    "Right! Emily, you can tell them the shit or whatever," they say before turning around and leaving again.

    "Okay, what the fuck was¡ª"

    "Right!" In-Joke says, shoving open the door yet again. "The employees are in the bathroom. They probably need your help getting untied. Should be fine though, unless they haven''t been cleaning the place but then that''s their own fault. Ugh, did I really tie them up in the bathroom? No wonder I''m off my game. Um. Bye."

    This time, we watch out the windows to make sure they have entirely walked away.

    "Okay, seriously, what the fuck was that?" Christine finally finishes.

    "Well, Emily''s supervillain boygirlfriend has a crush on Julietta, obviously," Peter says.

    "Right, okay, let''s start with that," Christine says. "Julietta? Like the girl we talked about being dead literally ten minutes ago?"

    "Yeah, sorry, I''m scamming the government, would have told you sooner but you found recording devices in our room," I tell her. "Now I know this is all very interesting and a little terrifying but I''m going to go free the people who are apparently tied up in the bathroom. I promise I''ll answer all your questions after that, okay?"

    "Oh, uh, right," Christine blinks, and I walk over to the bathrooms. There''s no one in the women''s, but the men''s bathroom has two people sitting on the floor, tied up by their wrists to the sink. They tense when I walk in, so I decide to cut off their concerns at the bud.

    "Hey, you two okay?" I ask, squatting down and slowly reaching for their bindings. "I''m gonna help you out."

    "See? That didn''t take long," one of the employees tells the other, seeming unharmed and largely unperturbed. The other one seems a bit more nervous, quickly standing up and stepping away from me as I grow teeth out of my thumb and forefinger and snip their ropes.

    "Are both of you okay?" I ask. "What happened?"

    "Nothing too fancy," the calm employee answers. "We just give some asshole the food they ordered and they pull a gun on us and tie us up in here."

    A gun? Seriously? Is that what they were fiddling with inside their jacket? I suppose it makes sense for a supervillain to have one, but I should have considered it sooner.

    "Should we call the cops?" the nervous employee asks.

    "Only if you want to make witness statements all day," the other employee answers. "Is that asshole gone?"

    "Yeah, they left after telling us you were in here," I confirm.

    "Great, situation over," the calm employee yawns. "You get used to this stuff. You guys want anything to eat?"

    "That''s it?" I ask, the other employee seeming to silently agree with me. "Do you two not like¡­ need a minute?"

    "You get used to this stuff," he says again.

    I stare at him. He stares back.

    "Okay then," I allow. "My friends and I might be talking about some private things if we decide to stay?"

    "I''ll turn the music up loud," the employee grunts, stepping past me. "You wanna take your thirty?"

    The other employee stares at him like he''s crazy.

    "Sure? I guess?" he manages. The calm employee nods and walks out of the bathroom. I have no idea what that was all about, but I guess we''re going to eat some waffles. I return to the others, who are mostly standing around awkwardly as Emily comes down from a panic attack.

    "Well, apparently they''re still open," I say as the music does indeed start to get louder. "You wanna sit in a corner booth?"

    Peter and Christine turn to look at me in much the same way that the new employee looked at his co-worker, but Anastasia speaks before they can.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    "Sure!"

    I nod and walk up to Emily, putting my arm around her shoulder and half hugging, half guiding her to a place to sit down.

    "You''re gonna be okay," I assure her soothingly.

    "I''m not," Emily whimpers. "None of us are."

    "Why is that?" I ask, partly on instinct to keep her talking, but also because it''s starting to seem like we are genuinely in deep shit here. Emily just clutches her head and shivers, so I scoot into the booth first and guide her in beside me, making sure she still has access to an easy escape route. Peter tries to scoot in on the other side of her, but turning my hand into a blade makes him reconsider. He glances over to where Christine and Anastasia are sitting across from us, considers their expressions for a moment, and decides to simply sit at the table behind me.

    "Okay, I think we probably all have a lot of questions for Emily, but let''s start with everyone''s questions for me so she can have some time to recover," I suggest.

    "I think we all need time to recover," Christine says. "I mean, we just got threatened by a crazy person who is apparently also a supervillain in the middle of a town actively being monitored by the military. That''s terrifying. Who sets up a treason recruitment drive ten minutes away from an army base?"

    "Have y''all decided what you want to order?" the employee calls out to us from behind the counter.

    "Maybe starting with food would be best," I say. "What''s everyone thinking?"

    A surreal atmosphere falls over us as we peruse the small menu and make our selections. None of us have been to a restaurant in months, and with the sudden encounter with danger so close behind us the experience is nothing like what any of us remember. Still, it doesn''t take long for food to be placed in front of us, and a full stomach does more to soothe panic than any words I could ever speak.

    I have a waffle. It''s okay.

    "Alright, so, Julietta," Christine prompts.

    "That is my name, and the name I prefer, but in public I''d appreciate it if you''d still call me Lia," I answer.

    "What do you actually look like?" she asks.

    "I''d show you, but I literally can''t," I tell her. "For some reason, I never gained a template of my original body. I was pretty heavily disabled due to an accident when I was a kid, with a lot of burn scars and other lumps all over me. Couldn''t walk well. Stuff like that."

    "Oh," Christine frowns. "Now I feel kinda bad. I was always a little envious of your powers."

    "You don''t need to feel bad for that," I shrug. "At least you didn''t say ''wow, you must feel pretty lucky'' or some shit."

    "I know you too well to think that you''re lucky," Christine sighs. "And I think I''m starting to figure out why you didn''t tell me. Emily needs to hide the powers she insists she doesn''t have for some reason, she needs to stay out of the military to do that, she needs Lia''s money to stay out of the military, and I''m guessing if you''re Julietta it means the girl who died was¡­"

    "Yeah," I nod. "You got it in one. Pretty much everything I''ve told you is true other than the fact that our positions in the story are reversed. Lia crashed the car, but I''m not actually Lia and definitely wasn''t driving. I''m a little worried about that breaking my cover, actually, because I have absolutely no idea how to drive."

    "God, this is so fucked," Christine groans, rubbing her face with her hands.

    "Everybody dies in three years," Emily suddenly says. All attention turns to her.

    "Maximum, I mean," she continues quietly. "Lots of things can definitely kill us before then, too."

    Oh. Okay. This is definitely not the direction I expected this conversation to go.

    "When you say everybody¡ª" Peter starts.

    "Everybody I''ve ever met," Emily answers immediately. "Three years, maximum. The exact date moves around a little, but it''s about three years from now."

    "So you definitely have powers," Christine confirms.

    "My power tells me when people die," Emily explains. "Me or anybody else in my domain."

    "So why can''t we feel your domain?" I ask.

    "I can feel her domain," Anastasia says. "It''s just really weak. Like, barely even there."

    "Yeah, that," Emily says, her voice having kept the same monotone since she started talking. "You just stretch it out so thin that it''s basically powerless. For some reason I don''t need any penetration for my ability to work, so there''s no real reason for me to not keep it at maximum range, minimum strength. Except to protect against other powers, I guess."

    "How long have you had powers?" I ask.

    "I got them slightly before I started living with you," Emily answers. "In the incursion that killed my parents."

    So at least three years then. This whole time, Emily has been seeing our time run out, and we''ve just hit the halfway mark from her perspective.

    "¡­So when you helped us escape the incursion, it wasn''t your first time," Christine says. "That''s how you knew what to do?"

    No, Emily''s knowledge of where to go was too arbitrary and specific to simply be from experience.

    "The numbers can change," I conclude. "You were trying to optimize them."

    "Basically?" Emily shrugs, staring at her plate. "They aren''t numbers, for starters. Just a vague feeling of when and how likely. And I can ask my power stuff like ''well, what if they do this,'' or ''what if they go here,'' and the intensity of likelihood of any given time changes."

    "So when the villain threatened you just now¡­" I prompt.

    "If I moved too much or made a sound, I''d die in a second," she says softly. "And that''s what they''ve been doing. I never met them until today, but I''ve felt that before, that there are certain things I can''t do or else I will die. Somehow, the Defenders of Nothing figured out my power over a year ago, and I''ve sort of been¡­ doing things for them. Because I don''t want to die."

    "So, were they guiding us via your power through the incursion zone?" I ask.

    "I have no idea," Emily admits. "I don''t know what causes the deaths my power foresees, it doesn''t work like that. I just know that we''ll die if we go left and we''ll die if we go straight but we''ll only maybe die if we go right, so I take us right. Over and over and over, at every intersection, before every door, before every fucking word that comes out of my mouth. Every time I think of doing anything, I see where my death date shifts. And I pick whichever option is farthest away."

    "So when you told me you refused to talk about your power because you suspected the military might have truth-telling powers¡­" I prompt again.

    "That''s just my best guess about why it might happen. No, that''s a lie. Telling you it was my best guess made an early death less likely to happen. I never know why. I suspect you were less likely to work with me if I didn''t give you a reason that sounded plausible, and for all I know that plausible reason is exactly why I needed to do what I did. But I don''t know."

    "Are you checking with your power now? Before answering our questions?" I ask.

    There''s a pause.

    "Yes," she admits.

    "Would you have lied about it if your power said you''d live longer?" I ask. This time, her answer comes out immediately.

    "Yes."

    When I want to talk with your power, I''ll let it know. Holy shit.

    "You''ve been doing this since you got your power, haven''t you?" I ask.

    "Yes."

    "And has it not occurred to you that this might not be healthy!?"

    "It''s healthier than fucking dying, Julietta!" Emily snaps. Immediately, she flinches, looking regretful about the outburst. God, it all makes so much sense now. There''s still a person in there, but she''s actively doing everything she can to ignore that person, her wants, her needs, because she''s mortally terrified of the death she sees approaching. She wants to be alive so badly that she''s scared to live.

    The worst part is, I''d probably do the same in her shoes. Having that knowledge constantly hanging over me, the certainty that doing one thing would keep me alive longer than doing something else, how could I convince myself of any other choice? Maybe if I needed to save someone else''s life I could shorten my own¡ªI know I''d do that for most of the people here¡ªbut that''s just a different kind of slavery to the same power, because Emily can see everyone else''s deaths too. If not the what, if not the how, then the when¡­ and that''s more than scary enough. So every step of the way, she asks: should I be doing this? And she obeys whatever answer she gets.

    "¡­It must be really annoying when you try to lie to me to take an optimal path and I just end up calling you on it," I muse.

    "Yes," Emily groans. "Oh my god, I just can''t get you to leave me alone."

    "Honestly, I''m kind of embarrassed it took me until the incursion zone to figure it out," I admit.

    "I mean, you could still tell that I was lying about Lia, you just thought that I was lying to myself," Emily mutters. She wrinkles her nose a little, seeming irritated. "¡­Which I was?"

    I chuckle. Oh, she didn''t like saying that, but I guess it''s good that admitting it out loud is helpful to her by her power''s standards.

    "Don''t laugh," Emily snaps. "If telling you what you want to hear makes me more likely to survive, I don''t think that says anything good about you."

    That catches me off-guard. What''s the implication here, that I would get fed up with her if she kept lying and stop trying to help her as much? Or is telling me what I want to hear only optimal because it allows her to make this exact accusation, guilting me into ensuring that I don''t forget about helping her even if I get annoyed? Should I be paying attention to how much time passes between my words and her responses? She made it sound like she had to explicitly think about any given option she might want to take; the optimal route isn''t simply laid out before her, she has to take the best option out of all the ideas she actually considers. And based on a few of our interactions, I think it''s likely that thinking of a good option doesn''t necessarily mean she can physically do it. ¡­Unless every single time I''ve caught her lying has been on purpose, because it¡­ what, catches my interest? Makes me more invested in her situation? Would I be less likely to help her if I wasn''t clued in on how much her power is making her suffer?

    "For the love of fuck, stop overthinking it," Emily whines. "You''re making the dates go crazy."

    Is that a genuine request, or does thinking about it less just benefit her ability to manipulate me?

    "Julietta," Emily whimpers.

    "Um, I''ve got a question," Christine interjects. "If your power''s entire thing is helping you avoid death in advance, how the hell did you get caught in an incursion zone?"

    Emily is quiet for a while. I do my best not to speculate too much on why or how many lies she''s composing. I''ll do my best to catch her in the act and leave it at that for now.

    "¡­I wasn''t going to at first," she says softly. "I was going to leave you all to die. The incursion was kind of a sudden thing. That happens sometimes. Times of death change wildly without any apparent cause. When I saw that nearly everyone in town dropped from three years to two days, I figured out what was going to happen. And all I did was make plans to escape."

    She scowls, seeming to chew on her words a little before she works up the courage to spit them out.

    "I completely forgot about your birthday," she tells me. "Lia wasn''t lying about that. The only thing on my mind was getting out of town. But then you called me, and for just a few moments, I lived longer than three years. If I went home and survived the incursion, I could finally get rid of the blade hanging over my neck."

    She sighs.

    "¡­It didn''t work out that way, of course," she says miserably. "Whatever thread of hope I had stumbled into, I managed to lose it. I don''t even know how. And I definitely don''t know how In-Joke knows the insane things they know, or why they singled Julietta out. But one thing''s for certain. One of the four of you is our only chance to stop the apocalypse."

    Oh. Well. That''s a lot to take in. All of us are left a little speechless by that particular proclamation, even Peter looking thoughtful for once. Christine is on the verge of freaking out, and though I''m doing my best to stay calm I''m still a little overwhelmed. Anastasia, though¡­

    "Aw man," Anastasia says. "We really are Team Avatar."

    "What?" I say, but Christine suddenly snorts and bursts out laughing. In an instant, the tension is broken.

    "Team Avatar!" Anastasia insists. "But, kind of a weird one I guess. I''m a bloodbender, Julietta''s a fleshbender, Christine''s a stuffbender, and Emily is¡­ a fatebender, I guess? Not quite as cool as explosions, but it''s still pretty cool."

    "What kind of bender am I?" Peter asks.

    "A patiencebender," Christine answers immediately.

    That makes me laugh, and to my surprise it makes Emily laugh too. Genuinely laugh, not something that looks forced. And from her lack of grimace afterwards, it seems like what she wanted to do and what she needed to do overlapped a little, just this once. I want to see that more often.

    "Emily, are you in danger from the Defenders of Nothing?" I ask. The question makes the mood serious again, but not quite as tense as before. "If In-Joke is going to keep threatening to kill you if you don''t work for them¡­"

    "There''s nothing you can do about it," she waves me off. "And it''s not like they can make me do anything that would get me killed, or the whole threat doesn''t work."

    "What kind of stuff do you do for them?" Christine asks.

    "I am absolutely not going to answer that question," Emily says. "It''s not the worst gig in the world, though. I don''t have to interact with any of their members. Plus, sometimes I suddenly feel like I''ll die if I don''t walk down a nearby alleyway, but when I do I find like ten thousand dollars at the other end. And I''m forced to pick it up. So at least I get paid?"

    "How does that even work?" Christine asks. "Is In-Joke just gonna walk around a corner and shoot you in the head if you don''t take the money?"

    "I guess?" Emily shrugs. "Look, I appreciate the concern, but I''m fine."

    "You had a panic attack in the middle of a restaurant because a crazy person resolved to kill you and apparently this is a semi-regular occurrence," I say flatly. "You can''t just say ''I''m fine'' like you told us you had a tummy ache."

    "¡­I''m fine in the sense that I''ll live and that will have to be enough because in the meantime you can''t do anything about it," Emily says. "If you want to become strong enough to protect me, though, I won''t complain."

    I can''t think of anything to say to that, and apparently neither can anyone else. We fall into an awkward silence for a while.

    "There''s one more thing I should probably say," Emily admits before I can raise the mood. "I''m not really sure what it means. Maybe it was just my power glitching out. But there was a little while, between showing up at your party and somehow messing up everyone''s fate again, where I saw a different possibility. Everyone had times of death beyond those three years, usually all the way to old age. But Julietta¡­ you didn''t."

    "Huh?" I say. "What, I die anyway?"

    "No," Emily says. "My power thought you wouldn''t die. Ever."

    "Oh," I say, thinking about it for a moment. "Yeah, that makes sense."

    Everybody gives me that look that I''ve been seeing from people way more often recently. The kind that says they thought they were prepared for anything I might do and found themselves wrong in a way that they should have seen coming in retrospect. I don''t know why people are so bad at predicting what I''m going to do or say. I feel like I''m a relatively straightforward person?

    "What?" I ask. "It makes sense. My power causes me to shapeshift into specific templates and those templates don''t age over time. They''re information. Unless my power itself degrades, of course I won''t die of old age."

    "You could at least act shocked," Christine accuses. "I mean, this is kind of a really huge deal."

    "I suppose?" I allow. "It probably hasn''t really sunk in yet beyond the ''does that seem possible'' sniff test. I always kind of assumed that I would die really young, so I mostly just avoid thinking about it."

    Christine gives me a concerned look.

    "Sorry if this is insensitive, but¡­ how disabled were you?"

    I snort. I''d probably be a little irritated if most people asked that, but I like everyone here enough that it feels right to talk about my past. So I explain how all of my skin was melted off¡ªyes, literally all of it, yes, I know how absurd that sounds, yes, I was saved by superpowers¡ªand we have a big question-and-answer session for the next few hours. Peter and Emily share anecdotes as we all talk about our past together, our old families, the people we knew and the people who died. Other customers show up to the restaurant partway through, but we seamlessly move on to talking about Christine''s past, her struggling relationship with her family and the hole they still left behind now that they''re gone. Anastasia joins in too, but she''s much quieter than the rest of us, her attention firmly on the conversation and yet somewhere else entirely as well.

    It''s funny. I still feel myself falling into old habits, doing my best to direct the conversation around so that nobody gets too upset, nobody starts to argue, but it feels so remarkably easy. Even Peter starts to fit into the groove, rude jokes at our expense abandoned in light of everything that happened today. There''s a calm rhythm to it all, a beat that flows through the conversation without truly needing me to guide it. Because for all the many flaws of all of us here, just being together like this makes it so easy to forgive them. No mistake seems terribly important in the face of mutual love and respect.

    I can''t remember the last time I''ve been this relaxed.

    "Should we tell the Army that the world is going to end?" Christine asks.

    It''s a question that ramps the tension back up, but it was so low to begin with that everyone seems to think about it in relative calm.

    "If we tell them that, they''re definitely going to ask how we know," I point out. "Our powers aren''t based around that kind of information gathering."

    "There''s a very good chance they already know," Emily says. "If my power can predict the future, there''s probably a bunch of others that can as well. And if the Army thought the world was going to end they definitely wouldn''t tell anybody."

    "Yeah, I agree," Christine allows. "And I obviously don''t trust them as far as I can throw them, but this seems like the sort of problem where the consequences of just assuming other people have it covered are pretty dire."

    "We could tell them that In-Joke told us," I suggest. "That would keep Emily safe."

    "Yeah, but then we''d have to tell them we made contact with a supervillain organization during our break, and that sounds like an enormous hassle," Peter says. "They already don''t really trust you, right Jules?"

    "Please stop calling me Jules," I grumble. "But yes, it might not be wise to put more black marks on our records."

    "Oh, I have an idea," Emily says. "Let''s ask the girl who can see the future."

    "I thought you explicitly couldn''t ''see'' the future," Christine says. "Or have any idea what actually happens."

    "No, but I think I can reasonably infer that if we want to survive the apocalypse, we can''t die before it even happens," she says. "And I don''t think this will do that, but¡­ telling the Army is a bad idea. I don''t know why, but it makes the current prediction feel more certain."

    "Duh," Anastasia says. ¡­No. Ana says. I don''t know why I''ve been mentally keeping so much distance.

    "Something you know that we don''t, squirt?" Peter asks.

    "Everybody knows that if you want to save the world you need a group of four to six kids. Adults only get in the way," Ana informs us matter-of-factly.

    "I''m an adult," I protest.

    "That''s okay," Ana insists. "You''re my sister."

    I smile.

    "Yeah. I guess I am."

    "Oh my gosh, that''s what we should do!" Ana gasps. "I''ve been trying to figure out what we should do with three whole days off! You need to watch Avatar with me!"

    "The good ones or the ones with the blue furries?" Peter asks.

    Ana narrows her eyes at him.

    "¡­Perhaps you are not entirely evil," she allows. "The good ones, obviously."

    "Sweet! I love M. Night Shyamalan," he grins.

    "Death! Death to the forsaken one!"

    She leaps out of her seat and starts chasing after Peter, who laughs and runs out of the restaurant, dancing around her as she tries to punch him with her tiny fists in the parking lot. He''s¡­ actually playing with her, not just taunting her. It''s nice to see.

    "Well, I guess we should pay and get out of here," I say. "My treat."

    "Do you have any money?" Emily asks.

    "I''ve got my tournament grand prize," I smile, taking out the gift card. "Also I got Lia''s wallet back when they released us into the wild. So that probably has some very lonely credit cards."

    "Ah yes," Emily smiles fondly. "The best part of dating you."

    "I feel vaguely offended on Lia''s behalf. I never thought I would ever say that."

    "Actually, I''ve been wondering," Christine says. "Emily, are you even a lesbian?"

    "Huh," she blinks. "I don''t know. I never really thought about it before."

    "¡­We need to get you therapy."

    "No thanks!" Emily says cheerily.

    Unable to protest without being a complete hypocrite, I take our receipt to the counter and get ready to pay, handing over the gift card. It''s strange. There''s so much more that needs to be done. Even without all these world-shaking revelations¡ªpossibly literal ones¡ªI have enough problems to fill an oil tanker, and I''m pretty sure all of those have been sunk. I have to convince Lia''s parents to help Emily, I have to support Ana through her shattered childhood, I have to help Christine not crumble under the stress of boot camp. I have to get a better handle on my powers, regain the self-control that I feel like I lost, and come to terms with the sensations and experiences that come with having a working endocrine system. I have to struggle with the fact that aliens might be people but I still don''t know why they''re killing us. I have to find a way not to lose myself in the slurry of instincts, emotions, and habits forced into me from other people''s brains. I have to make sure that I''m never a burden to anyone, no matter how small.

    Yet somehow, I still feel hopeful. It''s a stupid sort of hope, the kind based entirely on the fuzzy feelings in my chest rather than any of the thoughts in my head. Logically speaking, it doesn''t have any real business being there. I might have a new family, but I''ve had new families half a dozen times before and it''s never been a cause for celebration. When Anastasia first declared me her sister, I understood what that meant to her. I don''t think I understood what it meant to me.

    I wasn''t being handed off to someone who didn''t want me. I was being chosen by someone who I myself wanted. And that is a feeling both entirely alien, and horribly, regretfully nostalgic for a time I no longer remember. In some ways, it''s a double-edged sword. I''ve never had this much to lose before. I can''t let myself lose it. I won''t.

    "Ma''am?"

    I blink, looking up at the employee behind the counter.

    "This card has six dollars and forty-three cents on it."

    I stare at him. He remains professionally patient with me.

    "Man, Commander''s a bitch," Christine says.

    I laugh. For some reason, that''s just what I feel like doing.

 28. Our Beloved Daughter

    "I told you all you shouldn''t let Julietta play Monopoly!" Emily laments.

    "I''m gonna get her this time!" Peter insists.

    "¡­I thought Monopoly was all luck," Christine sighs.

    I frown at her, my eyes flashing over my numerous rows of green houses. That''s a hell of a thing to say when you''re seven spaces away from Boardwalk.

    "It''s statistics," I explain. "And math. You shouldn''t have bought the utilities, they almost never pay themselves off to a significant degree. Priority one is always gaining as many monopolies as possible, it''s the name of the game."

    "I have a monopoly on the utilities!" Christine protests.

    "¡­A monopoly in this case meaning the specific game state that allows you to buy houses," I clarify. "Not a conceptual monopoly over an aspect of the fictional town the game board supposedly represents."

    "Emily, do you have any more crackers?" Anastasia asks.

    "No, you ate them all, honey," Emily sighs. "You and Julietta are going to make me go bankrupt in real life."

    "I am a little peckish myself," I admit.

    "Then shapeshift food into your stomach with your bullshit powers!" Emily groans, rolling the dice. "Fuck."

    "That''s one thousand dollars, please," I report.

    "A thousand?"

    "Pennsylvania Avenue, three houses, one thousand dollars. You can mortgage some properties if you don''t have enough," I remind her.

    "No thanks, I''ve got nothing left, I''m out," Emily sighs.

    "Hey, look on the bright side," Peter smiles. "If you suck at Monopoly, it probably means that it isn''t going to kill you."

    I give him a look. That''s why we''re playing board games, Peter. Because they don''t matter. Doing irrelevant bullshit is the only time Emily gets to be herself. ¡­Though I suppose in retrospect, we probably could have picked a better way for her to be herself than kicking her ass at Monopoly.

    "This wouldn''t have happened if you didn''t trade her so much stuff," Peter says. "But anytime I ask somebody for something, noooo, don''t give properties to Peter."

    "You need to offer better deals," I tell him.

    "Every single deal you offered was to give yourself another monopoly!" Peter protests.

    "Yeah, but it was in exchange for something people actually want," I say. "The fact that what they wanted was less likely to make them win than what I wanted is just a difference in priorities."

    "I got all the railroads!" Ana says happily.

    "Yep, you''re the princess of trains," I agree solemnly. "That''s pretty awesome."

    "Well, I guess I''ll actually make dinner since I''m out of the game," Emily sighs. "Lia''s parents should be here in a few hours and I don''t think any of us want to deal with that on an empty stomach."

    I grimace, shapeshifting into and back out of Lia''s body as a pointless, paranoid check to remind myself what I''ll need to go back to. It''s been nice hanging out with everyone the past few days, not needing to keep up appearances. I''m currently lounging in a smoothed-out mixture of a bunch of different people''s bodies, taking the eyes I like from one person, the nose I like from another, and so on, combined with some of my favorite passive additions from nonhuman forms.

    Since I''m resting, it''s suboptimal to go whole ham with maximum strength, maximum speed, and the whole host of other adaptations I would want in a dangerous situation. Having them active in my body passively consumes resources because that''s how bodies work, so my extraneous additions are all just things that make me feel more comfortable. Having octopus tentacles instead of hair is the most obvious and visible one, but the passive ability to quietly fidget in ways that don''t bother anyone helps a lot with calming the parts of my mind that continually yearn for change. Much less visible but much more calming is the alien sensory suite I''ve finally figured out how to properly hook up to a human brain, constantly reminding me that there are no aliens around us. Any time I feel the need to check, the certainty is there.

    "I''m just saying, of course Julietta''s going to win when she basically has the rest of you giving her everything she wants," Peter pouts.

    "It''s a five-player game, Peter," I say. "The interpersonal element is intrinsically part of the strategy. If that''s why you think you''re losing, then just get better at it."

    Peter scowls, but doesn''t have a response to that.

    "When did you grow a backbone, Jules?" he asks instead.

    "My current backbone?" I ask, thinking back. "About four days ago, why?"

    "No dumbass, I mean when did you actually start speaking your mind?" Peter presses. "Back when we lived together you wouldn''t have told me to get good, you would''ve just laughed it off and said ''I guess I got lucky'' or some shit."

    Oh. Well, yeah, I would have.

    "Can you imagine how Max and Andre would have reacted if every time I won I started lecturing them about how I pulled it off?" I ask. "Max wouldn''t understand a word of it, Andre would think I was insulting him, and our foster parents would probably have solved the issue by never bringing the game board out again."

    "What, and you think I''m gonna let people bring the game board out again after this?" Emily asks.

    "No, but it won''t be because you''re insecure and I failed to assuage your ego enough, it''ll just be because Monopoly is a bad game."

    She snorts, rummaging around in the kitchen for cooking supplies. Peter rolls the dice and throws his hands up into the air in frustration, handing me a fat wad of fake money. I make sure to count it carefully. It helps to be clear and obvious about checking for certain signs of cheating so people never get any ideas.

    "It''s nice to see, though," Emily says.

    "Monopoly?" I ask.

    "No, you. It''s nice to see you saying more on the outside what you think on the inside."

    Uh. I''m not sure how to respond to that. Honestly, I feel a little insulted? If I''ve been letting my real thoughts slip out, that''s not something I should be complimented about. I''m way too much of an asshole for it to ever be a good thing.

    Still, that''s one of the very thoughts I shouldn''t be sharing, so I let it slide. Sooner or later I win the game, and Emily serves a surprising variety of foods to everyone. Anastasia and I get enormous sandwiches packed with cheese and tofu and some kind of actual real meat. The others get different foods, soups and salads and seemingly arbitrary combinations of fruit all piled together on individual plates. Christine wrinkles her nose a little when Emily brings over her plate, but Emily flicks her in the forehead.

    "Eat what I give you," she orders.

    "Why is it all so weird?" Christine asks. "How come they get big meaty sandwiches and I get lettuce?"

    "Eat what I give you," Emily repeats.

    Christine hesitates.

    "¡­That is way more ominous now that we know what your power is."

    Emily stares at her.

    "Good."

    I myself would much prefer a soup to the chaotic mix of textures and flavors that a sandwich provides, but I force it down without complaint. Anastasia, at least, enjoys her meal, and looking at the differences between her sandwich and mine I can see a lot of high-iron foods added in, whereas mine skews more towards carbs and protein. I guess she can just look at all of the food in her fridge and find out what happens to the likely lifespan to sort of de-facto detect our nutritional needs? If we''re all dying in three years anyway, it seems unlikely that our choice of meal has any impact on our lifespan. ¡­Though she mentioned probabilities, so maybe she''s just trying to stack the odds any way she can.

    I suggest putting something on to watch in order to get everyone''s minds off of Emily''s power, and before I know it we''re having a movie marathon. Christine has us watch some animated movie about giant robots fighting in space, Emily picks some silly comedy that has us all laughing until our cheeks hurt, and Peter picks some fucked-up horror movie that I''m pretty sure he was trying to scare Anastasia with. Of course, she''s the least affected out of all of us, spending most of the movie complaining about the actions of the main characters and the ways she could have totally killed the monster.

    But before we know it, the fun and games are over, and there''s a knock on the door. I sigh, and shapeshift into a full copy of Lia''s body, double-checking to ensure the way my skin crawls isn''t literal.

    "Remember the plan," Emily says. Anastasia nods seriously, a determined look on her face, whereas Peter gives a lazy thumbs up and Christine just grimaces. I walk over to the door, check the peephole, unlock it, and open up. To my surprise, I''m almost immediately scooped up into a hug.

    "Lia!" her mother exclaims, arms wrapping me up and squeezing with surprising force. "Oh, God, we were so sure we lost you."

    I very carefully keep my facial expression relaxed as I return the hug. Lia''s mother is only slightly shorter than she was, with long, wavy hair and a blue one-piece dress light enough to stave off the heat of the muggy southern weather. Having been thoroughly spoiled from being surrounded mostly by people in prime physical health, her biological structure is downright disappointing in the way that it''s optimized more for a sedentary lifestyle than anything particularly useful to me. Not that I was really expecting revolutionary adaptations from my mom, but¡­

    I blink. Lia''s mom. Not mine. Oh boy, this is going to be awful.

    "Well, you didn''t," I lie. "I made it, thanks to everyone."

    It''s not exactly the most Lia thing in the world to immediately attribute her survival to someone else, but it is the narrative we want to sell here. Lia''s parents probably don''t care particularly much about saving Emily because she''s their daughter''s girlfriend, but they''re much more likely to show generosity to the person who saved their daughter''s life.

    "We''re so glad to see you again," Lia''s father says, reaching out and squeezing my shoulder. Oh shit, are those cancer cells? There''s not a lot of them but I should definitely tell him about those. Get that stuff early.

    Noooot sure how to bring up my father''s testicles in conversation, though. I have unfortunately become somewhat inoculated to the fact that my powers make me uncomfortably aware of everyone''s genitals, but I have absolutely no idea how to talk about it with anyone.

    "Lia?" Mom asks.

    "Huh? Oh, sorry, I got lost in thought a little," I say. "Remind me to tell you about it later. How have the two of you been?"

    "How have we been? How have you been?" my¡­ dang it, Lia''s mother insists. "The damn military has been keeping us in the dark for months!"

    "Well, I''m not going to act like it was a pleasant experience, but it certainly could have been worse," I answer.

    "Well, don''t you worry honey, we''re going to have some stern words for whatever idiots think they can keep my daughter working as a common soldier like some simpleton!" Lia''s mother rants. "To think they would just ignore everything we''ve done for them and treat you like this! Your father and I won''t stand for it!"

    I''m¡­ pretty surprised by the intensity of this reaction. It seems odd to me. I suppose they''re rich people, they''re probably very used to getting their way, but even they should understand that my enrollment in the military is very much not something they can Karen their way out of. Unless¡­

    "Do you two not know I have powers?" I ask.

    "What?" my mother asks. What the hell?

    "Did they seriously not tell you!?" I gape.

    "Darling, they haven''t told us anything!" she insists. "We didn''t even know you were alive until you called!"

    "Well then why didn''t you say anything?"

    "Honey, you know better than to talk about this sort of thing over the phone," she frowns at me, and¡­ what? Sure, okay, fine, I guess I know that.

    "¡­You''re right," I say, absolutely not understanding why that is right, "but I never thought they just wouldn''t tell you about me! I clearly should have. They''ve been all kinds of strange. But¡­ I''m sorry, Mom. I got powers during the incursion. I don''t think the military is going to let me leave."

    Lia''s mother seems shocked, and her father frowns, but both of them quickly move to a more thoughtful look. Oh boy, I might be dealing with more than I realize here.

    "How about you come inside?" I suggest. "It''s not the nicest place, but it''s private."

    "Is it really¡­?" my mother asks, squinting into the apartment.

    "Yeah, Christine checked," I tell her. "No bugs, and nobody lives in the adjacent units."

    "Christine being¡­?"

    "Ah! Sorry, I should introduce you to everyone," I smile, ushering the family inside and closing the door behind them. "You know Emily already, of course, but this is Christine and this is Anastasia. Without all three of them, I wouldn''t have made it out of the incursion zone alive."

    "The feeling is mutual, ma''am," Christine says, only gritting her teeth a little as she holds out a hand to shake. "I''d be dead without your daughter. I owe her a lot."

    My mother smiles and nods approvingly, returning the handshake before allowing my father to shake her hand as well.

    "It is good to meet you," he says neutrally.

    "And this is¡­ do you remember Peter, Mom? I think you may have met once or twice."

    "You''re one of Emily''s brothers, aren''t you?" Lia''s mom says. "I remember."

    "Lovely to see you again, madam," Peter smiles, leaning forward into a half-bow as he takes her hand.

    "Such a polite young man," Lia''s mother smiles back at him, and I very carefully say nothing at all. Anastasia walks up behind me and grips the fabric of my pants, peering up at Lia''s parents with a shy expression.

    "So this little one is Anastasia, then," my mother smiles. "I assume if she''s here with you, then¡­"

    Everyone else she could be with is dead, yeah.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    "I''m taking care of her," I confirm. "Not that she couldn''t take care of herself, but¡­"

    My father nods in understanding and what might even be approval. Wow, that''s rare. ¡­Is apparently what Lia''s brain thinks about the matter. Gosh, this is so much more uncomfortable now that it''s at the forefront of my mind, but being able to pass as Lia is kind of essential to this entire plan so I can''t exactly stop using her mental and physical habits. I just feel so on edge, more than I ever did pretending to be Lia back at the military compound. It feels more like I''m back in the incursion zone. Like there''s a primal anxiety from my brain insisting that I am in danger.

    "It''s wonderful to meet you all," Lia''s mother says, "and I''m delighted at the chance to get to know you, but if it''s not too selfish to ask we would love some time with our daughter alone."

    "Of course, Mrs. Morgan," Emily answers immediately, dipping her head. "Let''s go on a walk, guys."

    Immediately I feel my anxiety ratchet up a few notches. Geez, was Lia''s relationship with her parents really this bad? Anastasia looks up at me and I give her a small nod. She nods back and allows herself to be ushered out of the apartment by Emily, everyone else following suit. When the door closes behind them, the three of us wait as the sound of footsteps slowly fades away into the distance. Somehow I just know that there won''t be any conversation until we are truly alone.

    "¡­So, what can you do?" Lia''s father asks bluntly.

    "I can analyze biological material and shapeshift my body accordingly," I report. "You actually have the beginnings of what will eventually turn into cancer in your, uh."

    I circle my hand around my crotch area.

    "¡­You know. So you probably want to get that checked out."

    He tenses up a bit, but his stony face doesn''t change expression in the slightest.

    "And the others?" he asks.

    "Christine can separate objects into their component parts, Peter can render himself functionally invulnerable, and Ana has autohemokinesis," I answer. I''m not liking the vibes here.

    "And Emily?" he presses.

    "¡­Powerless," I answer, but I know I hesitated just a little too long. This weird interrogation is not going to plan. I''m getting the distinct impression that Lia''s family was up to a lot more shit than I expected. My father raises a stern eyebrow, and I feel my muscles clench.

    "If you are attempting to cover for her, young woman, then you will find¡ª"

    "Father," I interrupt him, despite countless instincts screaming for me not to. "She''s powerless."

    I stress the word with as much emphasis as I''m able, looking him in the eyes as I do. I have absolutely no idea if this is the right play, but I have to clean up after my hesitation somehow and since Emily left this to me, I assume I can trust my gut. My metaphorical gut, not Lia''s actual one. Some amount of deviation from her normal reactions is only natural, given what she''s supposedly lived through.

    Initially, my father reacts to the interruption with clear displeasure, gearing up to verbally thrash me, but Lia''s mother cuts him off, holding up a hand.

    "This is her apartment?" my mother asks.

    "Yes," I say.

    "So she wasn''t being held by the government like the rest of you," my mother continues.

    "Correct."

    "Is there anything else you want to say?" she asks.

    "If she had powers that I thought were safe to tell you about, I would," I tell them. Jesus Christmas Christ I''m in it now. What the hell is the matter with this family? Unless they''re using Emily''s method of hiding it, neither of them have powers, but they are clearly very interested in powers. A lot moreso than they are interested in ensuring that their daughter is mentally and physically okay. And like, I didn''t exactly expect them to be lovey-dovey, but these vibes are rancid.

    So what am I thinking here? Mob bosses? Secret supervillains? Mob bosses who sponsor secret supervillains? Whatever they are, I''m so deep in the forest of bad news bears that I can''t see the sun through the canopy.

    "¡­We can probably smuggle you out," Lia''s mother says, and yep there it is.

    "I don''t think the military will be willing to let me go," I say honestly and also because I really don''t want to go anywhere with these people. "I''ve already killed an Angel."

    "What?" my mother asks, and even my father looks surprised. And maybe a little bit impressed? God, it''s really sad how badly Lia''s brain wants that to be true.

    "I can survive being impaled, melted, shot, and pretty much anything else you can think of," I say frankly. "I kind of had to. I ended up introducing myself to the military by killing an Angel in front of Agnus Dei."

    "¡­That explains the unusual scrutiny," my father hums. "We''ve had to walk lightly with our operations these past couple of months. I never thought they would be investigating us because of you."

    "Sorry for the hassle, Pops," I mutter. It just kind of slips out of me without much thought, along with a heaping helping of secondhand bitterness. Note to self: avoid using someone''s brain when I am around people who traumatized them whenever possible.

    "What about your other friends?" my mother asks. I mean Lia''s mother, god damnit! "Are they under similar scrutiny?"

    "Not to my knowledge, but I don''t think Christine or Anastasia would be interested," I say. I have no idea what I''m claiming they wouldn''t be interested in, exactly, but I am nonetheless fairly confident that I am speaking accurately. "Peter, though¡­ he would probably do a lot for a chance at extraction."

    Why the hell did I say that? God, he probably would, but I shouldn''t be encouraging him!

    "And Emily?" Lia''s father asks.

    I sigh to buy myself time to think. I have strongly implied that Emily has a power that people are better off not knowing, and while that''s far from what we really want it might be enough for what we need.

    "It would be best if she never enters military service," I say.

    My mother and father share a look, the kind I''ve never been able to decipher. ¡­Except, no, I can actually make a few reasonable guesses as to what they''re communicating with each other. Quit deifying your own parents, Liabrain. They''re evil, but they''re not special.

    "Alright, we''ll keep that in mind," Lia''s mother says. "It''s too early to establish any concrete plans in any case. I believe that should be all the business we have to take care of?"

    My father grunts, sharing another look with my mother.

    "Good," my mother concludes. "We shall go out to dinner then. As a family. It''s been dreadfully long since we''ve seen our beloved daughter, after all."

    "That sounds wonderful," I say, not quite able to make it sound perfectly convincing. Maybe I should just have the Raptor brain pretend to be Lia.

    ¡­

    No, that would be stupid.

    Lia''s parents take me out and buy me a new outfit¡ªone that all three of us entirely expect I will wear once and then never again¡ªbefore locating the closest thing this city has to a fancy restaurant and going there for no reason other than the fact that it is fancy. The food is too intense for me, but I carefully watch the other people in the restaurant eat and make good use of Lia''s instincts to not breach any etiquette. The entire experience takes about two hours and is unrelentingly stressful from beginning to end. I feel sick by the time we leave, and I''m pretty sure it''s physically impossible for me to actually be sick.

    And then¡­ they just leave. Lia''s parents just up and leave, dropping me back off at Emily''s apartment and driving back to the airport in the car they rented for precisely the past five hours. It''s a surreal experience, somehow exactly what I thought meeting Lia''s parents would be like and also entirely unexpected in every way.

    "So, how''d it go?" Emily asks me.

    "I should be asking you that," I answer, "because I have absolutely no idea. I''m pretty sure Lia''s parents are mob bosses or something?"

    "Or something," Emily nods. "And yeah, I think you did pretty well. Not the best it could have gone, but I''m not getting the death dates that usually pop up when joining the military seems likely, so good job!"

    "Cool," I say. "I sort of had to imply that you do have powers."

    Emily shrugs.

    "I only want people not to know if I''m more likely to die when they do know. Whatever you told them worked out, so it''s not a problem."

    "Right," I frown. "So¡­ what the heck is their deal?"

    "Eh, they work with the Defenders of Nothing, probably," Emily answers. "I''m pretty sure In-Joke is the reason I started dating Lia."

    "What!? Seriously? Why?"

    Emily gives me the biggest, most absolutely confused shrug I have ever seen. Her whole face flattens out into a defeated expression as her shoulders lift, her palms upward as if hoping the answers would drop out of the heavens.

    "I have absolutely no fucking idea," she says. "I don''t even know if it''s true. The terrifying feelings of certain death just kind of popped up at around the same time and I''m pretty sure I never would have even met Lia if not because of them. I don''t necessarily think they wanted me to date her, but I''m definitely not going to rule it out. Maybe they just wanted to watch us have sex."

    "¡­I really don''t want to think about that," I grimace. "That''s just¡­ fuck, Emily."

    "Yeah I mean that''s basically what happened."

    "That is not what I¡ªugh. Look, there''s like a dozen different things wrong with that so I''m going to do us both a favor and just move this conversation along, okay? Lia''s parents are clearly not fans of the government. They actively offered to smuggle me out of the military, and when I told them I didn''t think that would work they asked me about everyone else. So if any of you start getting weird offers from suspicious people, my bad."

    "Don''t worry about it Jules, I like weird offers from suspicious people," Peter grins. "I''m sure Lia''s hot mom and I will have a grand old time."

    I wince.

    "Please never say that again," I ask, knowing it''s probably foolish to do so. "And especially don''t do it while I''m using Lia''s brain."

    "I don''t really get it," Ana says. "Lia''s mom and dad are bad, right? That''s what we learned? Why don''t we just tell someone?"

    Oh, shoot. There''s a bunch of reasons, like how if they are working with the Defenders of Nothing it could be really dangerous to piss them off, but I think Anastasia would be pretty gung-ho about not capitulating to threats from evil. The real issue is that we have no way to know if it''s a good solution, but how am I gonna explain to the nine-year-old about systemic corruption and the intrinsic danger of whistleblowing?

    "Remember what happened to Team Avatar when they tried to warn the Earth Kingdom?" Christine asks.

    "Oooooh!" Anastasia gapes. "There could be bad people in the military! The bad people might already control the military!"

    "Exactly," Christine nods. "Can you imagine? Bad people in the military?"

    "All sorts of horrible things could happen!" Anastasia says, her hands over her mouth.

    "So we''ve gotta be really careful, don''t we?" Christine says.

    "Or we might be captured by an evil fire princess!" Anastasia concludes.

    "Sure, yeah, something like that," Christine nods.

    Wow. Good job, Christine. I really need to watch that show Anastasia is obsessed with, don''t I?

    "Do you think the aliens could be controlling the government?" Anastasia squeaks.

    "Slow down, conspiracy theorist," Emily says. "It''s possible that there''s some fucked-up Angel at the top of this pyramid, but I think it''s a lot more likely that it''s just humans being humans. You know how it is. Even with an existential threat forcing us to fight together or face extinction, there''s plenty of people who are still only in it for themselves. Like Peter!"

    "I feel like I should protest, but I don''t think any of you would buy it," Peter grins. "She''s right, kiddo. Why do you think supervillains exist? Heck, Emily here technically is a supervillain."

    "Hey, it''s not my fault that me joining up with the military somehow ends the world," Emily scowls.

    "Maybe that''s just what you want us to think," Peter smirks.

    "I mean, I do want you to think that, yes. Feel free to not trust me if you decide it''s worth the risk."

    "Bah, you''re no fun."

    "Yeah, Peter, I know," Emily sighs. "Anyway, as far as I can tell, it would be best to just forget about Lia''s parents for now. If you guys get assigned to take down supervillains that turn out to be working for them or whatever, then that''s the breaks I guess, but I don''t think there''s any point getting too involved in a mundane criminal organization while the apocalypse looms. If that changes, I''ll do my best to let you know."

    "Speaking of the apocalypse," I say, "I know we don''t really know anything, but is there some way we could look into it? Some hint your powers can give us about the right things to investigate?"

    "I would have told you already if I knew," Emily shrugs. "The best I can say is to keep your eyes out for possibilities. Anything you can find out about what the military knows would be great."

    "¡­You''re not just turning us into spies for your supervillain organization, are you?" Christine asks.

    "Honestly?" Emily grimaces. "I might be. But if I am, it''s not on purpose."

    "Figuring out a way to remove you from their clutches is a priority, I think," I say. "With a name like ''Defenders of Nothing'' they''re not exactly giving me confidence about their intent to cooperate towards a greater good. Your powers have their issues, but none of us would be alive if they weren''t effective."

    "I would be," Peter points out. I ignore him.

    "My point is that we need you safe," I say. "And more than that, I want you safe."

    Emily blushes slightly, looking away.

    "Please don''t say stuff like that while you''re wearing my ex-girlfriend''s body," she mutters. "You''re gonna make me miss her."

    "Oh!" I say, quickly changing into something more comfortable. "Sorry. I thought you¡­ no, never mind."

    "I could have saved her, you know," Emily says. "I could have. Her odds weren''t that much worse than the rest of us. But when the Behemoth came, I¡­ I just wasn''t even thinking about it. I wasn''t paying attention to any time other than mine."

    The rest of us are silent. Even as the only person who was there, I''m not sure what I could say to her. I remember her pushing me directly into the Behemoth''s blade. It was so sudden, so forceful. That might have been the exact moment Lia let go. I can''t imagine the guilt that must come with making a decision like that.

    And yet in the back of my mind, the same question rings: is it optimal for her to tell us this?

    "Maybe that''s how I fucked up," Emily says. "I sure as hell know that I can''t save the world. Maybe I''ll never find the right questions to keep myself alive unless I focus on everyone else instead. Maybe I have to pull off something risky and survive it in order to get the best odds of all. But the problem is that I can never know what the right risk is! I''m not a computer, I can''t ask my power about every possible action I could ever take, I can''t even get remotely close! I just have to take the best option I think of in the moment without even knowing why it''s best, and then I fuck it all up anyway because I can''t figure out the right question to ask two moves later. I don''t know what I have to do. I just know that this isn''t working."

    I hesitate, not quite knowing what to do at first, but after a few seconds I step forward and put my arm around my sister''s shoulders.

    "I forgive you," I say. "For the mistakes you made, and for the times you put yourself above us."

    "I should have listened to you more," she mutters. "I mean for fuck''s sake, I tried to get you to leave Christine!"

    "Well, it''s up to her whether or not to forgive you for that," I say. "But that proves the odds aren''t everything, right?"

    "Just because you can get a good run at gambling doesn''t make it a good idea," Emily scowls. "Life''s a casino and the house always wins in the end."

    "I''m just saying that you know that the deaths you predict are far from set in stone. I''m not telling you to risk your life every day, but given what we''re up against you will need to risk your life. The only question is who or what you risk your life for. What makes tomorrow worth living until?"

    "I don''t need an answer to that," Emily snaps. "I don''t need a reason to want to stay alive."

    "No, but I feel like you''d be a lot happier if you had one."

    She takes a deep breath, letting out a long exhale and leaning into me.

    "¡­I''m trying, Julietta," she says softly. "I''m trying."

    We stand like that for a while until she finally reaches her arm around me and gives me a brief squeeze before pushing me away.

    "You all should head to the meeting spot the military told you to wait for them at," she says.

    "We still have like an hour," Christine protests.

    "It''s probably worth getting there early," I say, just so Emily doesn''t have to justify chasing us out. Either she thinks it''s important for us to go or she just wants to be left alone, and I''m okay with either. "Thanks for letting us stay these past few days."

    "Of course," she says. "Anytime you guys are free, let me know and we''ll find a way to meet up. Until then, I guess I''ll be here."

    "Yeah, hopefully I can at least give you a call after boot camp," I tell her. "Good luck, Emily."

    "I''ll need it," she answers. "Peter."

    "What''s up?" he asks.

    "Don''t make a break for it. Not today."

    He frowns.

    "¡­Well, shit."

    "Yeah," Emily says. "Goodbye, everyone. Stay safe."

    "Bye Emily!" Anastasia says. "You stay safe too!"

    Emily rolls her eyes and scruffs up Anastasia''s hair.

    "I will, Ana. If nothing else, I''ll definitely do that."

    We head out from Emily''s apartment and start walking south back to where the military dropped us off. As usual, we''re all on edge, and as usual, no aliens jump out from the alleyways to attack us. No supervillains do either, thankfully, though I suspect it''s only a matter of time. It''s not a terribly long walk from Emily''s apartment to our destination, and when we get there we''re the first people I recognize to have arrived.

    Our meeting place is just a big abandoned parking lot, already occupied by the trucks and soldiers that are presumably here to pick us up. Ana and I instinctively case them with our domains as we pass by, which mostly just ends up with me getting a lot of new templates since all but one of them don''t have powers. I''m not actually sure which one of them does have powers, though, because once we get close we can feel their domain covering most of the lot. It feels like a shadow, a darkness burned into the ground by the heat of the sun, representing the outline of things yet in the distance. The domain immediately pulls away the moment we touch it with ours, but after a little while it expands back to its previous size, engulfing us as we approach. We let it, keeping our power close to our bodies. This other power doesn''t feel like it''s trying to do anything to us, but there''s no sense in being reckless.

    A few soldiers ask our names and tell us where to stand, so we do as instructed. As the hour passes, more people from our intake show up and stand beside us. Eventually, one of the guys from our power training group shows up alongside a soldier, which is a little weird. I quickly realize what''s going on, however, when I see that the two of them are walking in perfect synchronicity. Not just every step, but every blink, every breath. Even their eyes flick in the same direction to look at the same things. Only after the two of them reach the other soldiers, enter the radius of the domain surrounding us, and allow a few guns to be raised to point at the young man from my intake is he finally allowed to move on his own. His first act of freedom is to hyperventilate and nearly vomit.

    A couple more people show up that way. Commander arrives with two of my peers, both of them stumbling after her with glassy-eyed stares. Slowly but surely, every single member of our training course either arrives under their own power or someone else''s. Those that had to be escorted are placed in a different line. Commander gives me a wink when she passes, heading for the back of one of the trucks.

    "Never doubted ya," she grins, and then the rest of us are loaded up. Coincidentally or otherwise, I''m put in the same truck that she entered. Which I suppose potentially saves me a whole lot of internal catastrophizing since I can just ask.

    "So, were you guys watching us all weekend¡­?" I ask.

    "Nah," Commander answers. "Not you, anyway."

    "Why not me?"

    "Because we knew you''d show up on time," she answers. "Weren''t you aware? Some people have powers that can see the future."

    I decide not to say anything else for the rest of the drive. I''m sure I''ll get the chance to jog off some of this paranoia at boot camp.

 29. Traumatizing People on Purpose

    "Congratulations on completing your special power training, recruits," Commander announces. "What you have learned here is a basic background of knowledge on how to control the abilities that random chance has decreed to give you, and a basic understanding of what your future role in the military might be. Today, you begin your journey of actually, possibly, maybe being worthy of being part of that military."

    We''re lined up in the parking lot, yawning at the sunrise as Commander yells at us. It''s still fairly dark outside, but apparently we''ll need to get used to being woken even earlier than we were already. I''m sure everyone is looking forward to that.

    "Until this day I have treated you all like fragile children," Commander continues, "because that is exactly what you all are. Even the oldest among you are about to be born again, and there will be just as much crying and pain as the first time you plopped out of a womb. Many of you have the arrogance to believe that you are special, that being superhuman makes you greater than human. But humanity is what we fight for, and it is humanity that will disabuse you of any notions of greatness. It is humanity that will take your humanity from you, and turn you into soldiers. It is humanity that will wield you like the weapons you are to take back our planet. And though nothing I say here will prepare you to be reborn as a soldier, I will say this."

    Hands behind her back, she walks down the line, staring at every one of us.

    "You will be training alongside powerless humans. Some of your drill instructors will be powerless humans. And though when you are ready you and your fellow recruits will be given a gun, with live ammunition, completely capable of killing a man with a twitch of your finger¡­ all of you will start boot camp as weapons already. All of you, from the moment you step out of our insular little island of superheroes, will be able to kill almost anyone you could ever want. And I promise you, you are going to want to."

    She stops walking, and a smile creeps up her face.

    "So don''t forget: if you murder someone in basic, you''re not going to be put in jail. You''re not going to be removed from the Army. You''re not going to get to escape this war. If you refuse to learn how to wield yourselves as proper weapons, then you will simply be wielded by someone else. Maybe I''ll even see some of you again¡­ but probably not. The leash-holders they use for treasonous little fucks don''t have my tender touch."

    She claps once, sharp and loud.

    "So! Come up when I call your name and stand where I tell you. Anderson!"

    People start getting called up one by one, and it doesn''t take long to see that we''re getting sorted into two groups. I watch very carefully where everyone goes, looking for patterns. I don''t see any; it''s an even split down the middle, and by some miracle of chance or explicit design Maria, Peter, Christine, Anastasia, and I all end up in the same group alongside five other supers.

    "You all stay right where you are," Commander says, motioning to our group. "Cross Country will pop in to take you all to Fort Jackson shortly. The rest of you all load up into these buses¡­"

    She starts directing the other group as we stand around and wait as instructed. Fort Jackson, huh?

    "Where''s Fort Jackson?" somebody asks.

    "South Carolina," someone else answers.

    "Isn''t that on the coast?" Christine asks.

    "I mean, South Carolina has a coast, but it''s a big state. If you''re a hundred miles from the ocean you''re not considered to be in a war zone," I say.

    "It''s the only other still-functional Army base from before the aliens showed up," the guy who knew the state explains. "It probably has a better setup than the temp camps. My guess is they''re splitting us up between the two for efficiency."

    Hmm, yeah. They probably have to be specifically prepared for powered people, and putting us in the best bases is likely desirable for a number of reasons.

    "Well, it''s really cool that we all still get to be together!" Anastasia pipes up.

    "I wouldn''t count on it. We''ll be in the same company, probably, but I doubt they''ll put us all in the same platoon."

    Yeah, I doubt they want us all in one place. Makes us a lot harder to handle.

    A new domain suddenly appears nearby, causing Anastasia, me, and a couple other people to immediately turn around and face it, bodies tense. I relax as soon as I see who it is, though. It''s just Cross Country again. He holds out his hands.

    "First two," he directs simply. The two closest people grab one hand each and then all three of them vanish. A moment later, Cross Country returns alone. "Next two."

    Before I know it I''ve been moved from one hot, muggy state to another, ushered into a cramped building, and given a whole lot of paperwork. Thanks to once again being the proud owner of Lia''s wallet, I can actually fill it all out, although I am sorely tempted to list my birthday as the day of the incursion just to see what happens. It''s extra funny that it would actually be my real birthday, just with the wrong year.

    I don''t, of course, but after a couple of literal hours of paperwork, ranging from medical information and mental health surveys to twelve dozen waivers that all basically say ''we own your soul,'' I am moved on to physical examination. This is a particularly weird experience, because somehow it is the first time I''ve had a detailed physical examination since getting my powers, and hoo boy do my powers make the whole thing a little odd.

    "Alright, we need a urine sample," the examiner tells me.

    "Sure," I say. "Whose urine?"

    She gives me a weird look.

    "¡­Yours," she says.

    "Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?" I say. "I can produce pretty much any variety of urine you want on command, in pretty much any quantity."

    "I¡­ just normal urine, please," she says.

    "Alright, I''ll do my best to figure out what that means."

    I head into the bathroom, command Lia''s default body to make some urine, and piss it into a cup. Then I walk out, hand it to the lady, and she directs me over to a chair.

    "Okay, now we''re gonna draw some blood," she says.

    "Cool," I say. "Whose blood?"

    "Yours!"

    Most of the physical testing is of course super easy. My body is literally composed of other people''s bodies, who have already passed these tests, whenever I want it to be. They give me a bunch of vaccines, too, which is pretty much entirely pointless, but it''s interesting watching my immune system work for a little while before I instinctively return to Lia¡¯s template, obliterating the vaccines in my bloodstream and the white blood cells attacking them. Whoops. But again, if I ever need an immune system for something, I already have access to pre-vaccinated blood¡­ but also an immune system is unlikely to ever be important for me because I can delete infections from inside my body the exact same way I delete bullets.

    "Would you prefer to wear your hair up or have it cut?" one of the Army people asks me. "Women can wear their hair at any length but your hair may not touch your collar, so if you don''t cut it you have to keep it up."

    Damn, that''s gonna be really hard for Anastasia. I''ll have to get some really funky braids going on to collect that much hair above her collar. I can probably manage it though? I shapeshift my hair up into a pixie cut while I think about it, planning out the simplest and most comfortable styles that I think will work.

    "Recruit Morgan? I asked if you¡­" the hair lady trails off, staring at my head. "Oh. Never mind. Moving on, then¡­"

    I am given my uniform and some other basic gear before getting lumped in with around thirty other women and¡ªto my great relief¡ªone Anastasia. Christine and Maria are nowhere to be seen, though, and a quick expansion of my domain confirms that Anastasia and I are the only people with powers in the group. She runs over to me as soon as she spots me, shoving her face into my belly and wrapping her arms around me in a big hug. It looks like someone already got her hair up somehow, and props to whoever managed it.

    "You''re here!" she grins at me. "Oh geez I thought I would be alone!"

    We have the attention of all the other women in the room now, though I guess it''s kind of weird calling them ''women'' when like me, they''re all barely eighteen. Most of them have chosen to get haircuts rather than mess around with putting it all in a bun every day, but one of the bun girls addresses us before the silent stares can get too awkward.

    "I guess you have powers, then?" she asks.

    "I haven''t even done anything yet," I say.

    "Yeah, but there''s no reason the kid would be here otherwise, and she clearly knows you."

    Fair point. I should have thought of it. I''m just disappointed to be clocked this soon because I thought I was doing a pretty good job of looking normal ever since walking into this room. I guess everyone was going to figure it out sooner rather than later anyway, but still! I was trying really hard!

    "Well yeah, I have powers," I nod. "I''m Lia Morgan. Nice to meet you all."

    "Jazzlyn Garner," she nods. "Call me Jazz."

    Wow. That''s not the weirdest name I''ve ever heard, but it''s up there. I guess her parents must have really liked the blues.

    "Thanks for keeping an eye on Ana for me," I say, not having any real idea if she was doing that beyond the fact that she and Ana were standing nearby when I walked in, but if she was then she deserves to be thanked and if she wasn''t then she deserves to be guilt-tripped about it.

    "No problem," she says. Cool. Sounds like she did. "I''m glad she has someone she knows here. Not really sure how to raise a kid, let alone a super-kid. What do you two do, anyway?"

    "Nothing," a voice calls out from the front of the room. "You don''t talk about powers in basic. Your drill sergeant will eat you alive for it."

    A pair of female soldiers walk towards us, motioning us towards them.

    "Follow us. We''re going to get you situated with your new home for the next ten weeks."

    And so follow them we do, eventually ending up in a large but still cramped room full of bunk beds and wall lockers. Anastasia and I are thankfully assigned to the same bunk, and the locker is left empty because the next-to-zero personal items I own (literally just Lia''s wallet) were confiscated more or less as soon as I got here. The soldiers threaten us a little with a ''last call'' to come clean about any contraband items we may have smuggled in before giving us more details about the space, showing us the various cleaning duties, and teaching us how to line up and stand for the rest of the day.

    The next day goes similarly, and it''s similarly boring. If I want to, I can just use the brains of the soldiers teaching us and let my body instinctively understand whatever motions and habits they''re trying to impose on us. I''m a little worried this will mean I don''t actually learn those habits myself, but that makes me start worrying whether or not learning new habits is even possible for me. It must be, right? If I keep updating my templates, I should keep changes to brains that occur while I am using them. Same with stuff like muscle growth, but¡­ I mean, is there any reason to care? If growing new habits is just like growing new muscles, and I just use my powers to shorthand the latter, why not do the former?

    I suppose it''s probably important to have access to the most important bits of muscle memory in every brain. Going soldier brain to do drills and shoot guns is fine and dandy, but what if I have to try to do those things while Raptor-brained? If I''m in a warzone, I''ll want to have access to my alien radar basically all the time, and I might still need to also be able to use a gun. I wonder if there''s a way to mix brains so that I get a customized selection of habits and muscle memory?

    I know mixing brains is possible, at least a little bit. Hooking up alien senses to a human brain requires me to blur the line between the two, experimenting with methods of connection until I finally find one that sticks. Mixing and matching neurons from different people sounds like a quick way to lobotomize myself, but it should be theoretically possible, right? An absolutely insane thing to attempt, maybe, but¡­ well, I have a superpower. Superpowers can be kinda bullshit.

    A significant amount of time is spent just teaching us how to do chores the ''correct'' way. Cleaning the bathrooms, cleaning the showers, making our beds, sweeping the floors. We get introduced to the concept of fire watch, having at least two people awake at any given time of night, swapping shifts every hour. With the thirty-some women in our platoon, that means any given person has fire watch about every other day, and depending on what hour your shift is it could really fuck with your sleep.

    There isn''t much time to socialize, but Ana and I are fine with just working some basic chores for a few days and learning how to stand to attention and line up in various positions and situations. I can only hope Christine is doing well on her own. On the morning of the fourth day, we''re ordered out of bed at four-thirty in the morning, lined up in our sleepwear in front of our beds, and informed we will be introduced to our Drill Sergeants. Here we go. Now boot camp really begins.

    The woman who walks into the room first is quite a bit older than we are, probably in her late fifties or early sixties. I stretch out my domain and find none coming from her, only a tightly toned body kept as strong and fit as it can be despite age trying to wear away at it. Her blonde and gray hair is put up in a bun just underneath her big green bush hat, which is interesting because I haven''t seen any of the other personnel wear a hat indoors. I guess big hat means big importance. She walks down the rows of our beds with the other drill instructors, glowering at each and every one of us as we stand at attention to the best of our abilities.

    "It would seem," the woman says, her voice startlingly loud in such a cramped space, "that some rotten queef wisps blew in thinking they could be soldiers. No, I''m being too generous, aren''t I? You useless cunts don''t even have dreams. I''d call you children but you''re not even people. You''re nothing but piles of shit, and it''s my duty to shape you into something with worth."

    How colorful. I''m vaguely impressed. She sneers, her hands behind her back as her boots click on the floor, echoing in the silence between her shouts.

    "You are going to hate me more than you''ll ever hate the enemy. I am going to make those acid-spitting demons feel like your princess-themed birthday parties. I am going to personally destroy each and every one of you in body and soul, because there isn''t a single speck of value inside your pathetic bodies that you don''t bleed out into a rag! From this day forward you are nothing! You are not human beings! You are not even cockroaches! And you are certainly not fucking soldiers! Do you understand that!?"

    We''ve been told the script.

    "Ma''am yes ma''am!"If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    "Do you think I''m your fucking mother!? Do you expect me to breastfeed your sorry asses!? You will address me as sir!"

    Aaaand script flipped. Huh. Well, whatever.

    "Sir yes sir!"

    "What the fuck did you just say!? I didn''t hear a goddamn word of it!"

    "Sir yes sir!"

    "Louder!"

    "SIR YES SIR!"

    She screams at us. She swears at us. The insults start to get as personal as they are ridiculous. A few idiots stand out, so they naturally get hammered down. And one idiot in particular can''t get her stupid power to behave for five fucking minutes.

    "What the fuck is growing on your face!?" she asks. "What the fuck is the matter with you, recruit!?"

    I successfully don''t flinch as she screams in my ear, but I fail to stop myself from unforming the crystal scales and replacing them with her face. I quickly shift back to normal, but¡ª

    "The fuck was that!? The fuck did you just do!? Answer me, recruit!"

    "Sir! My power copies other living things sir!"

    "Do you think you''re funny!? Did I give you permission to copy my face!?"

    "Sir no sir!"

    "Then why the fuck did you do it!? Do you think you''re special!? Do you think you do not need my permission!?"

    "Sir no sir!" I insist, but the shout in my ear sends a twitch of fear up the side of my face that turns into crystalline scale armor, added and removed as fast as I can think.

    "Do you think you''re better than the rest of us, trainee!?"

    "Sir no sir!"

    "Then why the fuck is a freak of nature like you showing off!?"

    "Sir! I''m not showing off sir!"

    "I? I? You think a subhuman piece of shit like you gets to say ''I!?'' You will refer to yourself as this recruit, because that''s all you are! Another body here to learn how to kill and how to die!"

    "Sir yes sir!" I shout. What else can I say? Again, my face twists into something inhuman before I can reel it back. I''m trying, I swear I''m trying, but I''m just under threat and in a suboptimal form! It''s bothering me so fucking bad!

    "You alien-looking cunt! You could only be this dumb if you hit your damn head falling out of the sky!"

    "Sir!" I say, snapping my face back to Lia''s.

    "What, you trying to look pretty now, Angelface? Are your looks the only thing a stupid bitch like you has got!? Get control of your damn power, recruit!"

    "Sir yes sir!"

    The entire time this scream session is happening, I keep a bit of my attention on Anastasia. She is definitely handling my beratement worse than I am. While I have to admit that it is a novel experience to be told I''m trying to compensate for my stupidity with good looks, having the drill instructor in my face and screaming in my ear is the only part that really bothers me, not any of the words she''s saying. I know it''s an act. The ways she contradicts herself, swaps between topics without warning or reason, it''s all calculated to put me so off-guard alongside the fight-or-flight instinct she''s instilling that my sense of self starts to crack a little.

    Boot camp is about traumatizing people on purpose and gaslighting them into believing the coping mechanisms they are forced to develop are good and just and better than before. And the thing is, in the context of getting people to value obeying over their own lives and making them perfectly comfortable with killing whenever needed, it is indeed a very effective strategy. I don''t know if there''s a better way to do that to a person, because in a just world nobody would have to.

    But Anastasia doesn''t know the why or the how. She just sees someone screaming cruel nonsense at her big sister and it is making her very, very angry. I know that she''s far from the only person around her age to get powers. The military does have an entire established set of policies around how to handle it, after all. I''m curious to see how drill instructors have been forced to adapt to the reality of child soldiers; all the same techniques they use on us would indeed work on a child, but every child who comes through here has superpowers and that changes a lot.

    It''s very easy to imagine a child discharging a weapon during a tantrum. So how do you force a kid into such a state that they will not have a tantrum, no matter how much you abuse them? Maybe that''s what I''m here for. They probably can''t afford having people with powers stick on the back lines being drill instructors. In the power training course, it is a necessity. In boot camp, where the vast majority of people going through are normal humans, it''s a lot harder to justify powered staff members outside the few who are probably kept on base in case of an attack. The sort of powers that would likely be best to keep all the way back at base probably still have their own jobs to do with those powers; if your power isn''t good enough to be worth protecting and constantly using all on its own, you''re not going to be at base, you''re going to be at the front lines doing domain duty.

    So, speaking of domain duty, that''s why I''m paired with Anastasia. If she tries to kill someone, I''m the only person in the platoon who can physically stop her without killing her. I''d like to think it''s because we have a very good relationship and I can talk her down, but I suspect the fact that our domains are comparable in strength and I''ve physically overpowered her once already is the more important thing to the military.

    Thankfully, if that''s going to be a problem our drill instructor has decided not to find out today. Despite Anastasia''s visible rage, she doesn''t make a move and the drill instructor doesn''t make her one of the many examples of how to get screamed at (step one: do anything).

    After our requisite twenty minutes of being creatively insulted, we are informed that we have ten minutes to do thirty minutes worth of tasks and anyone who fails will be making up for that failure in unpleasant ways. To nobody''s surprise, we all fail. Thus starts physical training.

    I suspect that no one else in our platoon is going to be particularly happy about the fact that I''m literally incapable of not cheating at physical training. As long as I have eaten enough food, I cannot get tired. My body is already fully capable of doing everything the physical training is trying to make us able to do, and whatever extra punishments get thrown our way straight-up cannot faze me, let alone hurt me, if they are designed for normal humans.

    I need to be absolutely certain that nobody finds out about this at basically any cost.

    I have no idea what sort of intensive training they give superhumans and I have absolutely no desire to find out. The thing is, I know that they are going to be working us until we drop for the express purpose of working us until we drop as the end goal, so I need to be able to be convincingly exhausted. The easiest way to do that is to¡­ well, actually be exhausted. The only reason I don''t feel tired is because my body shapeshifts away exhausted muscles and replaces them with fresh ones. If I can just get myself to stop doing that on instinct, I will just have a normal human stamina. Sure, it will be a normal human stamina that I can technically turn back into infinite stamina anytime I want, but nobody has to know that.

    So while everyone else is focusing on not collapsing into a pile of sweat, I''m manually forcing my body to sweat while trying to figure out how to get myself to convincingly collapse. I''m also trying not to laugh at all the people watching Anastasia outperform them; she also has a superhuman stamina, after all. Not by a whole lot, but enough to make her stronger and faster than an adult while not being so strong that intensive training doesn''t eventually exhaust her. Which is good, I think. Being just barely better than everyone else is probably the ideal position in just about any social situation.

    The physical training is done outside in the company area, so while I don''t really have an opportunity to talk to them, I can glance over at Maria, Christine, and Peter occasionally. I can recognize a few of the other powered people as well, but they''re all men. Maria and Christine are in the other platoon of women, and the men are scattered between the other three platoons, with no more than two powered people in a single group. They''re making sure to split us up as much as possible, which makes sense on multiple levels.

    Only after an hour of grueling physical training are we allowed to go to breakfast. The mess hall looks basically the same as the one at Fort Moore, and the food is similar as well. I''m not a good judge of how good that is, but according to Christine the food they prepare for the military isn''t actually too bad. There''s even a selection of desserts in the mess hall, but when Anastasia tries to grab one, the woman who was taking care of her before, Jazz, puts her hand on Anastasia''s shoulder to stop her.

    "Don''t," she says. "My dad says the desserts are all traps. If anyone eats one they punish the entire platoon without telling you why."

    "Seriously?" I ask. God, I mean, that does sound insane enough to be real.

    "Seriously seriously," Jazz nods. "I''m gonna let all the other girls in our platoon know as well. There''s all kinds of unspoken rules. They''re actively looking for as many excuses as possible to punish us."

    "But why?" Anastasia asks. "Why would they put this stuff here if they don''t want us to eat it?"

    "It''s not about whether or not they actually care if we eat dessert," I explain. "It''s like I told you at Emily''s."

    Anastasia nods slowly, seeming to at least partially understand. I did my best to educate her about the effective cult indoctrination we''re going through. It doesn''t matter what the rules are, what matters is that we instantly obey anything our superiors say no matter how absurd, unfair, dangerous, or abusive it happens to be. Immediate, unthinking obedience is as much of a goal of boot camp as actually understanding how to be a soldier. Absurd punishments for unspoken rules are part of that: they need us to know that whatever we think makes sense doesn''t matter. They want us to stop trusting our understanding of logic, reason, decision-making, and morality. They do that by making sure none of those things work anymore.

    "No desserts," Anastasia nods. "Got it."

    "So, I take it the two of you know each other pretty well, then?" Jazz asks as we sit down.

    "I''m not really sure how or if I can start the process given our current circumstances, but I intend to adopt her," I shrug.

    Anastasia excitedly bobs her head up and down.

    "But she''s not my mom!" she insists. "She''s my big sister!"

    "We got trapped in an incursion zone together," I explain. "It was definitely something of a bonding experience."

    "Uh, holy shit, I guess that''s one way to put it," Jazz says. "How the hell did you survive that?"

    "By killing a lot of aliens," I answer succinctly.

    "Ha!" Jazz grins. "I guess you''re overqualified."

    "Eh," I shrug. "Anastasia and I are pretty damn good at killing aliens, but we have no idea how to do¡­ y''know, military stuff. You said your dad was in the military? You probably know a lot more about that than we do, then."

    "What, were your parents not in the military?" she asks. I wince, glancing at Anastasia. "¡­Oh. Shit, sorry."

    "My parents, for the record, are just way too rich to do anything as plebian as helping people not die," I answer to bring the attention off of Ana. "They probably haven''t even fought the kind of wasp that''s native to Earth."

    "Mine died," Anastasia says softly. Welp! That didn''t work! I think the only thing I can really do here is give her a hug, so that''s what I do, squeezing her tight and hoping I can pop the memory right out of her ears.

    "Do you cunts think this is schoolyard gossip time!?" our drill instructor suddenly shouts at us. "Do you think you''re here for hugs and fucking kisses!? Shut up and eat your goddamn food! I don''t want to see your disgusting hands touching anything but a fork!"

    I quickly release Ana and focus carefully on my food, shoveling it down as quickly as I can. Okay, I guess we''re not allowed to talk to each other either! Phenomenal. Great to know. I guess they had good reason to hurry us, too, because breakfast only lasts about ten minutes before we''re right back to it. The entire company is given fake rubber rifles and forced to repeat marching and standing drills for the next five and a half hours. Left face, right face, to the rear! We have to know exactly what to do based on any shouted order, and whenever anyone messes up they are berated in front of the entire company and we do it all again. Since this is the first day, a lot of people mess up. But throughout it all, I stay silent and do what I''m told, and before I know it we''re eating lunch and then getting back up to do it all again.

    After dinner we are returned to platoon-level activities, one of our drill sergeants teaching us things that are generally better learned via methods other than shouting. She does so mostly by shouting, but it is still overall educational. When she has finished up everything she seems to want to teach us for the day, it''s chore time, all the way until an hour before bed when we get the only personal time available to us. It''s still constantly monitored, of course, and entirely within the squad bay where our whole platoon shares a single room, but at least there aren''t any DIs screaming at us.

    Man. There''s going to be ten weeks of this. At the very least I suppose I won''t get bored. Jazz wanders over to Ana and I while everyone is reeling from the day and clears her throat.

    "Sorry kid," she says. "I said something stupid earlier."

    "It''s okay," Anastasia shrugs.

    Jazz is an interesting person. She''s probably the first or second most physically fit person in our platoon, at least for now, and she has clearly prepared for this for a long time. She doesn''t strike me as one of the propaganda guzzlers, though. I can''t say for sure since I haven''t really talked to her about it, but those are the vibes I''m picking up. She''s prepared not because she wants to fight, but because she knew she was going to have to so it only made sense to prepare. I like that kind of person, and I like that she seems to be the only person in our platoon interested in going out of her way to talk to us.

    Although I could do without Lia''s brain pointing out how hot she is. I mean, most of the people here are pretty attractive, and Jazz isn''t super notable in that regard. She has green eyes, dusty blonde hair tied up in a bun, and a fairly average athletic build. She''s not particularly tall or short, and not particularly flat or curvy. A very average person in overall appearance, outside of how hard she''s doubtlessly worked to keep in shape, but even that isn''t particularly apparent externally. I can tell because of my powers, but plenty of girls around look like they have more muscle mass just because they don''t drink enough water.

    "Uh," Jazz whispers, blinking at me. "I don''t know a good way to ask this, so¡­ why are you white?"

    "Huh?" I say, and then realize I''ve been slowly implementing traits from her body this entire time. "Oh, crap, sorry."

    I return to boring old Lia standard, ignoring the parts of me grumbling about having to keep doing so all the time.

    "She turns into other people sometimes," Ana says, patting my shoulder. "Christine says it''s creepy but I think it''s cool."

    "No offense, but I think I''m on team creepy," Jazz says. "You do you, though."

    Unfortunately that is one of the only things I cannot do.

    "If you think this is bad, wait until you see me turn into an alien," I say.

    "Oh god, can you do that?" Jazz grimaces. "Fucking hell, the drill instructors are totally going to make us fight you."

    "Honestly, part of me kind of hopes they do?" I admit. "That would be really useful experience. Plus, I could do anatomy lessons and point out all the best places to shoot the different kinds of aliens I have access to. ¡­Although, that would only really apply to the aliens from Chicago."

    "Ah yes, Chicago, the well-known homeland of monsters from outer space," Jazz nods. "And then the incursion happened!"

    I snort.

    "Part of me feels like I should protest, but¡­"

    "¡­You''re a walking example of why I''m exactly right?" Jazz finishes for me with a smirk.

    "Hey, you don''t have to say it," I grin back, getting a chuckle out of her.

    "Well, hopefully I didn''t hurt your feelings too badly," she says. "See you around, superhero."

    She wanders off, and free time is over before I know it. When I go to bed, I open my eyes to see myself slowly descending through an ever-changing expanse. Ah, okay. I guess I get the fall dream tonight, rather than the meat dream. That''s nice. This is a lot prettier than the meat dream.

    A pleased satisfaction rumbles up through my bones as I compliment the chaos around me, smashing into my mind but not overwhelming it quite as completely as it did back when these dreams first started. The enormous pulses of thought and emotion are still painfully beyond me, but I''m getting better at handling them, I think. Whatever entity keeps brainblasting me feels like it''s happier the less its communication hurts me, which is at least somewhat reassuring. I keep ending up in this place, falling towards the power that sustains it, because that power loves me so much. It wants the best for me, I think, it''s just¡­ clumsy.

    I''m not entirely certain where that confidence comes from. I get the impression I might have figured it out over the course of countless prior dreams, but the falling dreams are always so much more difficult to remember than the meat dreams. I feel almost awake during those, but this? This is unmistakably a dream. It could not possibly be anything else.

    -T CaN, the world claws at me. iT mer-LY is N-t.

    The pain that flows through me when it speaks isn''t the kind I can just shapeshift away. It wounds something deeper, but it is from those wounds that it heals back stronger. This is a dream. But am I the dreamer?

    I of Y-U, my soul tears, aND -oU o- ME.

    Ow. I''m not sure that illuminated anything, but I appreciate the attempt, buddy. I think I had a name for you once, but I can''t remember what it is.

    WH-T -F.

    Yeah, something like that. But that wasn''t exactly right. ''What If'' isn''t really a name, it''s a question.

    Another rumble of pleased satisfaction replaces my conscious thought for a few moments. It''s always jarring, no matter how many times it happens, but it''s not scary anymore. Every time I am destroyed, I always return, still me. So you like being a question, huh big guy? I guess that''s cool. Properly eldritch and all. But you aren''t just questions. You''re answers, too. You certainly answer a lot of my questions, anyway, even if the answers don''t always make sense. Isn''t there another name for you? One you also like?

    A quiet affirmation, or at least as quiet as the universe can be, confirms that it is so. In fact, more names is better. I am permitted to give as many as I like.

    That''s the thing, though. I''m not sure I know you well enough to give you a name. What are you? A dream? My power? A god? An illusion? A hallucination? Don''t answer that. I know you''ll say yes to all of it. But that''s what makes it hard. You''re so many things I don''t know which one to name you after. But I''ll think about it, okay? You seem nice enough. If you want more names, I''ll give you some good ones. Names are important to me.

    Again, I stop existing but for the gleeful anticipation that I become, and then I am me once more. For being some kind of eldritch universe-god constantly pulling me further inside it, this thing sure is easy to excite. It''s just pretty fucking happy. I like that. It''s a weird change of pace. Oh! Speaking of changes of pace, by any chance do you want the world to end?

    When I come to, I find myself unable to process the surviving fragments of the answer that I received. I think I''ll choose to interpret that as ''it''s complicated.'' But I definitely get the impression that my buddy here isn''t seeking it out. At minimum, it would be sad if I died. So hey! Before I forget to ask again, is there any chance you''d be willing to help us save the world?

    - maKe thINGS P-s-ibLE, the truth becomes known. Y-U maKe -H- CH-ice.

    And then I no longer exist until I wake up.

 30. Cats Cant Talk

    At four-thirty sharp, I am woken up by the cacophonous sound of our drill sergeants screaming "lights, lights, lights!" I guess alarm clocks are out of season.

    "What the hell is all of this!?" one of them yells beside my bed. "Did you shit all over your mattress overnight, recruit?"

    I suppose I am sort of a brown blobby mess right now. Lately I''ve been spreading out across the surface of my bed while I sleep, hugging the mattress like an extra blanket. Even I can''t tell what exactly I''m emulating when I do it. Maybe I''m not emulating anything at all, and my dreaming mind is trying to form entirely new templates from scratch but can''t figure out how skeletons are supposed to work. One way or the other, it''s easy enough to pull my body back into a human form. I''m even lucky enough to have grown around my clothes rather than through them, so I don''t end up in the buff.

    "I asked you a question, Recruit Angelface, are you going to answer it!?"

    Right.

    "Sir yes sir!"

    "You did shit the bed, then!? Am I going to have to call your momma to wipe your ass for you!?"

    I mean, I was obviously answering the most recent question, but there are no right answers here. If I had specified, I would just be yelled at for something else.

    "Sir no sir!"

    "Well if that wasn''t shit on your bed then what the hell was it!?"

    "Sir! This recruit possesses abilities that remain active while she is unconscious, sir!"

    "So that was you!? You were the piece of shit sullying this fucking rack!?"

    I mean what am I gonna say here? Whatever.

    "Sir yes sir!"

    "Then you had better clean up this bunk in the next two minutes until there''s not a single blemish, a single wrinkle, a single fucking hair from your freakish alien head left on top of it! I want these sheets tighter than a drum! I wanna drop a quarter on your bed and watch it fucking bounce! And if any of you sorry bitches mess it up then the whole lot of you are running laps until you puke! Get to it!"

    We run laps that day. A lot of people puke.

    When we aren''t running laps or doing other intensive training punishments, we are learning how to march. It''s a lot of ceremony stuff, focused more around perfect synchronization than anything we will actually be doing on a battlefield. That obviously doesn''t make it useless; the Army does sometimes do formal parades and marches and crap in order to keep up civilian morale, but more importantly this is about ensuring perfect, immediate obedience. The third day shows that even more clearly.

    "Right sock! Three, two, one, left sock! I see Recruit Bolton wants to be slow! Left sock off three two one, you are¡ª"

    "Ready, sir!"

    "Back on, three two one! Pants on, right leg! Three, two, one, left leg!"

    Because of our ''clear need for coddling'' they shout us through our morning routine step by patronizing step. The girls who put their hair in a bun are not given a step to do so and then yelled at for breaking regulation. This continues to happen for the next few days, and a lot fewer girls keep their hair into the second week. Anastasia adapts by just resecuring her braid as part of our free time at night and relying on exhaustion to ensure she doesn''t move enough in her sleep to undo it.

    We start hand-to-hand combat training in the second week, and that certainly feels a little pointless. I wonder if it''s just an artifact from back before I was born when humans went to war with each other. I suppose it could be useful when subduing supervillains, but normal soldiers generally don''t do that. It seems smarter to keep it as a specialized skill, but I keep my thoughts on what is or isn''t smarter to myself.

    Still though, as someone very familiar with alien anatomy, the only advice I can give someone who wants to fight them unarmed is ''don''t''. Aliens are intelligently designed and don''t really have most of the surface weaknesses a human suffers from. Even if you jab your thumb into a Raptor''s eye, it''s just going to gut you for it. It won''t actually hurt the Raptor all that much. And if you''re thinking about fistfighting a Behemoth or a Wasp or something¡­ well, no.

    One of the drill sergeants usually partners up with Anastasia for these parts of training. I guess having random people beat up children is a bad look even by boot camp standards, but more practically I imagine that Anastasia''s size requires a slightly different curriculum than the rest of us. We are being taught a lot about how to attack the face, and she physically can''t do that. Well, not with her fists anyway.

    Still, as pointless as it is, I kind of like learning to fight this way. A lot of it is learning about anatomy, seeing what happens to the human body when the drill sergeant demonstrates an arm lock. Watching so many people get pushed to their physical limits and taught to exploit those limits in others really helps connect a few dots that I didn''t realize were there. I''m not entirely sure how helpful it all is, but it''s enlightening and cool and that helps me maintain a fully human form during the spars, which I would almost certainly get yelled at for not doing.

    I catch the arm of my sparring partner and throw her onto the mat, thinking about all the little ways I could optimize the human body without having it appear outwardly different. She groans, not getting back to her feet immediately, which means we are probably going to be yelled at. I reach my arm down, offering to help her up, and she scowls at me.

    "I don''t know how I''m supposed to learn anything sparring with a fucking superhuman," she grumbles, and I wince because one of the sergeants definitely heard that.

    "If you have enough breath to complain about it then maybe you just aren''t working hard enough, recruit!" one of them snaps at us. "Do you expect to get everything handed to you? Do you expect life to be fucking fair? It doesn''t matter if Recruit Angelface is stronger than you! A pussy bitch like you is going to encounter nothing but people stronger than you! Faster than you! And certainly a hell of a lot fucking smarter than you! What are you going to do about it, recruit? Are you gonna lie on your back and whine about it until someone spoonfeeds you baby formula to shut you up, or are you going to get up off your ass and fight!?"

    Geez, I can''t even be mad about that one. I just kind of agree with all of that. If anything, I''m surprised she didn''t get blasted harder. I guess the drill sergeants are too busy instructing to want to waste time punishing her. Lucky.

    "I''ll show you how I did that," I offer to my partner as she finally takes my hand.

    "...Yeah, okay," she agrees.

    Boot camp never lets up for a second. When we''re done with hand-to-hand combat training, we move on to an obstacle course. When we''re done with the obstacle course, we ''rest'' by taking classes on first aid. Our power training courses were a resort retreat by comparison. We are yelled at, belittled, and gaslit into compliance, and though this doesn''t really impact me all that much¡ªI''m used to acting out immediate obedience¡ªit starts taking a visible toll on Anastasia and especially Christine.

    The former, I can do something about. Anastasia and I can spend our free hour chatting, and I do my best to help her direct her anger somewhere more productive than at our drill sergeants. Explaining to her why they''re doing what they''re doing works well to calm her down, but the resentment underneath her immediate desire to act out remains. I can''t really blame her for that. These might be desperate times, but this is still child abuse. And regular abuse, I suppose, but how are you supposed to prepare someone for war without getting them used to horrific moral violations? The whole goal is to turn people into weapons. There is no just way to do it, not without sacrificing effectiveness, and after thirty straight years of martial-law-led war military policy has firmly shifted towards effectiveness over morality.

    Christine, though. Even during our free periods, we are very much not allowed to visit other platoons. I''m not really sure why that rule exists; I recognize that they are trying to foster a bit of camaraderie and competition¡ªthere''s even going to be a hand-to-hand combat event between the top performers of every platoon¡ªbut we''re still in the same company. Shouldn''t it be all of us against the aliens rather than each platoon against the other?

    It''s painful to watch her struggle on the obstacle course and get screamed at over and over. It''s even more painful to watch her have a panic attack, curl up into a ball, and get three different drill instructors surrounding her and all trying to yell her out of it. I am very, very tempted to walk over there and try to stop them, but I doubt that ends well for any of us. I instead focus my efforts on distracting Anastasia so she doesn''t see.

    The day after that, Christine isn''t with the rest of her platoon. They come out to the company area to do exercises like everyone else, but they all seem completely exhausted before they even get there. I guess they can''t make her train, but they can make her watch the entire rest of her platoon get punished because she isn''t. After a few days of that, I can''t hold back my growing need to do something about it.

    "Sir! This recruit wishes to speak to the drill sergeant about Recruit Baker, sir!"

    The drill sergeants have something equivalent to office hours, though we aren''t actually allowed anywhere near their office. They don''t seem to particularly like it when we use them, but needs must.

    "What, is that sack of shit a friend of yours? Focus on your own platoon, Recruit Angelface," she answers.

    "Sir! This recruit has experience working Recruit Baker through high-stress situations. This recruit may be able to¡ª"

    "Did I ask you to fucking elaborate?" the drill sergeant cuts me off. "Well, did I!?"

    "Sir no sir!" I answer, trying not to grit my teeth.

    "Then that means I don''t want to fucking hear it, doesn''t it?"

    Yeah, that could have gone better. But it probably wasn''t going to. Still, Christine is a little too brittle for them to push on her this hard. She''s not going to bend, she''s going to break. I have to do something about it. When my next night watch comes around, I wait for the people who woke us to fall asleep before turning and looking at my partner dead in the eye. I''m lucky enough to have been partnered with Jazz tonight.

    "Will you cover for me?" I whisper at her.

    "What?" she hisses back. "Cover what for you?"

    "I have to stop one of the other powered girls from snapping and probably killing a drill sergeant," I tell her bluntly. "Will you cover for me?"

    "Wait, like you''re sneaking out? Are you crazy? They''ll set our asses on fire. There''s no way you can make it there without being spotted. If I let you go, you''ll just get caught by someone else''s night watch."

    I stare at her.

    "Jazz," I say, "I''m a shapeshifter."

    She mouths ''oh'' to herself.

    "¡­Well, there''s no way you can pull off the drill sergeant look without the hat," she points out.

    "I was planning on a stealthier approach," I say. "Like a cat or a mouse or something."

    Or some kind of freaky hairless cat-octopus hybrid, but she doesn''t need to know the details. Planning out my ''stealth form'' was pretty fun, honestly, but I don''t really need anything more complicated than small, fast, quiet, and hard to see.

    "What do I get out of this?" Jazz asks, narrowing her eyes at me. "It''s on my ass if they find out you''re missing and I didn''t report it."

    "I don''t know, the debt and gratitude of a future superhero?" I ask. "Is that worth anything?"

    "No," she says. "I probably won''t even see you again after boot camp."

    "I''ll owe you a favor during boot camp, then," I sigh. "Like I can¡­ I don''t know, let you nap on our next night watch."

    "I think that''s even less likely to work, but fuck it, whatever. Go do your thing."

    "Thanks," I nod, pulling my clothes off and tossing them onto my bed.

    "Woah, hey!" Jazz hisses, but then I shrink down into a freaky little creature and run for the exit. My skin writhes and my chromatophores bloom, matching my color perfectly with the walls as I slink alongside one to where the other platoons sleep. I don''t actually know which sleeping quarters is Christine''s, but there aren''t all that many and it''s easy enough to find the other one with women in it. I watch the pair of girls guarding the place carefully as I sneak past them, reaching out with my domain to try and feel around for the edges of Christine''s. The moment I find it, someone jolts in one of the beds, Christine waking up in a panic from the sudden domain contact. Well, that makes it easy enough to find her, I suppose.

    Unfortunately, since Christine doesn''t feel domain qualia, she can''t really tell that it''s me. I hide for a bit, the fire watch glancing in Christine''s direction because of the movement, but they scowl and dutifully ignore her shortly after, giving me a chance to creep up to her bed and whisper at her.

    "Hey, it''s me," I say quietly. "You okay?"

    "¡­Jul¡­Lia?" she whispers back.

    "Probably one of those," I joke. "How are you holding up?"

    "Bad, obviously," she groans. "I can''t do this."

    "You can," I insist. "It''s going to hurt, but you can."

    "Has it never occurred to you that maybe life shouldn''t have to hurt?" she asks me.

    "The way life should be is always a nice goal to have, but you have to deal with the way life is before you can get there," I tell her.

    "You always have an answer," Christine grumbles. "So what, you''re just here to tell me to suck it up like everyone else?"

    "I guess kind of," I admit. "But I hope you''ll take it a little more favorably when it comes from me rather than one of those screaming assholes."

    A small huff of air comes out of her nose, almost close to a laugh.

    "Have you seen my shoes?" she asks.

    "Um. No? Is there something weird about them?"

    "They took my shoelaces and put duct tape on them instead," Christine says. "So I don''t hang myself."

    "Holy shit," I say, not really knowing how else to respond. I guess I don''t always have an answer.

    "I can''t really blame them," Christine admits. "I do sometimes wish I had never gotten powers, even though that would mean¡­ you know."

    That she would have died in the incursion.

    "Yeah, I know," I say. "I''m definitely glad you did, though. I''m glad we all made it out together."

    "Did we make it out?" she asks. "Or are we just going to have to keep going back in for the rest of our lives? If the goal is to make boot camp so bad that it kind of sounds appealing, they might actually be succeeding."

    I hesitate, trying to decide how to handle this. With a quick glance over to the girls on fire watch, I step out of my hiding spot and hop up onto the bed, replacing my octopus skin with normal cat fur.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    "Ack! Lia?" Christine sputters.

    "Shh," I quiet her. "Look, I don''t know if there''s anything I can say that''ll make this better, but I''m here for you. We got through the incursion zone, we got through power training, and we''ll get through this. Maria is in your platoon too, right?"

    "I guess," Christine shrugs. "I mean, I like Maria, but we''re not really friends."

    "I see," I say. Slowly, carefully, making sure to give her plenty of time to object, I curl up next to her, snuggling her shoulder. "Well if there''s anything you need, I''m here for you. I''ll help you through this however I can."

    "Yeah," Christine says softly, slowly rotating on her side and wrapping her arms around me. "I know you will."

    We stay like that for a few minutes, me doing my best to just be a comforting presence. I wish I knew something better to say, but this might be one of those times that there isn''t anything good to say at all. Those are always the worst, but I''ll do my best in spite of them.

    "¡­This is weird," Christine mumbles. "You''re basically in my bed naked right now."

    "Look, I''m a cat right now," I sigh. "Just don''t think about it."

    "Cats can''t talk," Christine points out.

    "Okay, I''m an objectively better cat right now."

    She chuckles, squeezing me a little tighter.

    "You should get back to your squad bay," she tells me. "Thanks, though. I''ll try to do better."

    "You''ve got this, Christine," I encourage her, and then I slink back to my post, popping into human form and quickly putting my clothes back on while Jazz covers her mouth to hold back a swearing fit.

    "You scared the shit out of me!" she hisses.

    "Sorry," I tell her. "Did anyone notice me gone?"

    "Somehow, no," she says. "You owe me big."

    "I pay my debts," I nod.

    The next day, Christine joins us in the company area, her shoes still taped shut. Unfortunately, today is the day we get introduced to the gas chamber. I guess one of the nice things about the Geneva Conventions is that the aliens never signed it.

    The gas chamber is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: a room for pumping in various horrible gasses so as to expose us to them in a controlled environment. A lot of Queens can disperse or otherwise mitigate the effects of gas attacks inside their domains, but not all of them, and some of humanity''s greatest victories have been because of that weakness. Angels attacking us outside of the protection of their Queens often also have a vulnerability to gas attacks. After all, the aliens fight naked. They are organic beings that need to breathe, and while their respiratory systems are robust enough to filter out a lot of potential contaminants, poison is a different matter entirely.

    While I wouldn''t be surprised if deadlier concoctions have been used on the enemy, even without knowing too much about it I suspect from my understanding of alien biology that tear gas would be very effective on them. And since tear gas is usually survivable by humans, they want to train us to withstand exposure to it without panicking. We''ll usually have gas masks, presumably, and we''ll train with those too, but I guess they don''t want us to leave here without a facefull of riot suppression. I suppose it''s only fair?

    I mean, just because we''re at war doesn''t mean we don''t have plenty of opportunities to gas our own people. It''s not super common, since the propaganda does its job I guess, but it happens. I''m not sure it makes me feel better knowing that the people shooting gas canisters know exactly what they''re doing to other human beings, but it''s certainly a thing to know.

    We get drilled through the protocols, practice putting on and taking off our masks, and generally get exposed to the entire safety spiel before we get exposed to the tear gas. We go in, we do all the mask protocol stuff, they fill the whole chamber with gas so we can see what it''s like with our masks on, and then before they let us out of the chamber they make us take the masks off and scream the answers to a few questions while our eyes feel like they''re boiling out of our heads.

    Overall, I have to say that Wasp acid feels worse.

    The gas is still horrible, don''t get me wrong, but I think I might be able to at least lessen its effects with the right body. After every platoon has had their turn in the pain box, I request permission from my drill sergeant to go back in with authorization to use my power. I don''t even get yelled at for the request; they seem quite happy to send me back in. I experiment with a few variations on nictitating membranes for my eyes to protect them, but the only real solution I have to the whole breathing problem is not breathing. I have a good chunk of ways to hold my breath for a very long time, but what should I do if I inhale the gas by accident? And there has to be a limit to how long I can hold my breath, right?

    Wait. Does there?

    I can replace parts of my body with past versions of themselves. There should be no reason I can''t shapeshift away suffocating cells and replace them with oxygenated cells. That''s how my body handles muscle fatigue already! Although now I''m curious about where I get the oxygen from. Normally my power gets all of its material from stuff I eat, and there''s definitely going to be a lot of oxygen in that, but what¡­ huh. Have I never burped since getting my powers? Am I just swallowing a ton of air and not noticing? What the heck?

    On a whim, I take a breath of tear gas on purpose (do not recommend) and then, with it inside my body, shapeshift it away, replacing it with normal air. Jesus Christmas Christ. Even the pain is gone. Does this even count as shapeshifting anymore? It''s just like when I shapeshifted away the bullets that were lodged inside my body, I suppose. How does that work? What is my power, really?

    I stand in there with my mask off thinking about it until the drill sergeant in there with me yells at me to walk back out. I do so, wiping my eyes with my membranes as I try to work through the implications. Hypothetically, I could shapeshift away anything as long as it was inside my body. Is there a way to get it back, though? My power doesn''t really let me mess with nonorganic concepts. I don''t think there''s any chance of being able to eat a bunch of raw materials and then shapeshift myself a gun. So what happens if I eat a gun? (Hypothetically, of course.) Does the gun just stop existing?

    "Satisfied, Recruit Angelface?" one of the sergeants suddenly snaps at me.

    "Sir yes sir!" I shout on instinct.

    "Great! Because I think you''ve brought up a fantastic point! All you future superheroes, line back up! You''re going in for round two!"

    Whoops. I mean, it could be interesting to know if their powers can protect them from gas attacks, but¡­ oh boy. Christine looks mad at me. She''s already got snot and tears running down her face, and they''re clearly expecting us to go back in maskless to see what our powers can do.

    I feel the worst for making Anastasia go back in, of course, since I can''t see any way for her powers to prevent her from getting gassed. Peter clearly doesn''t care, so I guess his bullshit ability does something, but Maria and Christine are not happy about all of this, and neither are most of the other supers in our group. Yet when we all head inside together and they start to release the gas¡­ nothing happens. It never touches us.

    Christine is sorting the air.

    My immediate reaction to this realization is to check and see if I''m suffocating or getting oxygen poisoning. If Christine sorts the air too much and separates the chemicals in the normal atmosphere from each other rather than just relocating the tear gas, everyone in here could die. But we don''t. The tear gas hovers at the edges of the room and around the drill sergeant supervising us, but it avoids us entirely. We all seem to silently decide not to point this out to anyone, and a few of us do a couple fake coughs as we exit to act like it didn''t happen. Most of us still have faces dripping with tears and snot from our first go in the gas chamber, so it''s not too hard to sell the exit.

    "Nice job," I whisper to Christine when I see an opportunity. She pulled it off. She used her power under pressure! Christien just shrugs, though. Soon we''re sorted back into our platoons and I lose sight of her. Here''s hoping things keep going well.

    The next day, they hand out guns to everyone. No bullets yet, thankfully, but we have our guns and we will apparently be keeping hold of them for quite some time. Outside of our continued physical training every morning¡ªwhich everyone but me is starting to noticeably benefit from¡ªwe pretty much have the gun at all times. We march with it, we spend every class learning to disassemble and clean it, and we practice what using it will be like if it did have bullets. The drill sergeants balance small objects on the end of the gun barrels and tell us to pull the trigger without letting it fall. Hopefully this is a no-ammo-only exercise, because I can''t imagine it would be possible with the recoil from actually firing. Not that I would put it past the drill sergeants to find yet another impossible task to make us fail at so they can punish us.

    Watching Anastasia learn to use a gun has been equal parts entertaining and terrifying. The gun is enormous compared to her body, but she has the strength to carry it around just like the rest of us. The entire company seems to get a little more somber watching her do the drills, marching alongside us despite her legs barely being able to manage a sedate pace for adults. Everyone already knew that we were sending this child to war, but there''s something about seeing her work a gun that makes it all the more real. The instructors only react to the decreased morale the way they react to everything: even more yelling. Throughout it all, though, Anastasia doesn''t complain. Just like always, she is devoted to fighting.

    A few of the low-performing recruits, Christine included, get pulled aside by a separate group of drill instructors during company training to accelerate their physical fitness needs. It looks hellish. I keep an eye on the group as often as I''m able to do so without getting screamed at, and everyone in it seems to be having a bad time. It''s not uncommon to see one of the boys or girls in the group broken down crying on the ground as one of the drill sergeants screams in their face. In retrospect, I should have been a lot more prepared when, during the middle of one of our exercises, Anastasia suddenly turns around, cuts open a gash in her arm, and beelines it towards the intensive training group.

    "Wh¡ªAna, no!" I shout, ignoring my drill sergeant screaming at us as I turn to follow her. Anastasia is fast, though, with her blood out and wrapped around her waist, she can keep her domain at maximum power close to her body as her blood pulls her along, which in turn keeps that blood inside her domain as it moves along with her.

    "Christine!" Anastasia shouts, and I''m surprised to hear not anger in her voice, but panic. I tear my focus away from her to look at where she''s going, and I see Christine on the ground with the drill sergeant screaming directly into her face. And just like how I was surprised to see Anastasia afraid, I''m very surprised to see Christine angry. Stretching my domain ahead of me, I brush against Christine''s and find it wrapped not just around her own body, but also around the drill sergeant.

    Oh shit. I take it back. Anastasia has never done anything wrong and this is no exception. I try to stop Christine from activating her power, but she shoves me aside with barely any effort. I''m still too far away to have much density behind me, but more than that Christine is powerful. She''s always been powerful. My domain doesn''t require much penetration to copy someone''s body, so I pick up forms from other supers all the time, but Christine''s domain has always been a wall to me. She probably has a better RD score than anyone else in our entire power class. I can''t stop her.

    Fortunately, I don''t have to try alone. Anastasia fires a glob of blood forward, outside the range of her domain, where it smacks into the drill sergeant and makes him tumble over. Christine''s domain expands to keep him inside, but the move earns Anastasia and I just enough time for us to reach her and dogpile her with both of our powers. Combined, we barely have enough density to protect the drill sergeant.

    "Christine!" Anastasia repeats. "Christine, don''t, please don''t."

    "This fucker¡ª" she starts, but the drill sergeant who was screaming at her demonstrates the same survival skills he has shown thus far and interrupts her.

    "What the hell do you two shitstains think you''re doing!? Did you just hit me!? You''re going to be¡ª"

    I interrupt him this time.

    "Sir! This recruit is here to save your life, sir!"

    "I wasn''t going to kill him," Christine growls. "I can put things back together again."

    The drill sergeant opens his mouth to presumably try and commit suicide again, but a different drill sergeant cuts him off and takes charge again.

    "The three of you! With me! Now!" he snaps, briskly walking away from the training area. I gently pull Christine to her feet and tug on her a bit to get her to follow him with us. She''s not happy about it, but she complies.

    "Fucker was calling me slurs all goddamned day," she hisses.

    What kind of slurs are there for white women? Actually, on second thought, I don''t want to know.

    "Quiet!" the drill sergeant leading us barks, and we shut up.

    He actually takes us on quite the long walk, well off the training field and past the usual set of buildings we use for boot camp. This is probably not a good sign. We eventually walk all the way into a large, administrative-looking building, heading down a boring hallway before the drill sergeant finally knocks on one of the doors.

    "Come in," a clipped voice calls from the other side. Our drill sergeant steps in and salutes, so we take the cue to do the same. Inside is a Hispanic man in an officer''s uniform¡ªa Major, by the looks of it¡ªsitting behind a large desk. He has three different monitors in front of his face and four enormous stacks of papers covering the areas that aren''t relegated to his keyboard and mouse. His hands fly across the desk, constantly in motion, and the man barely gives us a glance before looking back at one of his monitors. A domain briefly flows out from him and brushes against us, though it immediately retreats after feeling us out. It reminds me more of Commander''s aura than anyone else''s, though it doesn''t have anything like her level of creepiness. Where Commander''s domain is almost desperate to get you to drink its poison and lose yourself in its pleasure, the Major''s domain is much more¡­ content. Happy with itself, and though it would be happy to share that with us, too, it doesn''t demand anything the way Commander''s did.

    "Thank you Sergeant, you are dismissed," he says, and our drill sergeant turns and walks out of the room without another word. Not being sergeants, the three of us stay exactly where we are. For the next ten or so minutes, we continue standing at attention, even Christine not being annoyed enough to speak first with someone who has that much stuff on his lapel. Eventually, though, the man finishes whatever it was that he was doing and looks up from his desk to acknowledge us directly.

    "Hello," he greets blandly. "I am Major Luis Espinoza. I have been called and briefed on the situation. Superpowered discipline falls under my jurisdiction mostly due to a lack of staffing, so I don''t appreciate the interruption."

    He didn''t ask us a question, so none of us say anything when he pauses. After a moment, he nods like we passed a test and continues speaking.

    "I have, however, budgeted my time under the assumption that something like this would occur. Chicago causing an influx of new powers made it excessively likely that someone would need to end up in my office, but I didn''t expect three of you at once. One at a time, describe to me in your own words what happened."

    I go first, to give an example to Anastasia and give Christine a little more time to collect her thoughts. There''s not much for me to tell, of course. I just saw Anastasia suddenly bolt towards Christine and followed her on instinct, justifying the decision by saying I felt it would be my duty as someone with powers to defend others against powers when needed. Anastasia says something similar, though of course she also talks about how she noticed Christine getting angry and managed to figure out that she was about to attack by stretching her domain super thin all the way over to Christine. Which, wow. That''s very impressive. I doubt I could do that, my domain has always been fairly stubborn when it comes to range.

    Then it''s Christine''s turn. She manages to keep her words professional, but the undertone of anger is plainly audible. She stays pretty vague about the kinds of things the drill sergeant said to her, but she effectively accuses him of discriminatory behavior and abuse in clear excess of what would be productive for training. Throughout all three of us giving our case, Major Espinoza barely even looks at us, instead doing more work at his desk.

    "I see," he says when we''re all finished. "Well, my primary piece of advice to you, Recruit Baker, would be to get over it¡ª"

    Christine''s face twitches in fury.

    "¡ªbut I can see that summarizing it so bluntly is not helpful, so allow me to elaborate. There is one thing and one thing alone that a soldier is supposed to do when they are angry with their superior officer: obey. Attempting to assault a superior officer with a supernatural ability is very much not one of the orders you were given. It is the sort of thing that could, if I decided it was needed, get you removed from boot camp and transferred somewhere that your ability to be willingly trained would matter quite a bit less. But frankly, Recruit Baker, you are very powerful and I would like you to be in control of that power if at all possible. And what being in control means is that you do not use your power on humans no matter how angry they make you."

    He pauses, the sound of fingers clattering rapidly against a keyboard filling the lull in conversation.

    "Generously, it could be reasoned that Drill Sergeant Compton was pushing these limits on purpose. If someone is likely to break, it is better that they do it here than on the field. The best training, after all, is noticeably more stressful and difficult than whatever it is you are training for. While that is impractical, it is still the hope that when you graduate our program, you will be above whatever revenge you were imagining for those who wronged you. Knowing Drill Sergeant Compton, however, leads me to be willing to believe he was motivated more by malice than professional dedication. I assure you that he will be reprimanded, and that he will find his duties rarely taking him near you."

    The sound of a printer buzzes beneath his desk, and a moment later he reaches down, grabs whatever just came out of the printer, and hands it to Christine along with a pen.

    "This incident will still be in your permanent record, of course. Recruits Morgan and Patrova, I have negative counseling statements for the both of you to fill out."

    He hands us our own paperwork next, and the three of us sit down and awkwardly fill it all out while he continues to work. If we didn''t have superpowers, there''s no way we would be doing this with a bigwig like him, and that makes it all the more uncomfortable. Christine is still clearly pissed about the injustice of it all, but she signs her papers (which look a lot nastier than Anastasia''s and mine) and hands them back to the Major without a word.

    "Thank you," he says. "Your file mentions you''ve seen combat already, Recruit Baker. What was that like for you?"

    "¡­Awful? I didn''t really ''see combat'' so much as get saved by the two of them," Christine answers, indicating us. "Just like today, I guess."

    He nods.

    "We would be having a much different conversation if your power did actually get used. But even if you didn''t fight, you remember what it was like out there, don''t you?"

    "Yeah, I guess," Christine says, and I wince, expecting her to get torn a new one. But instead, the words that follow are calm and measured.

    "By all accounts, your ability is one of the most powerful we have seen in a long time," Major Espinoza says. "Even discounting its effect, your RD score is enormous for someone who has had their power as little time as you have, and your growth rates are similarly noteworthy. You''re capable of making a big difference in this war. Bigger than I think you know. Please, don''t forget that."

    Christine blinks, seeming quite surprised.

    "I¡­ really?" she asks.

    "I do not waste time with idle words," Major Espinoza answers. "I know it feels daunting, terrifying. You can''t see it in yourself because you lack the context and experience to know. But I promise you, Recruit Baker, the next time you step within the domain of a Queen, you will be a very, very different woman. And they will have more to fear than you will. Dismissed, the three of you. Report back to your platoons."

    We exit his office and find a soldier already waiting for us to escort us back. Christine still seems a little shocked by the whole affair, clearly struggling to believe any of the things she was just told. So I put an arm around her shoulder and give her a light squeeze.

    "How are you doing?" I ask.

    "He doesn''t know what he''s talking about," Christine mumbles. "No matter how good my power is, it still has the problem of being used by me."

    "Does it?" I ask. "He kind of has a point. The whole reason we''re here is to be reforged into weapons, and all that. I think he''s right. I think you can change."

    "Easy for the shapeshifter to say," Christine mutters, but just like how she couldn''t hide her anger, she can''t hide the tiny spark of hope in her tone.

 31. Angelface

    I''ll give the drill sergeants this: having people constantly scream in our ears did a lot to get us used to how headachingly loud guns are.

    I seem to be affected a little worse than everyone else, but I''m doing my best to hide it so maybe they are too. Still, my powers don''t let me accumulate hearing damage (even when I artificially give myself some I tend to unconsciously fix it shortly afterwards) so the bark of the weapon remains painful no matter how many times I hear it. The helmets help out a lot, of course, but it still rings through me every time someone pulls a trigger.

    I line up my shot at the target as best I can and fire a single round. The bullet smacks into the vaguely Raptor-shaped image printed overtop, far enough off-center to make me grit my teeth in irritation. Lia''s brain is not very good at shooting guns. This isn''t necessarily a problem, given that I have access to quite a few brains that are good at shooting guns, but switching brains to fit the situation still doesn''t sit right with me.

    I did my best to justify it, but at the end of the day I think I just hate the idea of stealing other people''s skills rather than developing my own. It pisses me off to get something like that without having to work for it. I guess that''s superpowers in a nutshell though, huh? I got randomly chosen by some eldritch dork and now I get all kinds of shit I don''t deserve. It''s like being born rich. ¡­Not that I can complain about that while wearing Lia''s body.

    I''m not even really sure what I''m doing wrong when I use her brain for this. I swap back over to one of the many brains I have from people who already cleared boot and my body just¡­ works better, especially if I make subtle changes to Lia''s frame to better match it with the new brain''s body. It''s frustrating to know that my knowledge of what I''m supposed to do is fine, but my experience is lacking, because what even is experience? What changes in the mind define it? Does using an already-experienced form help me learn, or does it rob me of potential learning? I don''t know, and there''s no one I can ask.

    So I''ve been alternating between Lia''s brain and other brains, trying to get a bit of every strategy in hopes of feeling out what works best for me. It''s been going well so far; I even got to be platoon guide for a while there, though I of course made some tiny random mistake and so the position was passed on to someone else, then someone else, then someone else, because I guess that''s just how being platoon guide works.

    It''s been over a month of boot camp now, and I''m thoroughly lost in the routine. It''s almost nice not having much time to worry about the implications of my power (though I obviously find some time) and just chugging through order after order. After we familiarized ourselves with our new rifles¡ªwhich we will quite possibly be carrying from now until we die¡ªwe started getting trained with all kinds of other stuff too, with light machine guns being given the most emphasis.

    Here''s my main takeaway: this shit is heavy, and that''s mostly on purpose. The M4s the Army mainly used before the aliens showed up are perfectly functional, but alien skin is thick and tough, acting like full-cover body armor that only gets harder to penetrate on larger monsters. Thankfully, the military had already contracted and begun testing higher-caliber standardized weaponry shortly before everything went to shit, and though the new guns weigh more (especially per bullet) they''re a lot more reliable at punching deep enough into Behemoth flesh to break something important.

    Physics-defying superpowers are pretty dangerous, but physics itself is still a merciless, cold-hearted bitch. Supersonic hunks of metal kill shit dead.

    Speaking of, I fire off another shot and wince as it misses the target entirely. Please don''t have¡­ damn it, nope, they saw.

    "You call that shooting, Recruit Angelface!? Get your damn head in the game and aim!"

    Day in, day out. Shooting, screaming, running, marching. The sun goes up, the sun goes down, days pass one after another as I get blasted by the drill sergeants for going too fast, going too slow, missing, hitting, talking, looking at the moon, not being loud enough, anything and everything over and over. At night I dream of a god''s soft embrace or an endless cavern of flesh, and I wake up yearning to run northeast, dive into the ocean, and meet my Queen. But then the yelling starts, and I can''t worry about that any longer.

    Once our equipment training is more or less up to snuff, they take us out to an abandoned town near the base and start field training us. Packed down with guns, blank ammunition, sandbags, shovels, and every other heavy piece of equipment they can think up an excuse to give us, we''re sorted into squads and drilled through combat patrols.

    "Aliens are stupid bastards!" our drill sergeant shouts. "But they''re clever bastards, too. They might not shoot at you, but they coordinate like trained soldiers, which means those dumb animals are better at this than you! They''re not going to run directly into your line of fire! They''re going to set ambushes, they''re going to try to get behind you, they''re going to come from multiple sides at once, they''re going to distract you with a big scary Behemoth so you don''t notice the Wasps crawling over the buildings beside you! The aliens will always try to surprise you, and that means you sorry sacks of shit need to be impossible to surprise! You will move with full three-hundred and sixty degree coverage at all times! You will only move when you are fully covered by your fellow men, and you will only stand still when you are providing coverage! All squads, emplace!"

    Our LMG gunners all set up their weapons, each with an assigned buddy to carry the bipods and ammo. I''m carrying the accessories for the heavy machine gun, tripod, barrels, ammo, and all. I help my assigned gunner set the whole thing up, securing the base with sandbags and getting the ammunition prepared. It''s an arguably excessive amount of firepower, but after running away from a veritable tidal wave of Angel clones I can''t really complain about having it.

    "Reposition, three o''clock!" one of the drill sergeants orders, and we all rapidly remove those sandbags and rotate our emplacements ninety degrees to the right.

    "Reposition, six o''clock!" comes the order as soon as we finish, because of course it does. After spinning us around a few more times for shits and giggles, we get the next set of orders.

    "Alpha squads, move up!" the drill sergeants shout, and so my squad immediately starts completely undoing everything we just accomplished, packing the machine guns back up for transport, readying our rifles, and advancing down the street. Most of the other squads stay put, covering our backs as we rush to find another spot to emplace that won''t be in allied firing lines. Throughout it all, I stay near the center of my group, my domain covering each and every member of my squad.

    We find a spot I''m confident won''t get us screamed at, set up, and then the process repeats.

    "Bravo squads, move up!"

    Leapfrogging one after another, we advance into false enemy territory. We travel the entire length of the ghost town this way, spending all day packing up heavy gear, lugging it on our backs, deploying it, and then packing it all back up again. The rest of my squad is completely exhausted by the time we finally reach our destination, but of course we still don''t get any rest, securing the location and setting up a rotating guard schedule in case of ''enemy ambush.'' The whole time we have nothing to eat or drink but water and MREs, which one member of my squad insists stands for ''Military Rations (Evil).'' Personally, I don''t really mind them, but like I have for most of boot camp I keep my opinions to myself. Nothing good ever seems to happen to people who share opinions during boot camp.

    Staying overnight in someone else''s abandoned house is disturbingly nostalgic, as are rotating watches. I make sure to warn my team in advance that I''ll probably shapeshift in my sleep, though I suspect they already know given how I''ve been waking up in the squad bay every day up until now. They shrug me off, mostly seeming grumpy with me because I have powers and I''m not tired, so I take my assigned rest. In the morning, one of the already awake members of our squad gets everyone up without intervention from the drill sergeant. The lack of someone confidently screaming in my ears first thing in the morning is so unusual that it takes me a few seconds to remember where I am and what I''m doing. The instincts kick in fast, though, and soon enough I''m going through the morning routine the same as always. Once everyone is ready, the drill sergeants group us all together again and announce that they''re mixing up the squads for the way back. We all go wherever they point us to, but I''m a little concerned when one of the drill sergeants pulls me aside away from the other squads entirely.

    "How many different alien forms do you have access to, recruit?" she asks me when we''re alone, actually using a normal speaking voice instead of screaming.

    "Sir, Raptor, Wasp, Behemoth, and two kinds of Angel, all from the Chicago incursion sir!" I report, matching her volume.

    "You''ve fought and killed the damn Martians already, have you?" she asks. "You think you can put on a good enough show to scare these pussies?"

    "Sir! Absolutely, sir!" I confirm. That sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

    "Good. Everyone has blanks, so the rules are if someone points their gun in your direction and fires, you ''die'' or run off. If they don''t fire, you keep charging them. If you reach a squad, we''ll call them dead."

    "Sir!" I acknowledge. While the other squads are setting up I go through the arduous process of removing all of my gear and handing it to the drill sergeant for safekeeping before shapeshifting fully and completely back into a Raptor. God, it''s like listening to an old song for the first time in months. A lot of memories rush back to me at once. My Raptor brain, which has been struggling to handle a human body ever since I left the incursion zone, is finally back where it belongs, where it feels right. It''s lonely here, of course; my fellow Raptors are too far away for me to be able to detect, but even despite that it is an unexpectedly large relief.

    I feel the pressure of my hydraulic muscles clenching and shifting as my tail flicks behind me. I bob up and down, testing my weight with my legs, making slight adjustments with my forearms to help me balance. I missed this, didn''t I? I really did miss this.

    "Recruit!" My drill sergeant barks. I immediately stand up as straight as I can, twisting my tail up around the top of my body in my best facsimile of a salute.

    "Hot damn, look at that," the drill sergant mutters under her breath. "I don''t want a single injury, you understand? You hurt anyone with that power and there will be hell to pay."

    I briefly relax and then snap a salute again to confirm I understand.

    "That thing mute?" my drill sergeant asks.

    I mean, I guess I could make it less mute. I do my best to form a human vocal structure in the space I have available and let out a raspy, awkward reply.

    "Sssir. All the aliens are naturally mute, but this recruit can adjust them if necessssary." The drill sergeant''s eyebrows raise and she nods.

    "Silent assassin is just fine, recruit. Put the fear of the enemy in them so we can beat it out."

    "Sir!"

    The exercise begins, and I wait for the first few groups to move up before picking where I''m going to engage first, staying out of sight and tracking the humans by scent. If I''m going to scare them, timing is everything. A Behemoth could probably make them crap their pants no matter when I do it, but I kind of want to work up to that. There''s an artistry to this sort of thing, I feel like.

    Crawling over the rooftops, staying low, and camouflaging my skin, I watch the various squads and try to single out slackers that leave some of their cover area open. I spot one before too long, using the fact that its team has their back to a wall as an excuse to not look behind it. Or, for that matter, up. I crawl silently into the proper flanking position, ascend the building behind them, and drop down from the roof. Partly because I need to avoid hurting anyone and partly for shock and awe, I land dead in the center of their squad formation, right in front of the human who should have been watching above them. It screams, and I leap forward¡­ to tap it lightly on the chest and quickly do the same to the rest of its squad.

    Immediately, the drill sergeants start screaming furiously at their entire team while I leap back up the wall, looking to get out of sight before any of the other squads realize what''s going on. For the next hour, I continue making ambush attempts on the other squads. I catch a couple other humans out at first, but soon enough they start winning. Common logic dictates that a good position to set up a defensive emplacement is behind a lot of cover, but that logic only applies when you''re fighting people who also have ranged weapons. When the squads start camping out in open areas, covering every direction and not leaving any blind spots, rushing them down starts becoming impossible. I do get to have a bit of fun pretending to be killed when someone shoots a blank in my direction, though. I''ve been shot enough times that I''m very familiar with what the wounds are like.

    An hour after, I pick up the frequency of my attacks, always moving to attack somebody from some direction even if it''s not particularly effective. I want to keep them on their toes and also get them a little complacent while I work out other strategies. The next time I catch someone off guard, it''s because I rushed ahead of them, set up an ambush spot, and managed to leap at someone from a bad angle that puts another squad in the crossfire. I still ''die,'' but they got an absolute ass-blasting from the drill sergeant for shooting in the direction of their own allies. After a bit more of that, I decide it''s time.

    Compared to the sleek and nimble Raptor, I find the Behemoth''s body a lot less enjoyable. It''s probably because fighting a Behemoth is what ended up getting Lia killed, and no matter how much I didn''t like her I still wish I had saved her. There are bad memories in this body, bad associations. But at the very least, unlike when I was in the incursion zone, becoming a Behemoth no longer drains the majority of my biomass reserves. There is an odd satisfaction in being able to assume a form this large without it being a risk to my safety. And speaking of risks to safety, it''s time to charge a machine gun nest.

    Let''s set the stage a little first, shall we? I make the change about a block over, behind some buildings so no one sees me. But when I start to walk, I know they can feel me. Each impact of my blades into the ground sends an audible tremor, one that only becomes more and more obvious the closer I get. As large and unwieldy as Behemoths are, they certainly aren''t slow, so I pick up more and more speed as I make my way towards the humans. What a rush! I definitely prefer being a Raptor, but I guess this isn''t so bad either. I burst into view and find the squad prepared, trembling but ready. Their guns open fire, blanks flashing, but that wouldn''t fell a Behemoth, not immediately. I keep running as they send another volley at me, and another, until they finally go full auto and I make a show of tripping and collapsing into a heap. My body smashes into the ground, shaking the squad that shot me. I wouldn''t have known it back when I first got these powers, but after so much experience with so many animals, I can now recognize the smell of their fear.

    I wish I could give them a proper taste of what this would actually be like. A single Raptor ambushing a squad of soldiers is nothing. A single Behemoth is nothing. What makes us truly dangerous is our formations, our ability to act together with singular certainty. The very thing that these drill sergeants have been trying to instill in the humans for a month is what we have from the moment we are born. What would they have done if it had not been a single Behemoth charging them, but three Behemoths while a pack of Raptors flanks from all sides? What would they have done if a Wasp was overhead, vomiting death from above? They can kill us and kill us and kill us, but we do not fear death. When one dies, one is born. Our lives return eternally to the Queen.

    Oh. That¡­ feels like it might be important. Still, I shapeshift back into a Raptor and run off, preparing another ambush for another squad. These musings are not a priority. I have my task.

    I do my best to ramp things up, but at the end of the day these formations are designed to counter alien mobility and tactics, so as long as everyone is doing them right there isn''t much that I can do by myself. I focus on mobility for a while, sneaking around just at the edge of everyone''s sightlines and trying to make them paranoid. The more they focus on trying to find me, the less they''ll focus on keeping their formation in place, which will give me an opportunity to try and slip in. I even take a couple passes overhead in the body of a Wasp, trying to drop a pebble on someone''s head to simulate barfing acid. Unfortunately, Wasps are particularly vulnerable to bullets because they aren''t terribly great at flying super high. From any distance I could reasonably aim an attack, even standard rifles could hit me and dedicated anti-air fire would annihilate me. That''s the importance of having power support, I suppose. With the right Queen or Angel, the situation completely flips.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    That''s actually an interesting point, though. The Chicago Queen could intercept bullets, which means that the range of any of these guns is based entirely on the range of whatever domain protects them. That''s almost always going to be the limiting factor when pushing into enemy territory. This whole war is centered so heavily around powers; without them, the aliens wouldn''t even remotely stand a chance. Even the Leviathans, large and powerful enough to destroy military ships without power support, likely wouldn''t enjoy a full salvo of torpedoes in their hide. But powers flip the scale, because for every Angel that''s just as vulnerable to bullets as the rest of us, there are countless who have some absurd way to no-sell the projectiles, and that''s downright common with Queens. Missile strikes, bombs, artillery, and all our other destructive abilities are only overwhelming in environments where they work at all. We can create those environments, but we need supers to do it.

    My point being, this practice doesn''t really work as an accurate representation of what it would be like to encroach on enemy territory. I certainly can''t stretch my domain down an entire street, and my domain is apparently pretty strong. Maybe Christine could do it? Her domain could already cover an entire house when we met up with her, and it''s been growing ever since. Maybe that''s why the Angel wanted her so badly. What are domains, really?

    Well, whatever. Speaking of Angels, I think it''s time to step things up.

    The first Angel we encountered in the incursion zone was a freaky little fucker, and while its body isn''t particularly useful to me¡ªit''s kind of weirdly unoptimized for a form that''s clearly intelligently designed¡ªit certainly scared the shit out of me when I saw it the first time and I''m happy to share that pain. Its bipedal form and ever-splitting fractal arms are at once disturbingly humanoid and not humanlike at all. With its body, I shamble towards squads that have superhero support and ignore any blanks that are sent in my direction until I feel that super''s domain, at which point I tear a deeper gouge in my already-split head and collapse shuddering to the floor, my body unraveling ever further in tribute to Division.

    It''s honestly really funny that it freaks the humans out so much.

    Of course, the thought about Division catches me off guard a little. I suppose that''s the name of this Angel''s god. Fitting, I suppose, for all the imagery and abilities the aliens of the Chicago incursion demonstrated. The god of turning one into two, and two into four. What an odd deity to have. I have to wonder if that''s really all there is to it, but some part of me instinctively wants to answer ''why would there need to be more?''

    And I mean, I guess if the god of Division actually exists and gives people superpowers, I suppose there doesn''t need to be more. It''s just¡­ weird, right? When I think of religions I think of ways of life, ways of interpreting the reality of the world and our place within it. How do you construct an entire philosophy out of a single basic math operand? What does it mean to worship Division? Did the Queen slaughter every living thing in the incursion zone for no reason other than the fact that she happens to worship the god of cutting things? Why not cut the houses, or the streetlights, or the cars? I don''t understand it, and my stolen brain isn''t supplying any helpful hints on the matter.

    So I swap to the other one. The second Angel, the one I killed. I think this is a good grand finale for the soldiers here, as while the first Angel had somewhat of a ceremonial body, this one is very much built for war. Faster and more agile than the Raptors, capable of scaling all kinds of surfaces to attack from any angle, relentless enough to flee when ''shot'' but immediately attack from a different direction, I can force engagements any time the humans need to travel off the street and into more cramped areas. Scaring the crap out of people seems extra fun in this brain, for some reason. As if the Angel I killed had a preference for the dramatic that''s now rubbing off on me.

    Oh Division, that''s exactly what this is. That bastard taunted us! I remember that! He¡ªor maybe she or they or it, I don''t really know¡ªdramatically crawled up on top of a roof and showed off its powers to us! It ripped a Raptor in half, then tore its own arm off, and it watched as we watched the consequences of that, which¡­ is really obviously tactically stupid? With a power like that, the Angel never should have been on the front lines. It should have just been generating infinite clones for free well away from anyone who could hurt it! So either the Angel is just an idiot, or it took the risk on purpose because it wanted to. Or I guess both. Probably both? I barely even knew what I was doing when I killed it.

    I wonder if the Angel knew what it was doing. I wonder how long it had its powers. It''s easy to imagine, suddenly, a young person charging into battle in search of glory, full of arrogance, and getting felled by a relative amateur. Some Angels are absolutely bloody terrifying, I know that. Some of them are engines of war that put entire militaries to shame. But they''re all unique. They''re all¡­ people. It''s obvious in retrospect, but I guess I was going out of my way to avoid thinking about it.

    I need to stop doing that, but I''m not entirely sure where I''ll get the time. Maybe after boot camp, I guess.

    When we make it back, I meet up with the drill sergeant who took my clothes and retrieve them from her, quickly getting dressed and reintroduced to my platoon in a way intended to make everyone think I could have come from any other squad. Nobody falls for it, of course. Seriously, why would they? The drill sergeants literally scream ''Recruit Angelface'' at me all day while crystal scales grow out of my skin.

    "Jesus fucking Christ, Lia, what the hell was that!?" Jazz hisses at me during our free time. I glance up at her and then back down, continuing to reassemble my weapon.

    "What was what?" I ask.

    "Was that you out there? With the fucking Martians charging at us from every direction?"

    "Nah, it was the other aliens the military has captured and trained to obey commands," I answer evenly. "And don''t call them Martians, they''re not even from space."

    "I thought we were actually under attack for a few minutes there," she complains. "I thought we were getting an incursion dropped on our heads!"

    "Trust me, you would definitely know if there was an incursion. And you would be facing a lot more than one alien. We stayed as far away from the fighting as possible and no less than twenty Raptors were still stalking us for four days."

    "What!?" Jazz gapes. "Wait, you got caught in an incursion zone?"

    I pause. Shoot. I actually forgot most people in boot camp don''t know that. Well, I guess it''s not really a secret.

    "Yeah, Anastasia, Christine, and I were trapped behind enemy lines together. It made us a little late for power training."

    "Oh my god, no wonder you''re such a badass. Wait, who''s Christine?"

    "¡­Recruit Baker?" I try.

    "Wait, that crybaby? How did she live?"

    "Like I said, we worked together," I answer flatly. I think I''m pretty over complaining about how useless Christine was back in the incursion zone, and she definitely doesn''t need any bad rumors spread about her in boot camp.

    "Wow, I never would have guessed," Jazz admits. "You were really stuck there with the kid? Actually, sorry, do you not wanna talk about it?"

    Ugh. I hate it when people ask me that. Like no, I obviously don''t want to talk about it, but I don''t want to shut down conversations about it either. It makes me seem unapproachable, impersonal. You can''t establish a positive reputation if you never talk to anybody.

    "The only thing I have to say is that someday you are going to be very happy you were taught how to lug an entire machine gun emplacement around for a day," I answer. "You will definitely not be getting ambushed by only one alien at a time."

    "I mean yeah, we know that," Jazz says. "I guess it''s just different actually seeing one in the flesh, you know? In pictures I just thought they were hideous. In person¡­ I don''t know. They''re a lot bigger than I thought they would be, I guess."

    I shrug, ignoring the urge to argue the claim that the aliens are ugly. I can''t see them that way. They''re a lot more beautiful than I used to be.

    "It''s not that bad," Anastsia pipes up in my place. "They''re scary-looking, but stab them enough and they still die."

    I glance at her, noticing that she''s a bit faster than me at reassembling her rifle. She finishes her work, performing all the final checks to ensure the weapon is functional.

    "That''s, uh, reassuring, kid," Jazz lies. "Well, I''m sure you''ll get your chance to teach them a thing or two."

    I frown a little, thinking about that. Under normal conditions, a gun beats Anastasia''s power in range, speed, and penetration. But inside a Queen''s domain? Surrounded by aliens on all sides? A gun''s range is only the range of Anastasia''s power anyway, and it can only shoot in one direction at a time. The ability to independently direct multiple weapons of blood over a wide area is overwhelmingly superior under those conditions. Especially considering that she can attack without having to worry about crossfire or accidentally hitting her allies, all of whom will also have guns anyway.

    "Honestly?" I say. "If you end up trying to retake ground, I don''t think there''s any super you want covering you more than her."

    And that''s a bad thing, because it means that''s what she will be doing. That or something comparably dangerous. I just have to hope I''ll find some way to be there with her.

    And so boot camp continues. On and on, day by day, we train and we learn and we are made into weapons. Weeks pass in a blur, and awkward fumbling faux-missions slowly transform into effective teamwork. Having a gun on hand starts to feel more natural than not. The people in the special training group, including Christine, catch up to us in physical prowess. The lanky girl I knew starts to pack on visible muscle as she heaves herself over obstacle courses and nearly vomits doing running drills. She only gets mad enough to completely disassemble the climbing wall once, which I think is admirable restraint. It probably went on her permanent record, though.

    Before I know it, the end starts approaching. Things wind down a little in the final week, as our duties move away from constant workouts and towards deep cleaning the barracks, preparing all our loaned gear for the next group, and of course getting ready for the graduation ceremony. After all the constant screaming and sweating, it''s surreal getting quietly fitted for a dress uniform. But then we have them, and the day arrives. We do our marches, we listen to a speech, and suddenly, we''re privates of the United States Army.

    It is exactly as unexciting as it sounds. And no, the uniforms are not comfortable.

    "When I call your name, I will inform you of your assignment. Private Abbot, Engineer Corps. More training for you. Private Anderson¡­"

    On and on it goes, though my assignment is a little¡­ weird.

    "Private Morgan, personal AIT. Somebody''ll be by to pick you up, Angelface."

    Advanced Individual Training. That''s pretty normal; all kinds of specializations are important in the Army. But personal Advanced Individual Training is a bit more intimidating because what the hell does that even mean? Advanced training that they''re going to give specifically and only to me? The other supers aren''t assigned to something that weird, they''re already being shoved into an infantry regiment.

    Still, there''s nothing I can do but stand where I''m told to stand. And sure enough, when the ceremony is complete and we''re all working through the process of where to go now, I end up standing alone in an empty room until Cross Country suddenly appears out of nowhere and holds out a hand.

    "Congratulations, Ms. Morgan. You have been promoted to Warrant Officer," he says.

    I blink.

    "S-sir? I haven''t even done anything," I manage.

    "I am aware. Your promotion is premature for internal reasons. Please take my hand."

    "Sir," I respond automatically, taking the hand. What the heck are ''internal reasons?'' The nauseating sensation of existing in two places at once knocks me out of my thoughts and the next thing I know I''m in another small room, this one with dark concrete walls and the windowless chill of a basement.

    "I do not outrank you, Ms. Morgan," Cross Country says. "There is no need to address me that way. Do keep in mind that everything you see within this building is strictly confidential and need-to-know. Discussing the contents or existence of this complex without authorization will result in criminal charges."

    Oh lord, do I not even get a day before shit hits the fan? My uniform feels tight around my body as the stress encourages my power to bulk up my musculature.

    "I understand," I say, and Cross Country gives me a nod before vanishing. I''m alone in the room now, and there''s nothing here but a chair. I sit down in it and wait.

    Oh I''m in a government blacksite, doot do deet dodo do dee do! I am fucked in this government blacksite, whoop whoop deep dodo, do dee do! I mean, the promotion is probably a good sign, right? If I was just here to be a research subject they wouldn''t go to the trouble of upping my salary first. Or, y''know, training me. Or giving me the gun that I''m still carrying at this very moment, though I only have the blanks we used for the ceremony so it''s kinda useless.

    This feels¡­ rushed. I''m not prepared for this, and it didn''t go through the usual protocols and channels. So the question is: what warrants all this urgency? What do they want from me?

    My head snaps towards the door the moment it makes a sound, opening to reveal four men: three of them fully armed and armored soldiers, and one of them a stick-thin nerdy-looking guy in a lab coat and jeans. He has large glasses perched on his small nose, the rims large enough to eclipse his eyebrows and start encroaching on his forehead.

    "Ah! Hello!" lab coat guy grins at me. "You''re the shapeshifter, yes? Welcome, welcome. Did Jeremiah give you the rundown?"

    Who? Oh, that''s Cross Country''s name, right.

    "He mostly just said that everything here is top secret," I answer. This guy''s not in a military uniform, so I can presumably talk to him like an actual human being. "I''m Lia Morgan, and I am apparently a Warrant Officer as of ten minutes ago. Despite having no officer training."

    "Eh, you''ll get it later if you need it. I got tired of waiting for you to jump through all the hoops the Army wants and pulled some strings. Come on, let me show you around. Although, to start: is it true you can perfectly copy alien biology?"

    Oh boy. I guess that''s why I''m here.

    "Yes, it is," I nod. "I can copy any biology my domain interacts with, and form custom alterations as needed."

    "Neat!" he says brightly while the soldiers behind him continue looming silently. "Do me."

    "Pardon?" I ask.

    "Go on, turn into me," he insists.

    Uh. Well, okay then. I reach my domain out and encounter one on the way there: a promise of retribution, thoroughly escalated and without mercy. I''m not sure if it''s the scientist''s, but I don''t think so. I''m pretty sure it''s one of the soldiers.

    I push into its space slowly and carefully, making sure not to seem aggressive. It''s a strong domain, stronger than mine, but I don''t need much penetration for my scan to work. I grab the scientist''s biological information and shift into it, at least in terms of what''s visible with my clothes on.

    The lab coat guy whistles, looking quite excited.

    "Alright, Ms. Morgan! May I call you Lia?"

    "Uh. Sure."

    "Fantastic! Well, come right this way, then. Oh, my name is Dr. Nicholas Bovary, but you can call me Nick. Fair''s fair!"

    "Sure, Nick," I agree easily, following him out of the cramped concrete room into a cramped concrete hallway. "So, uh, what exactly is this place?"

    "A research facility," he answers without answering anything. "We''re owned by the government. Obviously. I mean, what isn''t these days, am I right?"

    He laughs to himself as I awkwardly follow along, being led through hallway after twisting underground hallway.

    "The moment I heard about you, I knew I had to have you here, at least for a little while. I have high hopes for you, so please don''t disappoint! My running theory is that the aliens communicate through a complex pheromone network. I mean obviously they have a pheromone network, but I mean really communicate, orders and orders of magnitude more complicated than the eusocial species of Earth. Care to comment?"

    "Uh," I manage, taking a moment to think about it. "Well, it''s certainly possible."

    "Possible? Bah! I know it''s possible! You''ve lived it. Come on, work with me here. What''s an alien sensorium like? Please, please don''t be one of the stupid supers."

    I scowl. Stupid? This fucker¡­ ugh. Calm down and answer the question, Julietta.

    "I take the habits of forms I acquire when I take their bodies," I say. "So I''m often not intellectually aware of the minute details of how a body works and why it does what it does. I''m sure I could figure out the answer to questions like that, but I haven''t had much opportunity to investigate while training or fighting for my life. I think it''s entirely reasonable that they communicate through pheromones; their sense of smell is much more nuanced and powerful than ours, with a lot of directionality to it. But I''m not confident in claiming it for certain."

    Dr. Bovary bobs his head back and forth, as if weighing my answer.

    "Well, I suppose that''s fair," he says. "We''ll figure it out, one way or another. I already suspected you took alien habits based on the reports about your power, and language is certainly habitual. Can you speak foreign languages in other people''s bodies if they know them and you don''t?"

    "I don''t know," I admit.

    "Well, you''re going to learn," he says. "After all, you can turn into an Angel, right? If you can figure out how to communicate with the invaders, it stands to reason that you''d be able to command them, wouldn''t it?"

    "I¡­ don''t know," I answer again. He looks back and grins at me, then pulls out a keycard and opens a security door at the end of the hall. We step through, and within I see a massive room of thick glass cages, scientists and military personnel scurrying between them. Most of them are empty, but a few hold something squirming, resting, or trying to escape.

    Aliens. Living aliens. Stocky Raptors, thicker than the ones I know from the Chicago incursion. Smaller Wasps, streaks of their acid dripping uselessly down the glass walls. Heavier Behemoths, shorter and stronger, wrapped up so tightly that their legs can''t even move.

    "Well," Dr. Bovary says, "let''s find out, shall we?"

 32. I Know Nothing

    The shock and surprise running through me feels¡­ misplaced. Thinking about it for a moment, it''s only reasonable that the military would have captured a few aliens. It wouldn''t even be that hard. Someone like Commander could just walk up to one and walk back with it, but even without powers aliens are just¡­ organic beings. They can be disabled, knocked unconscious, maimed, tied up. Culturally, the aliens have an almost mythological air about them: unknown invaders from an unknown world slowly wiping out humanity has a good deal of fictional precedent, after all. But in reality, they''re just animals.

    I swallow, glancing over at a glass operating theater where a Raptor is being vivisected inside. They are just animals, right? God, I hope they''re just animals.

    "A lot to take in, isn''t it Ms. Morgan?" Dr. Bovary asks. "I didn''t take you for the squeamish type, though."

    I glance at him, the pleasant smile on his face static in that fake way of someone putting on a mask. The soldiers escorting us are tense. And just now Dr. Bovary asked permission to call me Lia but still referred to me with the professional distance of ''Ms. Morgan.'' Red flag, red flag, red flag. This is a test.

    Worse, I''m not sure what the right answer is. Obviously, they still aren''t one hundred percent certain that I''m human, and a human wouldn''t be feeling empathy for the monsters trying to wipe out our species right now. Right? Is that the problem here? I flick my many eyes around to take in more of what''s going on and oh my god that''s the problem here I''m living up to my moniker as Angelface like an absolute moron. I return to Lia standard and try to talk like nothing happened.

    "Not squeamish, it''s just like you said. A lot to take in at once," I tell him. Time to change the subject. "Do you speak any other languages, Nick?"

    He smiles.

    "I''m fairly competent in French," he answers, so I shapeshift back into him, brain and all.

    "Say something," I ask him.

    "Something," he answers with a smirk, but the actual noises coming out of his mouth sound more like ''cake L shows.''

    "Yeah, wow, I understood that," I say, frowning when I realize I''m still speaking in English. Come on, French, French, French. How do I say things in French? The brain knows, so follow the brain. "Testing, testing, one two thirty-four. Okay, yeah, here I go."

    God, what a weird experience. I can feel my body moving and speaking the things I intend to say, but every sound that comes out is a complete surprise. Oh geez, if I copy someone who doesn''t speak English, will I forget how¡­? Wait, no, of course I won''t. Raptors obviously don''t know how to speak English, but I''ve done it with a Raptor brain plenty of times. So whatever keeps my personality between shifts also keeps my skills, which¡­ makes a lot of sense. I guess I basically already knew that.

    "Well done, well done," Dr. Bovary smiles. "Perhaps this will be even easier than expected."

    "Perhaps it will," I admit. I suppose I did start to figure out how to speak Angel mid-battle, way back when. I wasn''t even trying to, but I still caught a lot of conversation. "Well, want to just give me the tour? We could go straight to the Angel stuff, but I''d kind of like to head around and pick up all the new forms you have access to. All of my alien bodies are from the same incursion right now, so I''d love to compare notes."

    "Oh? Sounds reasonable enough," Dr. Bovary grins. "Do you think the differences are significant?"

    "They could be," I say. "Alien colonies don''t work together much, right? So presumably, the Angel forms I have from Chicago won''t be able to order around worker bodies from other hives. I''d like to see what all the options are before we commit to too much testing."

    "Well, I suppose you''ll need to know your way around the place at some point or another, so it may as well be now," he shrugs. "Generally speaking though, I''m the type who prefers to jump right into things. The scientific process is all well and good, but the thing about war is that it tends to put people on a bit of a time limit. We just don''t know what that limit is."

    Three years. But of course, I don''t say that out loud.

    "I think the quick method in this instance would be just dumping me into the tank and seeing if I get attacked, so I''d rather have at least a little while to psych myself up for that."

    He laughs and starts leading me through the room, passing next to every tank that has an unfortunate occupant so I can brush against them with my domain. Fittingly enough, all of the alternate forms of the various creatures I pick up tended to have far shorter blades than the ones from Division. They also tend to be slower, bulkier, and stronger, with the exception of Raptors who always have an emphasis on speed. The Wasps in particular have nearly no crystalline formations at all, their acid glands and acid projection systems far more developed in contrast. It''s actually really uncomfortable to know that my biggest fears out of all the aliens are usually worse than the ones I''m used to encountering.

    As we walk, I subtly grow myself that classic alien sensorium I used to check the positions of all the monsters stalking us back in the incursion. To my surprise and concern, it seems primarily confused regarding where everything is. I can tell that aliens are around, but even when I''m right next to them, looking through the glass, whatever sense I used back in the incursion zone still yields an inexact position. I swap over to the new sensoriums I''m picking up from these new bodies and get more or less the same result.

    "Are these rooms airtight?" I ask.

    "They are, yes," Dr. Bovary confirms.

    "Then I guess it''s a pheromone system," I hum.

    "Oh? You''ve been figuring all that out already?" he asks. "I hadn''t even noticed you change."

    "It''s hidden under my hair, mostly," I admit. "It''s just alien noses and stuff. They have a bunch of them."

    "Around the circumference of the main body, yes," Dr. Bovary nods. "That''s so fascinating. I''ve been impressed with the degree to which you''ve been able to mix various features, but your ability to integrate neurological information is of particular interest to me. It''s such a shame that your medical providers couldn''t find a way to get a proper set of MRIs."

    Uh oh. Is he honestly disappointed or is he onto me?

    "Well, hopefully there''s not too much of a need to know exactly how I work. Powers are pretty crazy. As long as they can help me protect people, the how and why are kind of secondary."

    "You''re quite right, unfortunately," Dr. Bovary sighs. "I suppose we might never know."

    "I suppose not," I answer flatly. Topic change, topic change. "Do you have any food here? The more I eat, the better my power works."

    "Ah! Yes, your file mentions an increased metabolism. We do have meals available if you''d like to get a quick bite before we get started. Science should never be done on an empty stomach!"

    I manage to smile a little. God, what a dangerous weirdo.

    "I''d like that, yeah."

    The food in this underground black site turns out to be mushy, processed, and oversaturated with a single flavor, just the way I like it. I have decided that gravy gets to go on the list of foods I really, really like¡ªand yes, I understand that gravy isn''t really a food so much as something you put on food, but soaking everything in thick enough gravy that it all tastes the same is my new favorite way to consume basically any meat.

    "Huh," Dr. Bovary says, watching me eat. "You are really going at that Salisbury steak."

    "It''s really good!" I insist between bites.

    "See, that, more than anything else I''ve heard about you doing, makes me think you''re secretly an alien infiltrator," he says, and I freeze. "I can''t imagine any way you could think this food is good unless you''ve had nothing but regurgitated Queen spit for your entire life."

    "U-um," I sputter, desperately trying to think of something to say. Is it really that weird? How the heck am I supposed to play this off without bringing attention to the truth? No, wait, quit freaking out, Julietta. It was a joke. He was joking! "I''ve always had a pretty weird sense of taste, I guess. I like it when flavors and textures are simple and consistent."

    He blinks, and then suddenly busts out laughing like I''ve said the most hilarious thing possible. What? What did I do wrong?

    "Oh my god," he wheezes. "All that stuff in your file, all the abnormal emotional ranges and goal-obsessed outlooks and pathologically detached approaches to social interaction¡­ you''re not a damn spy, you''re just autistic!"

    "What!?" I bristle. "I''m not¡­"

    Wait. Wait! He''s handing me an excuse. If he thinks this explains everything, then just roll with it!

    "...I mean, I''ve never been diagnosed," I mutter, shoving another bite of food in my mouth. He laughs some more.

    "Oh man, that''s hilarious. Military incompetence at its finest, really. I mean, you''re obviously hiding things, but you''re even more obviously human. As strange as you are, the military needs to get over whatever moronic assumption they have that expects powered folks to be normal. Did you know that minority groups are substantially more likely to get powers than majority groups?"

    "Uh¡­ no, I didn''t," I admit. "Minority by what definition?"

    "Yes! Great question!" he grins, pointing at me excitedly. "If you view the term too narrowly you''ll still get some interesting data, of course. Race is the obvious one that got everyone looking in the first place: there are naturally more caucasians with powers than anything else in America, but per capita it''s Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and so on that gain powers most commonly. In other countries, on other continents, it''s the opposite¡ªthe exact race you are doesn''t matter so much as how common it is wherever you happen to live. That''s interesting, but when you start looking deeper it gets much more interesting. Religious minorities are more likely to get powers. Queer people are more likely to get powers. Neurodivergent people are more likely to get powers. People with physical disabilities are more likely to get powers. Fine, all that lines up, but then it starts getting weird. People who are exceptional at sports are more likely to get powers. People who dye their hair are more likely to get powers. People with substantial facial piercings are more likely to get powers! People who were dressed in bright clothing on the day of an incursion are more likely to get powers! Statistically common people still make up the majority of powered individuals, of course, but statistically uncommon people can often be up to twice as represented among powered populations compared to unpowered ones¡ªand a lot of those so-called common people can be tied to one of the stranger ''demographics'' that doesn''t fit the standard legal definition of a minority. But of course, we have far less data on those, so it''s a bit more difficult to study."

    I take another bite of food, chew, and swallow. I wonder why I haven''t heard of this before? I guess it makes perfect sense for the military to consider information on how people get powers to be strategically important. They want to maximize their chances of getting the right powers to the right people, after all. If the civilian population all starts dressing in bright colors and punching holes in their face to try and become superheroes, that becomes a lot more difficult to control.

    And the fact that it''s controllable is pretty important, isn''t it? That top-secret declaration I received when I got here definitely applies to this conversation.

    "You''re saying power selection is provably nonrandom," I eventually respond.

    "Randomness could still potentially be involved, but it''s not completely random, yes. There''s some sort of filtering system that prioritizes certain types of individuals over others."

    "I see," I answer, swallowing another bite. Hmm. I guess this probably isn''t dangerous information to share. "Personally? I think we''re chosen by something intelligent enough to have opinions."

    "Oh?" He prompts, leaning forward and resting an elbow on the table. "On what basis?"

    "Are you familiar with the falling dreams?" I ask. "Apparently they''re pretty common among people with powers."

    "I am," he nods.

    "The thing I fall towards talks to me," I explain, starting on my fourth helping of Salisbury steak. Dr. Bovary frowns.

    "What does it say?" he asks.

    "Not a whole lot," I answer. "It¡­ hurts me when it speaks. And it seems to care about my well-being, so it tends to stay quiet unless I start asking questions. I guess it''s possible that I''m just¡­ y''know, dreaming it all up, but it doesn''t feel that way. It feels like I''m talking to something on the level of a god."

    "And what does this god want?"

    "That," I admit, "I have no idea."

    "Hmm. Well, I''ve heard of similar anecdotes, but most people don''t report hearing voices during those dreams," Dr. Bovary hums. "It''s an instinctively compelling theory though, isn''t it? That there''s some divine intelligence handing out these abilities. That there''s some¡­ purpose to it all. Personally, I don''t find the idea very comforting."

    "I can''t say I find it comforting either," I answer. "I just can''t see any other possibility being more likely."

    He smiles and leans back in his chair.

    "Well, that''s not the mystery you''re here to solve today," he says. "If you''re all done stalling, I think it''s about time to throw you to the wolves, hmm? Or the Raptors, as the case may be."

    I sigh, but I stuff the rest of the Salisbury steak into my mouth and stand up, swallowing it all at once.

    "Alright, let''s do it," I agree. "It might take me a while to figure things out, though. Is there a procedure for this, or do I have permission to just fuck around and find out?"

    He chuckles.

    "There are safety protocols for entering and exiting the enclosures, of course, but you know your powers best," he says. "I''m quite curious to see what you come up with."

    I nod in acknowledgement. One way or another, I''ll get him some satisfying information. And if I manage to control the aliens, all the better.

    "I''ll need somewhere to undress and put my things."

    We head out of the mess hall and before I know it I''m walking out of a bathroom, smooth as a barbie doll and wearing nothing but octopus skin. I''m getting better and better at mimicking real clothing, but it still doesn''t take more than a dedicated squint to figure out it''s fused with the rest of my body. Not the biggest deal in the world, though; the whole charade is for everyone else''s comfort, a value that has somehow found itself falling down my priority list as of late. Never thought I''d see the day, honestly.

    Dr. Bovary directs me to an enclosure with a Raptor he claims is ''relatively nonviolent'' and shoves me into the airlock-style doorway to where they keep it. With my domain I can feel its body through the walls, and most Raptors back in Chicago were clones of each other, so why not try copying it completely? I make the change, the door in front of me opens, and I step inside.

    My broodmate is there, and they turn to face me with shock and confusion radiating off of their body. All of that knowledge hits me at once, and I know it''s the brain giving me those thoughts but it''s still a bit of a surprise to have it fill me so suddenly. I suppose I''m a lot more used to sinking into the habits of my body than I was back in the incursion zone. Panic had a tendency to detach me from my form, even when I couldn''t feel that panic in the body of a Raptor. I didn''t really have the context at the time, but compared to now my transformations in the incursion zone almost felt more like piloting a body than actually being it.

    The sensations were all there. The influence was all there. But I was going out of my way to avoid it, to keep what I thought was me separate from the form I inhabited. I was very, very frightened of what it would mean to no longer have a brain to call my own. But I''m not scared of that anymore. I don''t have an answer to most of the questions that brought me panic, but I have accepted that I don''t need an answer. There are more important things to worry about than whatever made-up idea of ''me'' I happened to be obsessed with at the time.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    I think, therefore I am. I remember, therefore I am Julietta. That''s all I need. So I do my best to sink into the instincts of this bulky Raptor form and listen.

    My broodmate is concerned and confused about my presence. My broodmate is concerned and confused about my silence. The following queries are outstanding: what is my status, what is my task, what information can be shared about recent events outside the current location?

    My body, I realize, attempts to answer the moment it perceives the questions. I try to cut that instinct but my brain doesn''t know how; there is no known method of not responding to a query. But that''s stupid and absurd, so I ignore the brain for a moment and watch the body, feeling out the movements and actions my flesh takes that it wasn''t attempting before. At first, I find nothing. Then, I realize it''s because the main thing I do to communicate is breathe.

    Aliens have a surprisingly redundant respiratory system. Rather than a single centralized pair of lungs, airways throughout the body can expand and contract to create airflow, directing it in a number of different directions based on the alien''s current needs. Throughout these passageways, there are a complex mix of scent-producing glands in the outflow paths and scent-detecting organs on the inflow paths. Each is hyperspecialized to make out extreme degrees of precision specifically within the realm of the various chemicals the glands can produce. And all of it¡ªthe entire communication structure of the invaders¡ªis tied to the autonomic nervous system. Which is to say, they have no conscious control over what they are and are not communicating.

    Well. I guess that''s not exactly true. The aliens control their thoughts, it''s merely the case that the aliens automatically communicate whatever happens to be on their mind. It is impossible to have private musings, and consequently the aliens need to be extremely task-oriented in order to not be perpetually flooding the air with scent patterns about every little thing that comes to mind. They have to be able to effectively turn their individuality off when the situation calls for it. In the incursion zone, it didn''t feel like the Raptors were saying or thinking much of anything other than how best to coordinate with each other to accomplish the task, and that''s because they weren''t. It was not, however, because they couldn''t.

    The following queries remain outstanding: what is my status, what is my task, what information can be shared about recent events outside the current location? My broodmate reemphasizes their confusion. My broodmate reemphasizes their concern. I am requested to acknowledge in order to confirm my functionality.

    I direct my brain to think the following thoughts, and therefore communicate the following ideas: my status is nominal. I have no outstanding task. I am minimally capable of sharing information about recent events. I express sympathy for causing my broodmate to experience concern. Anything else my body attempts to communicate is manually strangled.

    My broodmate acknowledges my responses and my sympathy. My broodmate expresses relief with my answers, but also new concerns. No, there''s a better way to think about this communication. I''m still too detached. What happens is that the Raptor across from me says: I''m so glad to see you. Are you sure you''re alright?

    I respond with acknowledgment, uncertainty, and concern over both their circumstances and my own. No, wait. Again, there''s a better way to think about that.

    No, I answer. I''m a little shaken.

    After all, I''m reeling a bit from the revelation that every single alien is absolutely, definitely a person, and I can have conversations with them. I shift my weight, clenching my tail-mouth in distress. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Don''t start caring, Julietta. You can''t afford to start caring. They''re wiping out humanity!

    Why are they wiping out humanity?

    How did you get here? the Raptor asks.

    I don''t know, I lie, despite my brain''s insistence that this is not possible. How did you get here?

    I journeyed with our other broodmates and those of our shared mother who also accepted weight over words. But as the Angels of Nothing sought haven, the natives descended. I have been trapped here ever since.

    I can''t help it. My body ripples a little as the other Raptor says ''Angels of Nothing.'' It has to be a coincidence, right? I mean, ''nothing'' is the only translation that makes sense, but it''s not actually the word ''nothing.'' It was more¡­ philosophical. Conceptual. It didn''t describe an actual absence of matter so much as the idea of an absence. A platonic nothingness, inconceivable by nature.

    I don''t get it yet, but I will.

    What are the Angels of Nothing? I ask.

    My broodmate experiences concern. My broodmate suspects that I am not their broodmate. My broodmate immediately answers my question regardless, because the act of asking makes one think about an answer.

    We are chosen, they insist. Can you not feel it? They tell us not to believe but there is no room for doubt. We are chosen.

    Chosen by what? I ask.

    The God of Nothing, the Raptor says, anger and suspicion leaking into the air. A true broodmate of mine would know this. You are an imposter. Reveal yourself, chosen of the conquered gods.

    Anger is bad. I should deescalate the anger. But how? I mean, this is an alien, so I have no idea if any of my conversational skills survive the culture gap here, but I have to give it a shot. This is a zealot. Appeal to their understanding of the world, however mad, and they will be pleased.

    I am not your broodmate, I confirm. I have come seeking information. I wish to understand the God of Nothing.

    My broodmate¡ªwho isn''t my broodmate¡ªis confused and awed by my ability to contradict my own prior claims. Still, they answer.

    Everything you know of the conquered gods may be used to prove the truth of Nothing.

    I know nothing of the conquered gods, I answer bluntly.

    Unlike every prior answer, it takes a few moments for the Raptor to respond. This cannot be an intentional pause; therefore, their thoughts simply stalled for the entire duration of the delay.

    How? they ask.

    I am ignorant of many things, I communicate. It is my task to learn them. Please, tell me.

    My hydraulic heart thunders in my body as I wait for the response. My broodmate who isn''t my broodmate declares me insane. Still, they answer.

    The God of Nothing grants nothing, they say. Yet the God of Nothing chooses all. You have been chosen by Nothing, yet you have been chosen by something, too. Do you not hold the power of a lesser god?

    Well. For some reason I feel extremely offended at the idea of being chosen by a ''lesser god,'' but yes I suppose that is my running theory. I confirm my broodmate''s (who still isn''t my broodmate) suspicion, quickly shapeshifting an Angel tentacle and then returning to normal. Er. I mean, returning to copying their body. The Raptor acknowledges me, then starts to explain.

    Reciprocation. Legion. Division. Blasphemy. Perfection. Silhouette. Bliss. Possibility. Contradiction. Failure. These are the conquered gods, devoured by Nothing. Still, they choose champions. Still, they yearn to spread their power. Their chosen act as though Nothing has not bested them. As though they do not feel the greater weight. But it is here, proven by every step we take. Even the Queens fall. How do you not know this?

    I don''t answer, trying to process all of that at once.

    How do you not answer!?

    What are Queens? I ask. Which Queen was yours?

    I have no Queen! the Raptor silently roars. I have forsaken her, forsaken all who demand I do not think the truth! Their power has filled them with madness, but it is irrelevant. All falls to Nothing.

    I''m not sure I would describe the emotion filling the air as ''spite.'' I don''t think Raptors are equipped for that in quite the same way as humans, or even in the same way as the Angel who cursed me. But it feels as though this Raptor has chosen an entirely practical primary objective¡­ and filled its secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, and denary objectives entirely with ways to bring its tormentors pain.

    ALL falls to Nothing. Even gods.

    What is this? What is any of this? Is it the end of the world that Emily predicted? A tap on the glass distracts me from my musings on annihilation, and I spot Dr. Bovary''s smiling face.

    "Hey!" he says, his voice muffled behind the barrier. "How''s it going in there? Ready to take an Angel form?"

    Right. That. I guess that''s still technically something I''m supposed to be doing, isn''t it? I doubt it''s going to work, but I make the shift anyway, assuming the body of the Angel I killed. No longer do I see my broodmate across from me. Now, I see the tool of someone else''s Queen. The Raptor takes a step back, an instinctive reverence moving it for a moment before its rage doubles.

    You seek to flaunt your ascension to me!? Your servitude to a dead power!? The Raptor demands.

    Well, here goes nothing. Task designation: move away from my position. Step back further.

    The Raptor steps forward, projecting defiance from every motion. It will not listen to me. It has chosen itself as its master. It is capable of that, no matter how revolting that instinctively feels to an Angel''s brain.

    A different tactic, then.

    You could leave this place, I tell the Raptor. If you obey me.

    The God of Nothing chooses all. None shall obey any other as their master.

    Anger bubbles inside of me, but I push it down. Yeah, this isn''t how it works. This isn''t how any of it works. My assumptions about the aliens are all wrong. I didn''t want this answer to be right.

    Catching Dr. Bovary''s eye, I motion for him to let me out. The first part of the airlock doors open.

    Then I will leave you here, I respond. I appreciate the knowledge you have shared.

    I turn to depart, but as I cross the threshold I smell an intent to attack behind me. Still in the Angel''s body, I do not turn to intercept the lunging Raptor. Forward and backward are relative, and it is a simple manner to bring one tentacle up to shove aside the Raptor''s meager talons and a second to wrap around its body, preventing it from finding purchase on the ground. Enraged that a lowly worker would assault me, I surge away from the door with it in my clutches, slamming it against the glass of the back wall.

    The God of Nothing grants nothing, my emotions froth, pouring out of me without prompting from my conscious mind. If your god has conquered mine, why do I so easily conquer you? You speak of obvious evidence, as plain as the ground, and this is mine. THIS is what it means to be Chosen. If your god can combat it, I challenge it to try.

    The Raptor struggles, cursing me, but I hold it steady in an unyielding grip. This mindless fool. How could it¡­ no, wait, what the fuck am I even doing!? Okay. Alright. I guess this body has strong opinions about religion. I pull back from the habits a little, centering myself as best I can. Even with that, I''m still pissed and I barely have any idea what I''m talking about! Calm down, Julietta. Calm down!

    I''m going to release you now, I say. If you attack me again, I will make you suffer for it.

    I immediately smell the agreement and assent. The violence is over. I drop the Raptor, return to the airlock, and when the door closes behind me I shift back into a humanoid form, octopus skin on my body and octopus tentacles sprouting from my head, writhing anxiously as I attempt to burn off some of the panic now welling inside of me. The second door opens.

    "Ms. Morgan?" Dr. Bovary asks. "How are you feeling?"

    "¡­Fine," I answer, thumb and forefinger pinching my chin as I quickly try to decide how much of everything that just happened I should share.

    "I take it that controlling the Raptor didn''t work?" he asks.

    "It did not," I confirm. "I don''t think it can work, except maybe as a temporary measure, and even then I would have to have an Angel body that matches the Raptor''s faction."

    "Faction, you say?"

    "Yeah. Where did you find this particular Raptor?"

    Dr. Bovary blinks at the non-sequitur, but doesn''t take long to recover.

    "We found a sizable batch of them wandering around outside the radius of a Queen," he explains. "Twenty Raptors, a few Behemoths, and half a dozen Wasps. No Angels with them. Command decided they would be relatively easy to capture, and now here they are."

    I nod slowly. That makes sense. These aliens are, in effect, heretics. They deny the power and rulership of Angels and Queens. Therefore, my guess is that they fled their home due to religious discrimination. Which is an absolutely wild thing to think about, but I need to focus here. The question is whether or not it''s something I should share.

    Aliens are people. They work and act like a hive mind, but they are actually comprised of individuals. I''m not sure of all the details, but that much is clear. This could be strategically significant information. It''s certainly something that the military would want to know. Hell, it might become possible to negotiate with alien hives due to my ability to communicate with them, and that would be the best-case scenario. The potential benefits of revealing this are pretty high.

    But what about the potential downsides? What if things don''t go well? And let''s be honest here: they won''t. The first option is that I could claim that aliens are people and simply not be believed. No one can verify that other than me, after all, not unless the Raptors start communicating in writing or performing complex math. There''s no way in hell humanity decodes the alien pheromone language in a reasonable amount of time, and if whatever weird truth-telling powers the military has access to could figure this stuff out, the brass would already know. They have no compelling reason to believe me other than my word, so there''s a good chance I just get deemed crazy and ignored. Not the best mark on my record.

    Worse, however, is what happens if they do believe me. When I first met Commander, she seemed incredulous at the idea that I was an alien infiltrator simply because the idea that aliens could do something like that was ridiculous. If I prove that they can, I''m painting a huge target on my back. I''m demonstrating that I''m entirely capable of being what they fear me to be most. There''s no way that doesn''t come back to bite me somehow.

    Besides, if I''m the only one who can talk to aliens, I''m the only one who can potentially negotiate with them regardless of whether or not the military knows about it. Considering the whole omnicide thing they have going on, I''d bet on the aliens not being interested in a ceasefire anyway! I can just wait until I have an opportunity to see if peace is even possible before taking the risk.

    "Best I could tell, the group was cast out from their Queen. The lack of support was entirely intentional. Maybe they were deemed defective or something," I lie carefully. Whatever I tell them has to be very close to the truth, because they could have access to information that proves the lie if I stray too far. The more my claims match reality (but of course with the idea of alien sapience removed) the less likely it becomes that I can make a mistake.

    "Interesting," Dr. Bovary muses. "These kinds of breakaways from a Queen''s territory aren''t common, but they''re far from unheard of, either. Perhaps they were expanding to establish a new hive. We still have no idea what process creates new Queens. We''ve yet to see one be created on Earth."

    "As unfortunate as that is in terms of scientific understanding, I feel like that''s a pretty good thing overall," I tell him. He laughs.

    "I can''t argue with that, I suppose," he agrees. "Though of course, it''s worth noting that while we don''t know about new Queens being created on Earth, that doesn''t mean there haven''t been any. The vast majority of alien forces live in the ocean, after all. That''s where most incursions occur."

    "Yeah," I acknowledge. "Anyway, I don''t think my powers will be very effective at manipulating enemy forces. They use a pheromone system, like you suspected, but there are a lot of redundancies to protect from the possibility of other hives manipulating it. I could probably confuse a handful of nearby forces for a little while, but the moment an enemy Angel contradicts my orders the game is probably up. Useful in a pinch, but not the best long-term strategy."

    "And you would need an Angel of the relevant faction, you said," Dr. Bovary prompts.

    "Yeah, like an Angel from Chicago might work on the aliens from Chicago, but it won''t work on the aliens from Denver. At least, it certainly wasn''t working here."

    "I see," Dr. Bovary frowns. "A disappointing answer, but not an unexpected one. Still, the confirmation that we can disrupt the alien communication network through gas-based weaponry or even particularly strong smells is good to know. Mustard gas and the like is certainly effective, but nobody likes a weapon that can redirect itself back on your own troops after a bad gust of wind. By any chance could you produce some samples of the scent compounds the aliens use in large enough quantities for a detailed analysis? If we can find a way to produce the compounds, we could flood an area with gas harmless to humans but extremely confusing to the enemy. Chemical synthesis on that scale is unlikely to be efficient for organic compounds like that, but it''s worth having some samples."

    "Um, yeah, I could do that," I confirm, but at this point I''ve mostly stopped listening. I managed to pass the lie, so now I have all the other shit to worry about. There are too many other things on my mind, too many fears and concerns.

    They''re people. Aliens are people. They have religious schisms, for fuck''s sake. I shouldn''t care, though, right? I shouldn''t. They''re killing us, so I have to be able to kill them without hesitation. But whenever I try to make myself believe that, all I can think about is the vivisection still happening a few rooms over. I wonder what a silent scream smells like.

    "Absolutely wonderful!" Dr. Bovary smiles, and my tentacles freeze mid-writhe. "We only have you here for a few days, but I do intend to get my time''s worth even if our main objective hasn''t panned out. I''m very curious as to the exact mechanics of your ability."

    "Well, I''m at your disposal, I suppose," I mutter.

    So. There''s a god of Nothing, supposedly apart from all the other gods and superior to them according to this one random alien religious sect that worships it. I could maybe dismiss that if not for In-Joke and their ''Defenders of Nothing.'' They said it''s funny if I get the joke, but I have to say, I absolutely do not get the joke. I am terrified by the joke. Does this god of Nothing end the world? Why does In-Joke want to defend it!? I need to find excuses to talk with more aliens. I''m so painfully ignorant.

    "You are indeed!" Dr. Bovary beams. "Your ability to assume alien forms and provide direct verbal feedback should dramatically accelerate some of our investigations here. As will your reportedly prodigious regeneration capacity!"

    Is the god I feel in my dreams the God of Nothing, or one of the lesser gods? Wait. Back up. What did Dr. Bovary just say? I didn''t like the sound of that.

    "Could you perhaps explain to me why regeneration is relevant here?" I ask as casually as I can muster.

    "To help us better map alien internal structures, of course," he explains easily. "Cadavers are all well and good, but sometimes you just need to peel something open while it''s moving to properly see what makes it tick."

    Oh. Oh boy. Well, at least all the other aliens trapped here won''t be lonely on the vivisection table.

    "...Well, like I said, I''m not squeamish," I hedge. "And I imagine you have something to numb the pain?"

    "Ha!" he barks. "Are you kidding me? Of course we don''t have that. Who the hell would fund me if I said I was trying to make an anesthetic for aliens?"

    You know what? Yeah. I can''t even say I''m surprised.

    "You''ll have to deal with me doing it myself, then, which will involve crippling parts of my nerve structures," I tell him frankly.

    "Could I perhaps convince you to¡ª"

    "No," I insist.

    He pouts, but he doesn''t seem terribly put out. If anything, he seems pretty excited. It takes me a moment to figure out why, which is a little embarrassing. Most people would have just said ''no'' to the entire vivisection, wouldn''t they?

    I probably should have tried that, but I didn''t want to be seen as difficult.

 33. Thief of Torn Wings

    "How are you doing there, Lia? Do let me know if you need a break."

    "I''m fine," I grunt, doing my best to ignore the human''s hands rummaging around my stomach. I can turn my nerves off, but I can''t stop my power from constantly updating me on what''s going on.

    "It would really be okay to take five! You''re rather unique in that way. Seal yourself up, walk around, have a couple snacks, then peel yourself back open and we pick up right where we left off."

    "I''d really rather just get this over with," I manage.

    "Well, suit yourself! Can I keep some of these parts, by the way?"

    "Knock yourself out."

    Yep, there he goes stealing my organs. God, this is probably the weirdest thing I''ve ever done, and I have a pretty high bar for that nowadays. This whole vivisection thing is weirdly¡­ I don''t know. It''s kind of like going to the dentist. Some guy is spending the better part of an hour uncomfortably deep in awkward parts of my body and absolutely, completely refusing to just shut the fuck up.

    "They maintain cohesion when separated from your domain, then? Fascinating. While the insights into extraterrestrial biology are exceptionally useful, I admit I find research into powers more stimulating these days. They seem inexorably tied together, don''t you think?"

    "Their bodies seem intelligently designed," I agree. "A power could be the reason why."

    "Oh, I''m so glad you understand. Yes, that''s one theory I''ve considered, though there are a few holes in it. If I disconnect your heart, do you think you could regrow it fast enough?"

    "Go for it. I can oxygenate my brain manually if I need to."

    "Oh that is fascinating," he says, cutting open my major arteries and letting the fluid spill out all over my other organs. Yuck. "Anyway, powers don''t tend to repeat themselves. There are certainly many similar powers, as well as powers that achieve the same basic ends through different means, but there has yet to be a recorded instance of two powers being exactly the same, among both Angels and humans. So if it is a power that creates alien biological structures, it would most likely need to be a single Angel or Queen designing them. But that doesn''t make sense. Each Queen seems to have their own unique variations on the basic designs."

    Removed entirely from the rest of my body, I can still feel my heart trying weakly to beat as the pressure rapidly drains out of it. The circulatory fluid that carries oxygen throughout the body is distinct and separate from the hydraulic fluid that powers my body''s movements, and feeling them drip out and mix together reminds me somewhat of peeing in the toilet and having the water splash back up on my ass.

    "It could be a singular Queen or Angel that resides in their home dimension," I point out. "After the designs are made, the Queen need only produce them. No power required."

    "I thought of that. Two reasons I find it uncompelling: one, alien hives, by and large, do not cooperate with each other."

    Wait, what?

    "They don''t?" I ask.

    "Most of them don''t! Some of them do, but aliens that wander into the range of a different hive''s Queen tend to get shredded. We''ve been able to witness countless fights between Angels as well, though only from a distance. They tend to prefer to fight us if it''s an option, but most hives nowadays are surrounded by other hives."

    That''s¡­ disappointing. I guess speaking their language probably isn''t going to be enough to get a ceasefire. Not that I thought it would, but a girl can dream if she''s feeling foolish enough.

    "What''s the other reason?" I ask.

    "Simple. All Angels are unique, and there have been multiple Angels created and birthed on Earth."

    Huh. I didn''t know that. I guess the military doesn''t really spread that info around. It wouldn''t do anything but scare people. It makes sense, though.

    "So the Queens themselves must have the ability to create the unique bodies of Angels," I conclude. "Either innately or via similar power expressions."

    "That''s my belief," Dr. Bovary nods, shoving one of my kidneys to the side to get a better view of my intestines. "The question is when do they do this, and why."

    "What do you mean?" I ask.

    "Think about it," he says. "Only Angels have powers. Every Angel is custom-made. So are Queens capable of manufacturing more Angels¡ªand therefore more powers¡ªat will? You''d think there would be more of them if so, but each Queen generally has only half a dozen to a dozen of them. It''s possible that they take an enormous amount of resources to create, but the theory doesn''t sit right with me. Again, what determines who gets powers? As far as we know it is a matter of individuality¡ªof breaking the established norms of your culture. And aliens are all clones of the same few templates¡­ except for Angels."

    "You think they''re made to look the way they are in order to make them more likely to gain powers," I conclude. "That the Angel''s body is made first, and then they are granted powers afterwards."

    "Right. And perhaps through instinct, perhaps through reason, the aliens may have determined that having more than one Angel ''in the queue,'' so to speak, makes both of them less likely to be empowered. Because they''re less unique."

    "Huh," I manage. "Doesn''t sound like a very testable theory."

    "To my great chagrin it is not, at least with our current capabilities and resources. Could you remove this bit, please?"

    I obediently disappear an essential part of my anatomy and politely ask my body to keep working anyway. It obliges.

    "So this part of the skeleton here protects the brain. Are you absolutely certain I can''t convince you to¡ª"

    "No," I cut him off immediately. "No vivisecting my brain."

    "Surely just a bit of exposure to open air wouldn''t harm it," Dr. Bovary insists.

    "Maybe, but it''s comments like that that have me suspecting my safety isn''t your first priority in this situation," I deadpan.

    "I just think you''re being needlessly overcautious about this," Dr Bovary sulks. "If you can manually oxygenate your brain after getting your heart removed, then you can surely withstand a few pokes and prods."

    Honestly, I probably could, and I''m even a bit curious to find out. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no desire to show the mad doctor the alien-human hybrid brain I''ve whipped up to control a Behemoth''s body with a human respiratory system so I can speak. I barely even know how it works, and I''m the one using it to think. Maybe.

    "Do not expose my brain to open air," I insist simply. "This is non-negotiable. Quit whining about it."

    "Pfft! I don''t whine!" Dr. Bovary whines, shifting his focus over to my humanoid lungs. "Fine. Onto the other fun part, then."

    "You do realize how deeply concerning it is to hear you talking about the ''fun part'' while inside my chest, right?"

    "Come now, Lia! I thought you said you weren''t squeamish! Now, let''s see here¡­ oh, this is interesting."

    He starts poking and prodding at the area of my flesh where human biology merges with the alien. I am somewhat proud of it, I suppose. The two are very different on a cellular level, and while I have never had much difficulty merging them, the fact that it is a fully unique design means that there is constant room for iteration and improvement. The overlapping lattice structure I initially used has been refined into a much more complex weave of interconnected flesh. I''ve also had to modify my entire human circulatory system to accept alien blood, which in turn necessitates a modification of effectively every cell in my entire body. The end result is dramatically more durable than it used to be, and devoid of many of the conflicts inherently present between the two types of life.

    Arguably, my human cells are now just alien cells modified to look and feel human, but in other bodies the reverse is often true. When I put alien sensory organs on my human body, for example, I need them to work with human blood if I don''t want to add an entire second circulatory system to compensate for their needs. Which I can do, and used to do, but it was grossly inefficient for numerous obvious reasons.

    "It took a lot to get it working as well as it does," I admit honestly. "My power guides me through a lot of the shapeshifting process, but as time goes on more and more of it has become purposeful. It''s a fun thing to optimize."

    "Yes, I imagine so!" Dr. Bovary agrees. "That''s usually the case with you superpowered types. I''m not sure I''ve ever met one of you who didn''t enjoy their powers. I''m sure it need not be said, but this is somewhat statistically suspicious."

    I mean, I feel like I know people who hate their powers. Maria certainly wasn''t happy with hers¡­ though I guess that was just Blue Maria? The others all seemed to like it, but maybe they were just created by the power? But also maybe not? They all seemed to be part of the ''real Maria,'' so I guess maybe I shouldn''t count that. But Emily! Emily hates her powers, they cause her nothing but grief. At least, that''s my interpretation, but it''s not like she ever tries to stop using them. She totally could if she wanted to, and I guess not wanting to stop using them arguably counts as liking them, and I''ve never heard her complain about her powers outside of the bad things that happened to her because of them. ¡­Alright, that''s a maybe. But Christine! Christine hates having powers! ¡­Pretty much entirely because she gets exploited for having them, and not because of any part of the power itself, which she does seem to occasionally have fun with. Hmm.

    "I guess that is weird," I admit. "I suppose that''s another point towards my supernatural intelligent power-granting entity theory, though."

    "Yes, yes, and a half-dozen other theories," Dr. Bovary dismisses. "I''m even somewhat inclined to agree with your theory, though I take issue with the label of ''supernatural.''"

    "Because powers are real, observable, and studiable, and therefore they are just regular natural?" I ask.

    "Precisely!" he beams. "The only difference between something magical and something scientific is whether or not you can do science on it. And I, my dear, am doing all of the science on it."

    I chuckle at that, which turns out to be a big mistake while there is a man currently poking at my lungs, but oh well. This is easily the least unpleasant vivisection without anesthetic I''ve ever had. And the most, technically, but for some reason I''m more inclined to think optimistically when most of my guts are sitting on a table. I guess I''m just a chest-cavity-half-full kind of girl.

    Honestly? As weird as it is, this is almost fun. Yeah, it''s a little dehumanizing, and yeah, it''s not very comfortable, and yeah, the company could be better, but I get to use my powers like a complete fucking freak and nobody''s upset about it. On the contrary, Dr. Bovary is downright ecstatic.

    "Okay, hold right there until I say you can go. We''re gonna capture one of these shifts under the electron microscope."

    I keep the strip of human flesh I extruded for this purpose still as he sets everything up.

    "Ready? Three, two, one, go!"

    I slowly shift the flesh from human cells to alien cells, making a note of trying to keep a careful eye on the process from my end as well. It''s a lot more involved than any other kind of shapeshifting: a lot of the time, I don''t even need to mess too much with the mass in my storage because I can just repurpose whatever mass is already part of my current body. But the alien and human cells feel like they have dramatically different chemical compositions, so I am not moving my current body around so much as removing the current body entirely and adding in new material at the same rate. From the outside, it looks like my flesh is shifting, but in reality, it''s being replaced.

    That''s kind of cool, but also really really concerning. I can''t even hide behind the Ship of Theseus like a normal transhumanist. I have to come to terms with this shit all at once. I am, somehow, Julietta, despite the fact that no part of my body ever existed as part of my original body. Am I going to have to start believing in souls? I know I literally talk to a god sometimes, but I''ll be really annoyed if I have to start believing in souls.

    Dr. Bovary runs me through new tests for hours, but boot camp has gotten me plenty used to having to spend all day doing stupid and often painful things. The next couple of days go about the same, and while I often find myself staring at the trapped aliens, Dr. Bovary doesn''t offer to let me speak with one again and I don''t ask. The conditions here are inhumane, but it''s not like anything I do or say could improve that. The aliens are violent, genocidal monsters. The fact that they are also people doesn''t change that. So why should I care? I don''t want to care.

    Thankfully, the mad doctor has apparently only requisitioned my services for three days, and when that time is up I get escorted back to the waiting room where Cross Country presumably will pick me up when his schedule permits. Rather than leave after dropping me off, though, Dr. Bovary steps into the room with me.

    "I just want to say, Lia, that it has been delightful having you these past few days," he says. "Our brain disagreements notwithstanding, you have been more helpful and cooperative than I had ever dared hope for, and even a lovely conversation partner to boot."

    I squint at him. Is he coming on to me? You know what, I''m just going to pretend I don''t notice. I don''t need this right now.

    "Just doing my job, Nick," I answer neutrally. "We''re all on the same team, right?"

    "Quite right, quite right indeed," he nods happily. "Though to that end, as a show of my appreciation, I''d love to know if there''s anything I can do to help you."

    What''s his angle here?

    "I appreciate that," I nod. "It''s really not necessary, though."

    "I insist!"

    Dude, why do you have to be so annoying about this? Just take the hint. I hate asking people for favors. A lot. Even if this is a genuine offer, I really don''t want to take it.

    "I can''t think of anything I would ask for," I tell him.

    Dr. Bovary sighs, giving me a slightly condescending smirk.

    "Well, I know that''s a lie," he says. "You''re more than smart enough to think of something. You''re quite the interesting young woman. I don''t think I''ve ever met someone so¡­ obediently recalcitrant. And the cynicism! Why, were I a more empathetic man it would pain me to see it in someone so young."

    "¡­Where are you going with this?" I ask, not particularly enjoying the deconstruction of my character.

    "I get the feeling that you don''t like owing people things," Dr. Bovary says. "I''m exactly the same way. And that is why I urge you to reconsider declining my offer. You know I pulled a few strings to get you here. I can certainly pull some more on your way out, if you feel so inclined. It''s an honest offer, Lia. We''re all on the same team, right?"

    I carefully study his expression, making a conscious effort to reevaluate my opinion of him. I guess I have been prone to cynicism for my entire life, but lately it seems to have gotten extra bad. How could it not? But I need to remember that, despite how it feels, not everyone is out to get me. Most people are, at worst, indifferent to the ways their actions might hurt me. Outright malice is uncommon, and while genuine altruism is too it''s probably more common. I don''t even have to imagine Dr. Bovary as perfectly altruistic to believe his offer is genuine. It could be tit for tat, like he said, or he could be hoping to work with me again in the future. Maybe even butter me up enough to open my skull. I''m only shooting myself in the foot by not taking his offer. I take a deep breath and start to think.

    "¡­I guess we''ll start with pipe dreams and work down," I hum. "I''d like to become Anastasia Patrova''s legal guardian."

    It would, among other things, give me a significant degree of control over which deployments they force her into. She''s nine years old, so legally she can''t really consent to stuff¡ªher guardian has to do that for her. Unfortunately, her guardian is currently the government, and the government is currently the military. They basically don''t have any checks or balances on how they decide to use underage orphans.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    "You mean Private Anastasia Patrova, don''t you?" Dr. Bovary frowns. "Autohemokinesis, altered biology. RD¡­ twelve, if I recall correctly, with a relatively low penetration requirement. No, I don''t think I could get you to be her legal guardian. A lot of problems with that. The main one is that you can''t adopt if you aren''t in a position to raise a child¡ªthe fact that you won''t be able to raise her anyway because the military will be using her is irrelevant. You need a house, a non-combat job, and enough income to support a child. I could certainly grease the wheels at Social Services, but not that much."

    Okay. Unfortunate, but I kind of expected that.

    "Second choice then," I say. "There''s an unpowered girl I know, Emily Hewitt. I escaped the incursion zone with her. I''ve been trying to get my parents to get her a combat exemption, but I have no idea how that''s going to work out so I would prefer a backup plan. And she does have a place to live, and presumably a job."

    Dr. Bovary whistles.

    "You certainly don''t ask for cheap favors, do you?" he says. "I can''t do the combat exemption, but I can help your girl get adopted if Ms. Hewitt manages to get one. And while I''m at it, I''ll make sure you and the kid end up in the same platoon out on the field. So you can keep an eye on her."

    Oh shit, really? God, I''ve been trying not to think about what I would do if they tried to keep the two of us apart. I should have asked for this myself! Stupid, stupid, stupid. But whatever, we got it.

    "That would be a huge relief," I tell him honestly. "Thank you."

    "Of course, Lia," he smiles. "I''d best go make those preparations, then. Have fun storming the castle!"

    Oh hey, I''ve actually seen that movie. Max loved the hell out of it. ¡­And now he''s alien food.

    "I''ll do my best," I nod. "Thanks again."

    He waves and departs, leaving me pleasantly relieved and surprised. I''m just going to decide to assume he''s not into me because I don''t want to ruin this for myself. I mean, he clearly wants to get inside me, but probably not in that way.

    Oh my god Peter can never know about any of this. He and Dr. Bovary must never meet.

    A blink later, Cross County appears. He doesn''t even say anything, he just holds out his hand and I grasp it. One disorienting transition later, and I am somewhere else. No idea where. The moment I let go of Cross Country''s hand he just disappears again, so I guess I have to find someone else to ask.

    Man, I think the most impressive thing about that guy is that I''ve never seen him like, look at a list or something. He just goes. Does he have his entire itinerary memorized for the day? Or does he just occasionally teleport somewhere private to pull out his phone and open up the notes app? They must have some way to contact him in an emergency, or even for urgent non-emergencies. I remember Agnus Dei calling someone up to get him to move me on short notice, but she''s Agnus fucking Dei so I don''t know how standard that sort of thing is.

    Well, I guess I should figure out where I am. Once again, Cross Country has dropped me off in a nondescript meeting room¡ªhonestly, he seems like the type of guy who gets birthed out of the aether in the middle of a meeting room already prepared to discuss quarterly reports¡ªand I haven''t been told not to leave the room so maybe I can just do that. I start to head for the door, but then I hear a quick knock and it opens before I can answer. A mousy-looking girl with brown hair pops her head in, brightening up when she sees me. She glances down at the clipboard she''s holding in one arm and then addresses me.

    "You''re here! Miss Lia Morgan, right? Gosh, it''s so weird that your actual title of address is ''Miss.'' Warrant officers are weird."

    Thanks, you too.

    "Um, that''s me," I say out loud.

    "Great! Ready to get all dolled up, superhero?"

    "¡­Ready for what?" I ask.

    "Have you not been informed? You''re being presented to the public soon. Getting your official titles, doing a quick paparazzi run to keep morale up. Surely you''ve seen them streamed before?"

    Oh. Oh! Right, I guess they would do that with us now that we are officially members of the military instead of involuntary wards of the state or whatever the hell they classify us as before we get our ranks.

    "Honestly, I completely hadn''t thought about it," I admit. "Do we get any input on what our names end up being?"

    She''s going to say no.

    "Nope!"

    Called it.

    "It''s decided by the PR teams well in advance," she explains. "I''m here to take you to a meeting with the image department for you and the other supers in your platoon."

    "Oh," I say. "Okay. Lead the way, then."

    She does so, and as we head down the hall I can''t help but notice how weirdly nice being in a building with windows again is. Looking outside, I can recognize a few buildings and conclude that I''m back in Fort Jackson. As opposed to¡­ wherever the hell that underground blacksite was.

    "So, warrant officer already, huh?" the girl asks me. She''s not wearing a military uniform so I assume she''s some kind of contractor handling the superhero PR stuff. "Where have you been for the last three days?"

    "Classified, sorry," I answer, which sounds really weird and pretentious to say, but¡­ I mean, it is classified.

    "Bah, that''s what they all say," she pouts.

    "Yeah, it''s almost like the military wants to keep secrets from people or something," I say before thinking better of it. Thankfully, the girl just snorts and laughs.

    "You know, I think you might be onto something there," she says. "In here."

    She opens a door for me, leading us into a similar meeting room to the one I showed up in, but this one is of course already set up for a presentation and occupied. There''s a professional-looking man standing primly at the front of the room next to a projector screen and a row of seven chairs facing him. Eight, if you count the wheelchair Ed is sitting in. Because somehow, by some obvious lack of coincidence, the occupants include Ed, Anastasia, Christine, Maria, and Peter. The only people that aren''t part of our usual group are the goop guy I knocked out of the tournament in round one and the illusory copies guy Anastasia beat.

    How? Literally how? There is no way in hell that Dr. Bovary set this up after he offered to. He either already knew that this would be our platoon assignment, or he arranged it well in advance and just made the offer because he''s a cheeky little bastard. Gah. I can''t even be mad about it. This is better than I ever could have hoped for.

    "Oh my gosh!" Anastasia squeals with delight, rushing up and wrapping me into a powerful hug. "You''re here too!? This is gonna be the best platoon ever!"

    "Lia!" Maria smiles at me. I think it''s the first time we''ve spoken since power training ended. Wow. "How are you?"

    "I''m, uh, fine," I manage. "Did we seriously get grouped up based on our lunch table? Is this normal?"

    "I''m not the person who decides who goes where," the man at the front of the room speaks up, staring at our reunion with a complicated expression. "But I can tell you that you have all been reportedly chosen based on your compatibility with the position. Your infantry regiment specializes in insertion into Queen-controlled territory. Each of you will be assigned to an individual fire team, split among two squads, and will be responsible for your squad''s defense against hostile power use, which will be a perpetual threat. The eight of you either have above-average RD scores, abilities considered advantageous in a firefight, or both. Today, we''ll be going over the ways you will be expected to use your abilities, as that will directly impact the way the military intends to present you to the public. If that''s understood, please take a seat so we can begin."

    "Right, sorry," I nod, Anastasia returning to her seat as I grab the last empty chair.

    "Let''s go ahead and start with a summary of all of you, and your designated STRATAS ranks," the man says.

    Right, those things we learned in power training class. I was wondering when those would actually become relevant. What was the acronym? Strike, Transit, Recon, Artillery, Tactical, Armor, and Sapper? It''s measured on a heuristic scale where one is ''can do this, but not better than standard military equipment'' and anything more than that is where things start getting powerful. The scale generally goes up to ten, but since it''s heuristic there''s nothing preventing someone from getting a rating above ten someday, if they turned out to be that much better than other tens.

    "Private Felix Koch," the man continues. "Abilities: fluid creation, capable of variable viscosity, adhesive, and friction properties. Domain-locked. Transit one, Sapper three. Your ability to secure a field with adhesive fluid that prevents enemy traversal while not affecting allied units can allow you to create impromptu kill fields and secure angles of attack against melee units. Your adhesive strength is measurably powerful enough to stop a Behemoth, a fact that we will be leaning on for promotional materials. Your codename is Degreaser."

    Felix winces.

    "Degreaser? Really?" he asks. "That''s the best you could come up with?"

    "I kinda like it," Christine smirks. "It''s funny."

    "It''s really not," Felix scowls.

    "I wouldn''t make fun of anyone else''s name until you hear yours!" Ed grins. "The shoe might end up on the other foot, eh?"

    "Moving on," the man says loudly. "Private Oscar Curry. Abilities: creating duplicates that vary in tangibility based on surrounding conditions. Transit two, Recon three, Armor four. You are hard to take down, and your clone selves can be moved into dangerous territory to gather information without risking any actual harm to you. Their range, however, is limited, so your main advantage is that you are a very difficult man to hit with attacks, making assassinating you an unlikely prospect. Your codename is Afterimage."

    "Oh, that one''s not bad," Christine hums.

    Oscar nods stoically, and the PR man moves on.

    "Private Peter Edwards. Abilities: invulnerability. Strike four, Armor eight. Your RD score is lower than we''d like, but your complete inability to be taken down by anything short of an Angel is invaluable. Your codename is Nemean."

    "Ooh, like the lion that Hercules strangles to death," Peter grins. "Truly, an auspicious title with no problematic theming. Say, did you know that ''Nemean'' means ''from Nemea,'' which is a real place I have never once been to?"

    "I did know that, but since the whole place is alien territory I doubt there are any actual residents of Nemea left to care," the PR man grunts. Truly, a master of his craft. "Private Maria Delaney. Abilities: creating independent energy constructs that possess their own domains. Recon three, Tactical two. In practice, your defining feature will be your excellent RD score, but your ability to effectively extend the range of your domain without weakening it to the degree of any other powered individual deserves a Tactical rating. Your codename is Titania."

    "Shit, that one''s actually good," Christine admits.

    "Yeah, I can live with it," Maria allows. Her eyes turn orange. "The queen of the faeries. It fits."

    I guess she''s gotten a lot more used to everything going on in her head. That''s good. I wish I could say the same. I suppose I''ve certainly improved at a few things, but I haven''t really come to terms with my situation so much as resolved not to think about it.

    "Plus it sounds like ''titan,'' to mesh with the fact that you are tall as hell," Peter chimes in.

    "Except when I''m tiny!" Orange smirks at him.

    "Private Eduardo Cortez," PR Guy continues, steadfastly ignoring our commentary. "Abilities: empowerment of individuals within your domain including strength, speed, durability, and reflexes. Tactical four, Armor two. Though you will require assistance to move around a battlefield, your RD has been progressing at an exceptional rate which will enable a wide range of operations, encompassing multiple fire teams, all of which will perform more effectively. For functionally turning all of your fellow soldiers into Spartans, your code name will be Leonidas."

    "Ha!" Ed laughs. "Oh, that¡¯s great. Imagine all the people expecting Leonidas to be some hulking love machine of a man and I turn out to just be some old fart. Oh, I¡¯m going to look forward to seeing those expressions."

    "Damn, you know, I was gonna say something snarky, but you¡¯re just so incredibly correct," Peter brightens up. "That¡¯ll be hilarious. What if we like, put those plates of ab-molded armor on your wheelchair as hubcaps? Is that anything?"

    "Or a chariot!" Ed exclaims. "I want a chariot. That would be perfect!"

    "Private Anastasia Patrova," PR Guy says, and I lean forward in my seat. Here''s where I have to start caring. "Abilities: autohemokinesis, altered biology. Strike four, Transit one, Armor one. Reportedly capable of holding off an entire pack of Raptors single-handedly with no available weaponry. Extremely resilient to blood loss. Unfortunately, your abilities will need to be deemphasized in the public eye due to sensitivity issues. Avoid cutting yourself in front of civilians. If we need to use your powers for a public event, we will prepare in advance. Your file also notes a powerful synergy with one of the other members here, but we will get to that later. Your codename is Vermillion."

    Well, that''s about what I expected, I suppose. I want to be mad about the fact that the military clearly knows that what it''s doing is horrific and its only response to this is to avoid telling the public about it. Ultimately, though, this is too obvious a truth to warrant any strong emotion from me, so I''m mainly focused on the relief that Ana is explicitly not going to be hurting herself for the sake of public fucking relations. She doesn''t need to stab herself in order to look good on TV in front of all the other children that the Army wants to show how cool and great and fun being a superhero is. Because who knows who''s going to get powers, and at what age.

    "What''s a vermillion?" Anastasia asks.

    "It''s a pretty shade of red," Christine answers. "A nod to your powers that doesn''t scream ''this is blood!''"

    "Yeah, it only loudly speaks it instead," Peter snorts. "Like a politician trying to remind everyone that he thinks he''s the most important person in the room."

    "Vermillion¡­" Anastasia hums. "It''s a pretty word. I like it!"

    "Private Christine Baker," PR Guy interrupts.

    "Oh god, here we go," Christine grimaces.

    "Fingers crossed for the dumbest name imaginable!" Peter says excitedly.

    "Abilities: arbitrary deconstruction, sorted and reconstructed at will. Strike eight, Tactical two."

    "Strike eight!?" Christine gapes. "What the hell do you mean, Strike eight?"

    "You''ve demonstrated biological deconstruction under supervision before," the PR guy says, "and according to your permanent record, threatened it once. Our analysts believe, therefore, that because you have used your ability within the domain of a Queen, you should be hypothetically capable of instantaneously dismantling any target that enters your domain at will, unless it is also backed up by an Angel. This applies to any number of targets simultaneously, and is a near-instant effect. Furthermore, you have the highest RD score out of everyone in your intake, and therefore the greatest effective range outside of Private Delaney."

    "Okay, but that''s hypothetical," Christine argues. "I''ve never actually done any of that. You can''t just assume I''m going to be able to. You''re going to get people killed if you rely on me blowing up everything with my mind. I''m not that good with my powers."

    "I will return that feedback to the analysts," the PR guy answers evenly. "In terms of public perception, your power also has the advantage of being extremely flashy and impressive to look at. We intend to use you as the frontrunner for our newest generation of promotional materials. Your codename is Breakdown."

    She stares at him, her mouth open in shock.

    "Are you¡­ are you fucking serious right now?" she asks helplessly.

    Peter busts out into a laughing fit, and I honestly struggle not to join him. It''s mean, but¡­ Breakdown? Seriously? Breakdown? That''s her name!?

    "It will be important to break the habit of swearing, if at all possible," PR Guy says.

    "Dude, I''m gonna have a fucking breakdown if I pop up in a goddamn propaganda piece. Are you gonna make posters with my face on it!? I''ll kill myself. I''ll actually kill myself."

    I tense up as her breathing quickens, ready to intervene when the panic attack inevitably hits. But I realize, soon enough, that my instincts are a couple months out of date, and after managing to graduate boot camp Christine has gained at least some resistance to emotional trauma. I watch her slowly calm her own breathing, feeling a weird mix of shame and pride. I don''t know if I really deserve to feel pride for her accomplishments, but still. It''s nice to see. She couldn''t have done that, not too long ago.

    "Superhero promotional materials involve modifications to the general uniform," the PR guy tells her slowly. "If you would be more comfortable with a mask or helmet, those are both options. The public doesn''t need to know your real name or face."

    "Oh, god," Christine swears. "Shit. Or shoot, or whatever. I don''t get a choice with this, do I? Fuck. A mask or helmet might work, I guess. As long as I never actually have to look at myself."

    "That can be arranged," he nods. "Finally, we have Warrant Officer One, Lia Morgan. Abilities: shapeshifting and biological analysis. Strike one, Transit one, Recon three, Armor nine."

    "Nine!?" Peter protests incredulously. "The fuck you mean nine? How does she get a higher Armor rating than me? I''m literally invincible."

    "You are invincible against all threats except powerful domains. Miss Morgan defeated an Angel in single combat before receiving training and has only further proven her resiliency since. According to her own report, she has been impaled, melted with acid, shot with several volleys of automatic weapon fire, dismembered, partially disintegrated by powered beam attacks, and we''ve recently received a report that she can survive without her lungs or heart. More to the point, her RD score is superior enough to yours that she proved the method of defeating you. So while she might suffer the same weakness¡ªdomain subsumption¡ªshe is substantially more resilient to it. A rating of eight is considered to be overwhelming against any and all conventional tactics, requiring direct power intervention to overcome. A rating of nine is considered to be overwhelming even against certain other powers, requiring specific strategy and capabilities to overcome."

    "Wait, when did I get hit with powered beam attacks?" I mutter, mostly to myself. "Oh yeah. I actually kind of forgot that Agnus Dei shot me."

    "Jesus Christ, are you serious?" Peter stares at me. "Fine, I get it, you''re Armor nine. Flaunt it, why don''t you?"

    "That can''t possibly be true, right?" Glue Gun Dude asks. Degreaser. What was his name? Felix, right. Felix Koch. "You''re making that one up."

    I shrug.

    "Whether it''s true or not, you probably shouldn''t spread the rumor around. I''m probably hard enough to do PR for without people knowing that the country''s greatest superhero felt a need to attack me. Right?"

    I put the ball back in PR Guy''s court so we can move past this. He nods at me, looking almost grateful.

    "Your abilities do lend themselves easily to a certain unfortunate image," he confirms. "Due to its efficacy in combat and your instinctive use of your abilities, we don''t believe it''s an image we can avoid. Therefore, we lean into it. Embrace it. Spin it as best we can."

    "You don''t have to keep tiptoeing around it," I sigh. "Just say it. I look like an Angel."

    "If you insist. Lia Morgan, you look like an Angel. But you''re America''s Angel, and we can use that."

    Days later, after a slog of boring instructional work broken up by rehearsals, I find myself behind the stage of an amphitheater. There''s a modest crowd of civilians here to see the new superhero lineups, but more than that there are cameras. Countless angles, ready to be captured and edited together into something to show the world over. Up on stage, the announcer is introducing everyone else one by one, having them perform sanitized power demonstrations to get the crowd excited. I''m just waiting for my cue, my body shifting and writhing as I continue making minute adjustments to my current form. It''s one I might have to use a lot, and I want it to be perfect.

    "¡ªBreakdown!"

    The back wall of the amphitheater explodes outwards and hangs in the air, Christine''s power holding it aloft. It''s time. Muscles coiling in my legs, I leap up to one of the hanging chunks of stone and start to ascend the floating array of platforms, flitting higher and higher between the levitating obstacles. Members of the crowd start to spot me as I quietly rise to the top, gasps ringing out, fingers pointed in my direction.

    "And our final hero today," the announcer projects, "joining our prior two survivors of a Queen''s wrath, is a formidable one indeed! Don''t let her frightening looks fool you, folks, she''s even more dangerous than she appears. She''s the monster that monsters fear, the soldier that goes bump in the night!"

    With one final jump I make it to the top of Christine''s carefully planned formation, wings twitching from where they fold against my back. Then, I start to fall, keeping everything tight to my body so I hurdle head-first at full speed.

    "Introducing the thief of torn wings¡ª"

    At the final moment, my wings whip out, straining against the air to slow me down. I impact the floor hard, but I''ve already nearly liquified myself, absorbing the impact with a burst of wild transformation. What was once my head sinks into a chaotic mess of flesh, shrouded by large feathered wings that rotate quickly around my body as I reform legs to rise back up on. I loved doing this in practice. I am not a functional organism because for these moments I do not need to be. I can be transitory, free to become whatever I desire, no matter how impossible. My legs assemble themselves, then my hips, then my chest, then my arms and my head and the mix of feathers and octopus skin I wear as clothes. I spread my wings out wide, and across the length of them I stare at the crowd with alien eyes.

    "¡ªSeraphim!"

 34. Sorry Again About The Tank

    The chill of the air-conditioned locker room tingles against my skin as I stare at my clawed hand, flexing the fingers into and out of a fist. The PR stunt went about as well as it could have. I looked pretty cool, if I do say so myself, and that goes a long way to avoid the potential image issues my power presents. People will let you get away with a lot if it entertains them enough.

    I still had to make my superhero body mostly humanoid, of course. Can''t stretch things too far. That means two arms, two legs, a head, and general normal human body proportions. The additions all come with my name¡ªSeraphim¡ªwhich I had a lot of fun designing to theme. Biblically-themed superheroes are fairly popular here in the ''ol U S of A, so my ''costume'' design comes straight from Isaiah 6:2: ''above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.''

    Most depictions of the seraphim I''ve seen make all six wings equally huge, but that''s absurdly clunky and would make both coordination and balance horrendous. Instead, my body has one huge pair of wings on its back, as well as two tiny pairs of wings: one emerging from my ankles and covering the top of my feet, and one emerging from my temples to wrap in front of my eyes like a blindfold. The blindfold doesn''t impede me, of course, because the Book of Revelations also mentions some six-winged angels that are just absolutely covered in eyeballs.

    I keep my eyes restricted to my big wings, as well as a collection of six underneath my feathery blindfolds. In practical situations, I will of course be looking around with them and not blinding myself at all, but I don''t really need to. I am, somewhat ironically, using about an eighty-twenty Angel-human brain mixture to run this body, and the optical center is all Angel. I can look in any combination of directions with any number of eyes and not get confused.

    As for other aesthetics, I was actually instructed to lean into the fact that I''m technically naked, exposing a tantalizing amount of breast underneath a spiky collection of chest feathers designed to make people think they might catch a flash of nip if the wind blows right. But of course, I don''t actually have any nipples in this body (why would I bother to form them?) so those dreams will go forever unanswered. I wondered for a little bit who the target audience was supposed to be given the mix of ''biblically rigorous'' and ''incredibly slutty,'' but then I realized how stupid I was being. Those two things go together like peanut butter and jelly, don''t they?

    I guess they decided that if people were horny enough and/or outraged enough, they wouldn''t be afraid, and that''s the main thing we''re trying to avoid. I''m definitely not an Angel, no sirree! Just don''t look beyond skin deep, okay?

    Because yeah, all that visual posturing is the boring part. The power under the hood is what makes this body a joy to be in. Optimizing my musculature always helps me scratch that itch in my head to tinker with a form, and I''ve managed to construct a hybridized system between alien and human musculature, hanging off of a vastly improved skeleton (partially rebuilt with architectural principles rather than organic ones, though I''m still learning how best to implement things like triangular lattices).

    Anyway, earthlike musculature pulls, whereas alien hydraulic systems push. I need to sit down with an engineer sometime and hash out the best ways to take advantage of that duality, but right now I''ve found success with doubling them up and letting them cover each other''s weaknesses. Hydraulic systems are very powerful, but they suffer from requiring extremely sturdy and therefore extremely heavy pressure-resistant containers to hold the fluid in. If I could just build my muscles out of metal, this might not be a problem, but unfortunately I can''t just turn my internal organs into a lightweight aluminum alloy. I''m stuck with bone or crystal, so the hydraulics end up being absolute hell on the square-cube law, weighing a lot more than musculature of similar strength despite taking up a lot less space. By forming the core of my strength with hydraulic systems and padding out any extra needed force with muscle, I hit a solid middle ground of power-to-bulk that I''m happy with, at least for now. There''s a lot of room for improvement, of course, but that just gives me something to do.

    One thing I feel like I should note, though: despite all these wings, I can''t fly. At all. The human body just isn''t shaped for it, and even if I didn''t have a weight problem the closest set of instincts I have available is like, an eagle or something, which would be useful as reference material at best. Gliding, though, I can almost definitely do gliding. And as demonstrated, I can certainly fall with style.

    Of course, none of this matters if I can''t even use this body in the first place, and one of the unfortunate things about having massive wings and no clothes is that it makes it rather difficult to carry around military gear.

    That''s why I''m staring at my hand, trying to will the bullets I know I must have absorbed to reappear. Initially, I thought it didn''t really make a lot of sense that I can shapeshift bullets out of my body. If I had just pushed them out and let them fall to the ground, then sure, but that''s not what I did. I made the bullets disappear. And I''m pretty sure I''ve done the same with things like toxins, acid, and air.

    The acid, technically, was only ever my own acid¡ªthe acid I produce when using a Wasp body. But what''s the difference between ''my'' acid and anyone else''s? When it starts burning my skin, why doesn''t it count as in my body? I''m not sure, but the air is what really got me thinking.

    I can directly oxygenate my cells, but I''ve tested it and I can also directly shapeshift air into my lungs. Yet air isn''t really ''biological.'' It''s just a handful of elements, mostly. So why not a bullet? What difference is there, fundamentally, between those things? The body might need oxygen to function, sure, but does it need argon? Pretty sure it doesn''t, but I''m pretty sure the air I give myself is just normal air. So why can''t I put a bullet into my own body?

    I pop a live round out of a magazine and swallow it, tracking it down into my stomach before it finally vanishes. Wait, should I even need it to be in my stomach for this? I shapeshifted bullets out of all kinds of different spots before. I pop out another, place it in my mouth, and will it to disappear. Nothing happens. Frowning, I try again, and the bullet stubbornly refuses to go away. This is so¡­ arbitrary. I don''t understand the rules here.

    Come on. The bullet doesn''t belong in this template. Shift it away.

    My mouth empties immediately, the space the bullet previously occupied replaced seamlessly with air. What the hell? Okay, it worked that time. Now I just need to put it back. Right? I should be able to do that. I''m probably not causing the bullet to stop existing, because material I eat is added to a resource pool. Presumably, I retrieve material from that resource pool in order to shapeshift. So the resource pool should contain the bullets. I just have to put them back.

    Why can''t I? Why does my power not let me? What''s the difference between bullets and argon?

    There''s the obvious stuff, of course. A bullet is solid and metal, while argon is a part of the air. A bullet is something that hurts the body, while argon is mostly just inert. I''m not technically shapeshifting pure argon into my body, I''m shapeshifting a normal mix of Earth atmosphere into my body, which is only around one percent argon. The body is explicitly designed to handle that much of the noble gas.

    ¡­Argon belongs in this template. Why? Because the template contains argon. It doesn''t do anything for the body, it isn''t useful to its biological function, but my power doesn''t require me to shift useful things, as preferable as they are.

    Is there lead in my body? Is there mercury? Quite possibly trace amounts of it, yes. Neither is beneficial. Both I would be better off without. I can find them, if I focus. There are a few chemicals I can feel that aren''t doing anything helpful, a few compounds floating around in my brain and kidneys that aren''t produced by any part of the body and are partially made of things I very much need to not be chemically bound this way. There isn''t much of it, and the redundancies in the body render them largely irrelevant, but they''re there. I can remove them, so I do.

    I can also return them. They don''t help. They don''t provide a function to the body. But they were part of my body, so I can make them part of my body again. What''s the difference between mercury and a bullet? What''s the difference between lead and a bullet? In many cases, nothing. Nothing at all. It''s not supposed to be in the body. But it can be.

    A bullet can be part of my body, for the duration of its stay. It can be intended. It can be part of the template. Right? Doesn''t that make sense?

    A bullet can be part of my body. A bullet can be part of me.

    I shift it into being, spitting the round out of my mouth. Holy shit. I take the other bullet I swallowed, the one that made it to my stomach, and shift it into my mouth as well. Spit. I shift the fired bullets, the ones that lodged themselves into my flesh months ago, into my mouth. Bent, spent, and naked without their casings, they fall from my lips one after another, clattering onto the floor. That''s all of them. I know that somehow.

    I did it. Was a trick of perspective really all it took?

    What else can I do this with?

    I pick up my canteen. It''s way too big to swallow¡­ with a normal mouth. But really, do I need a mouth at all? From my hand, I grow a layer of skin across and around the canteen, engulfing it completely into my body. I decide it doesn''t belong there, and make it vanish. Then I decide it does belong, and bring it back. Yes. Yes, yes, holy shit yes. I disappear it from my right hand, form a sack out of my left, and reappear it there. Yes!

    "Oi! Superheroine! What''s the holdup!?" a familiar voice calls out, soon followed by a familiar face entering the locker room and doing a double-take. "Holy shit."

    "Jazz?" I blink. "Hey!"

    "Jesus Christ, girl, where were you hiding those abs in basic?" Jazz gapes. "Are you naked? You''re supposed to be getting dressed! What the hell are you doing in here?"

    "Improving my Transit rating, probably," I say, reabsorbing my wings into my body so I can start putting on my uniform.

    Jazz rolls her eyes.

    "You power nerds and your STRATAS ratings."

    "I mean that''s not the goal, it''s just one of the likely results," I say, quickly throwing everything on. It''s not put on well, but it shouldn''t have to be. "Watch. I''m either about to do something really useful or really, really stupid."

    "Uh, how stupid are we talking?" Jazz asks, and then I eat the entirety of my assigned military gear.

    Well. ''Eat.'' More like I rapidly form a shell of muscle and skin around my entire body and deconstruct everything inside, turning myself into little more than a big, hollow blob of flesh. My gun, my uniform, my armor, my accessories, all of it is gone. Sent to the void.

    Then, little by little, I shape myself the beginnings of a human form. A carefully-made, thin frame, attached to the inside of the shell to keep it one continuous body. Gently, I will my gear to form around the inner me, then grow within the clothes, filling them out as I complete myself. Once I have a fully-formed and fully-dressed body, I determine my body needs the rest of my gear where it''s supposed to go, willing them back into the world in their proper places before unforming the shell, retracting it back into myself where it connects via my scalp and feet. Wait, shit, helmet and boots! I do the canteen trick for each foot and just inflate the end of one arm to pull the helmet out of that, securing it on my head the old fashioned way.

    I am now fully dressed.

    "Yes!" I whoop. "It worked! God, that was just the test run! I bet I could do all that so much faster! No more constantly stripping to use powers! Fuck yes! Did you see that, Jazz!?"

    I glance her way, meeting a wild-eyed stare, one hand covering her mouth. Jazz dry heaves, trying to hold back vomit, and rushes towards the nearest toilet.

    People never appreciate my hard work.

    "Jazz?" I call out, hesitantly following her. I find her having opted for a sink instead of a toilet, leaning over it and taking deep breaths. She hasn''t vomited yet, and is probably trying to maintain that state of affairs, so I don''t want to get too close too quickly. I certainly hope that she won''t associate seeing me with nearly vomiting from now on, but in the immediate term that is a genuine risk.

    "What the actual fuck?" Jazz heaves. "That was the single most disgusting thing I''ve ever seen in my entire life."

    "Um. Sorry?" I manage. "I guess I''m just used to it."

    "God, somehow the fact that it wasn''t a bloody mess is even worse. Like normally you''d expect the fucking Thing to vomit something out covered in saliva or pus or something but it was all just dry."

    "Well, I didn''t really want all of my gear to come out covered in saliva or pus," I frown, unable to stop myself from feeling a little offended.

    "I could see through the fucking flesh blob," Jazz continues. "Stretched over some scarecrow-thin inflated ribcage. And there was shit moving around inside. Did you fucking eat yourself?"

    "Depends on your perspective, I guess?" I hedge. "It turns out my power just kind of alters the entire process of eating into another form of shapeshifting."

    "Oh my god, please shut up," Jazz whines. "Jesus, I was so excited to be on your fire team until like one minute ago. Am I gonna have to see shit like this every day?"

    Well fuck me for getting excited about something, I guess. I suppose I should have seen this coming; it''s not like it''s difficult to predict that most people would be grossed out by a shapeshifting flesh blob. I let how happy I was get in the way of paying attention to other people''s feelings. Unacceptable.

    "Sorry," I tell her. "Do you need a minute? I can go."

    She waves me off.

    "Yeah, I''ll be fine, just get to the rest of the squad, okay? I''m good, I''m good."You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    I nod and head out to the staging area, my face twisting through different configurations as I work through the stress. I, too, was happy to learn Jazz is part of my fire team, but now I''m worried about it. Time to meet the squad, though. I hope the rest of them don''t have too many issues with it.

    I walk into the room wearing my Seraphim face, minus the wing blindfold because it doesn''t really fit inside my helmet. Everyone is mulling around a little, so the NCOs probably aren''t here yet. If I''m being honest, I''m not entirely clear where a Warrant Officer stands, rank-wise. In technical terms, I think I might be above a Sergeant, but in practical terms I think I''m very much not. There''s a substantial difference between Warrant Officer One and Two¡ªa Chief Warrant Officer is very much an officer, but a regular Warrant Officer is like a secret third thing. My ability to order everyone else around is dependent entirely on my assignment, and it sure seems like my assignment is placing me below Sergeants and Corporals, but nobody has really pulled me aside and given me the exact spot I''m supposed to stand in the hierarchy. I''m exactly as trained as a Private, though, so I think I''m just going to act like one until instructed otherwise.

    "Well that''s gotta be her. Yo! Sera! You''re with us!" someone very loud yells in my general direction, while staring straight at me. But my name is absolutely not Sarah, so I refuse to answer to it. "Hey! Man, can she not hear me?"

    The annoying private walks over and places himself in front of me so I cannot possibly get away with ignoring him any further.

    "Hey! You''re Seraphim, right? We sent Private Garner to check on you. You''re with our team."

    "I am Seraphim, yes," I confirm. "Morgan is also fine. That''s my last name. And ''Sarah'' is absolutely not my first name."

    "Yeah, it''s your superhero name. Seraphim, Sera? Easier to say. Anyway, come on."

    How is it that I have managed to acquire yet another unwanted nickname? I haven''t even met this guy yet! Well, I guess I should get this over with. I expand my domain around him and the people he''s leading me towards, getting used to their templates and letting my body twist and shift. Hmm. One of these is familiar.

    "Jimenez?" I blink. One of the soldiers who escorted me around the zoo waves at me.

    "Hey! I figured you were Seraphim!" Jimenez grins at me. "Let me guess. Garner''s not here because she walked in on you going full eldritch?"

    "It was at least on purpose this time," I sigh, letting a small smile onto my lips.

    "Sorry again about the tank," he says sheepishly.

    "Water under the bridge," I assure him honestly. "Literally, I suppose. It took me a long time to reassemble myself, but I learned a lot from it."

    The nearby members of our squad start giving us very odd looks. The guy next to Jimenez leans in and stage-whispers to him.

    "Dude did you seriously shoot a superhero with a fucking tank?" he hisses.

    "What? No! I threw her into a tank when I wasn''t supposed to. Like a fish tank!"

    Now everyone looks even more lost. I smirk.

    "Honestly, getting shot with a tank probably would have been easier for me," I announce. "But hey, you were pretty cool about it. And I don''t get those seizures anymore, of course. It''s not going to be a problem again."

    "Hey, that''s great!" Jimenez grins. "Oh hey, Garner''s back!"

    I turn around and indeed find Jazz making her way to our group.

    "You okay?" I ask her.

    "Yeah, yeah, I''m fine. Just give me a warning next time."

    "What were you two up to in there?" another squad member asks.

    "Well, I¡ª"

    "You don''t wanna know," Jazz cuts me off. "I thought I wanted to know, and now I know, and I promise you, you don''t wanna know."

    I frown.

    "...I''m probably going to have to inoculate you all to the intensity of my shapeshifting. I don''t want it being a problem in the field."

    "Uh, what exactly do you mean by ''inoculate?''"

    I don''t get a chance to answer, as a shouted order to form up by squad has us all quickly shutting up and lining up. Oh, hey! Anastasia''s here! I couldn''t see her through all the bodies on the other side of the room. It looks like each fire team is nine people, and there are three fire teams in our squad. The three supers in our squad are me, Anastasia, and Ed, the latter of whom is of course sitting in his wheelchair rather than standing at attention. He''s keeping his back straight, though.

    Man, what a squad. We have a freak, a child, and a paraplegic all heading into a warzone together. I wonder what all these other people think about us. I never thought too much about superheroes when I was younger. They weren''t going to be relevant to me in my future (or so I thought) and I had other problems taking up my attention. Now that I am a superhero, I have to wonder what everyone thinks of me. It must be a little frightening knowing that you''re going into an instant death zone held back only by the willpower of a nine-year-old. Maybe that''s why my fire team seemed so happy to see me. I''m the most normal-seeming supersoldier in the squad, and isn''t that a sad thing to consider.

    What follows is pretty administrative for a good while. The corporal at the front of the room starts with a headcount, which is useful to me because it means I can actually learn the names of everyone on my team.

    "Private Jarrett!" the corporal calls out.

    "Here, Corporal!"

    "Private Jaques!" the corporal says, somehow pronouncing it as ''jack-wes.''

    "Here!"

    "Private Jimenez!" the corporal barks, butchering it into ''jim-en-eez'' instead of ''him-en-es.''

    "Jimmeneez nuts!" Jimenez shouts, to quite a bit of laughter that doesn''t come from the corporal.

    "Great, so we have a volunteer for every working party this month," the corporal deadpans.

    "Yeah that''s fair."

    The sergeant comes in to do most of the rest, explaining our assignment and giving us a rather uninspired motivational speech. More importantly, we get our deployment, predictably to the front lines. My platoon is heading to St. Louis, Missouri¡­ or at the very least, the battle line near the city that used to be St. Louis, Missouri. Now it''s alien territory, and we are to be part of an extended operation with the ultimate goal of retaking the Mississippi River.

    It makes a certain amount of sense. Contesting the aliens in the ocean is borderline impossible for us because submarines don''t stand a chance against Leviathans. They simply don''t have the maneuverability, suppressive fire, or armor to withstand being crushed by the massive serpents. With uncontested undersea superiority, the aircraft carriers that normally form the backbone of naval warfare are relatively useless outside of assaulting a coastline, and nearly defenseless against an enemy fully capable of weaving through minefields and pulling entire battleships into the depths of the ocean in moments.

    Rivers are a different story, though. The Mississippi can get pretty deep, but even it doesn''t have anywhere near enough space for a Leviathan. Other types of aliens are perfectly happy living underwater, and military vessels usually aren''t made for the area, but we don''t really want the Mississippi River so we can put boats with guns on it. We want the river so we can put boats with supplies on it. (Including guns, probably, but not for shooting from the boats.)

    That, and it would be a major symbolic win for humanity. Personally, I think it seems a little optimistic. Major symbolic wins should probably come after tangible material wins. But hey, I guess we have to start somewhere, right? We can''t structure our entire war plan around the assumption that we''re all going to fail and die.

    We''re going to be deployed to the front lines, and soon. I''m going to be back among aliens. I might very well have to fight another Angel. It''s a lot to think about as I get through the day and lie down for bed.

    Even if I hadn''t been able to manually induce myself into slumber, boot camp would have quickly taught me how to pass out. Yet almost as soon as I fall asleep, I find myself awake, surrounded by darkness, and devoid of form. I quickly assemble myself a body, patting around at my surroundings to confirm my suspicion. Skin and muscle and crystal and bone, just like I thought.

    I''m having the meat dream again.

    I expected this might happen. The easiest way I''ve found to escape this squishy prison is to simply induce myself to fall asleep a second time. I figured that out a good while ago, and it has been helping me get excellent rest, mostly devoid of horrifying eldritch flesh caves. Today, though, I finally have the energy to be in an experimental mood. I''m going to figure out what''s up with this place, once and for all.

    Oddity number one: I can use my powers here, but I don''t feel my domain. It just isn''t around me the way it normally is, an extra muscle in my mind that I can flex to move however I please. Yet if I focus, I''ve started to figure out how to map the area around me. It feels different from my normal biological scans, but fundamentally everything around me is biology. I can determine its composition, shape, and status. The first time I did this, I stretched my senses as far as they could go, pushing my range beyond what my domain would normally be capable of and overwhelming myself. This time, I make sure to be careful, only extending my range enough to help me navigate. It''s gross, but I''ve gotten plenty used to gross. I can handle it.

    Now, I want to see it. There''s no light in here, but if I can still shapeshift then I can make my own light. Though I don''t have any particularly bright sources of bioluminescence, there''s nothing stopping me from making up the difference with surface area. I adjust my entire epidermis to glow, pulsing yellow-green light revealing the area around me. I''ve seen it all in my mind''s eye before, and my real eyes confirm it''s just as gross as I expected. A cave of exposed flesh, guts and organs and skin mixing together into a Cronenberg mess of a room. I don''t let the human instincts for shock and horror take over; my eyes carefully take in the details of the area. I''m looking for¡­ yes, there. A chunk of crystal.

    A shimmering blue blade is wedged into the wall, so I approach it, grasping it, tugging on it, yanking on it until it comes free. Large and heavy in my arms, I eyeball its measurements and confirm my suspicions. It''s a Behemoth''s leg blade. Not just some random chunk of crystal, but a very specific chunk of crystal that I have worn on my body before.

    "This is my storage space," I mutter to myself, the hot air tasting like iron on my tongue. As suspected, there is a real, physical location of some sort where I house the biomass I remove from our reality. I am, if my hunch is correct, currently standing in an entirely separate dimension. One that is, arguably, inside myself.

    "What the fuck."

    I wedge the Behemoth blade back into the wall, accidentally cutting a gouge into the flesh with the blade. I flinch. That kind of hurt.

    Wait. It hurt? Why did it hurt? This might be a storage space for my extra mass, but it''s not connected to my¡­ body¡­

    I look down, yelping in surprise as I spot my feet fusing with and sinking into the floor. I stagger back, tripping as one leg fails to unearth itself, and landing on my butt. The soft ground cushions my fall, but then it quickly gives way to another attempt to absorb me. I shapeshift myself separate, leaving behind the stuck parts of my body like I once did to escape a glue trap, hobbling away as I try to reform my feet. Immediately, I get stuck again, unable to avoid touching the ground, but this time I don''t feel myself sinking.

    I feel the floor getting sucked up into my legs.

    Right. Of course. If this is the inside of my storage space, then I can''t just teleport in materials however I want. The materials are already here. I don''t feel my domain because this entire area is a function of my domain, some aspect of my power that I have unwittingly manifested myself inside of. This body probably isn''t my actual body, is it? I presumably don''t disappear entirely while I have these dreams, so my usual body still has to be on Earth. This is just some puppet body that I am somehow remote controlling through my dreams.

    I feel kind of silly for freaking out so much about this place before. It''s definitely odd, but there''s nothing scary about it now that I understand what it is. I guess I can just put this puppet body back to sleep and let myself rest until tomorrow, but I should think about whether or not there''s something else I should do here first. Oh, I know! This is my storage space. I should take stock of my inventory.

    Slowly, carefully, I expand my awareness, looking over my inner world. Oh, wow. There are a lot of little crystals in here, most of them shaped like Raptor foreclaws. Wait a minute, am I creating a new set of crystals every single time I shift into an alien? I must have a veritable mountain of Angel scales stacked up somewhere if that''s the case. That''s so wasteful! If they''re all still here I can just use them! I''ll have to modify the design a little so that the crystals can be properly anchored in the body without the organs that developed them in the first place, but that won''t be too hard. Continuing to look around, I mentally locate one of the more disturbing sections from my initial freakout: the feces room. I guess my body can only recycle so much waste, and the result is an uncomfortable slurry of dried poop, urea, and ammonia¡ªalong with lots of other things I don''t really want to investigate too closely¡ªthat''s just kind of hanging out in here. While a lot of biologically useful things are in human waste, I clearly haven''t properly set myself up with a recycling center. I could also just dump this stuff somewhere, I suppose. Maybe if Jimenez pisses me off I can give him a very, very bad day cleaning the portashitters. Whatever, I''ll put it on the to-do list of things to figure out in the future. It''s not super urgent because I don''t feel like I''ve hit any sort of upper limit for how much I can store.

    ¡­Now that''s a thought, isn''t it? I don''t have an apparent upper limit to what I can store. I''ve figured out how to contain and retrieve arbitrary items. Did my powers just get upgraded from shapeshifting to shapeshifting and also hammerspace? I can carry my gear in here, so potentially I can carry a lot of people''s gear. As long as I can swallow it, I can put it in my eldritch stomach. Could I devour a huge chunk of supplies and then be teleported by someone like Cross Country, thereby creating cross-continental supply trains? Could I eat a person, and keep them alive in here? I have an atmosphere, and I can certainly breathe with normal human lungs. It wouldn''t be pleasant, but it doesn''t seem impossible. I doubt I will be able to find anyone willing to let me eat them, though. ¡­Except maybe Dr. Bovary. I guess I could just start by testing with bugs or other small animals. I''ll have to catch one next time I see one.

    There is one issue I see to all of this, of course. My meatspace does seem to be a little bit¡­ digesty. I can''t even stand still without the floor trying to eat me. Is using my own insides as long-term munitions storage really a good idea? What happens if something misfires inside my own extradimensional guts? I''ve never felt any conscious awareness of this place while awake, which means I have no way to monitor what''s happening, so keeping anything in here long-term seems risky at best. Ugh, there''s just so much that needs testing here! I wish I figured this out months ago, back when I actually had time to mess with my powers. I''m not going to be able to risk too many experiments when I''m back inside of another Queen''s domain.

    Still, this is good, this is useful. My power is shaping up to be even more crazy than I expected. I''ll have to experiment with keeping little useful things inside of myself and seeing if I can bring them back out later undamaged. Stuff like a combat knife, a spare change of clothes, some food¡­ no, wait. I obviously can''t store food in here, I would just¡­ eat it. Still, though! I''m getting excited.

    Unfortunately, I doubt this much excitement is conducive to sleeping well. I can''t think of anything else to do here right now, and I will certainly be back here later, so now is probably a good time to fall asleep. I sink back into the floor, my brain cradled comfortably in the foundations of my meat-house, and induce myself into slumber. Next thing I know, I''m groggily waking back up, and my day is quickly filled with briefings, squad exercises, and a lot of getting shouted at by our sergeant. I guess some things never change.

    Only a few days later, and it''s time to depart for the front lines. For perhaps the first time in my military career, I am not transported to another state via Cross Country, but instead by a regular normal military transport aircraft. The flight is loud and boring. I can''t even play with Anastasia because they only keep one super per vehicle, ensuring there is always some defense against a possible flying Angel. I''d comment on how funny it is that most Angels don''t fly, but I guess I don''t really fly either most of the time. I could if I wanted to, but it wouldn''t be fast enough to keep up with aircraft so the military prefers me on the ground.

    I have to say, I expected myself to be more stressed than I actually am at the prospect of returning to an active warzone. I didn''t exactly have a pleasant experience with it the first time around. I suppose that when push comes to shove, I think I could survive alone if I had to. I was only in danger the first time around because I was so critically low on biomass. This time, I''ve spent the last several months stuffing my face at every available opportunity. It would require an exceptionally dangerous Angel with a very specific skill set to physically prevent me from returning to human territory if I was really motivated.

    But of course, I''m not alone. I have eight other people I''m directly responsible for ensuring the survival of. I have five other people I''m not supposed to worry about per protocol, but I know I would struggle to stop myself from rushing to their aid if need be. Anastasia is in my squad, so she will always be at least fairly close, but Christine, Maria, even Peter? I''ll be constantly worrying about them. Yet despite all that, I still feel relatively calm. Maybe the Angel part of my brain is just relieved to be heading back towards something it understands. Orders, objectives, and violence. It''s so much easier, so much more natural, than having to constantly deal with human egos.

    As we approach St. Louis, the horizon changes. From a distance, the city itself is impossible to miss, but its greatest invader is just as impossible to avoid. The St. Louis Queen is unmistakable as anything else, despite looking nothing like the Queen that dropped out of the sky in Chicago. Whereas she was a bulbous mass of giant, ever-dividing cells, the Queen here is wider, sleeker, more chaotic and much less centralized.

    It extends over St. Louis like a mass of vines, spreading over and corrupting everything it can manage to touch. Its body is eternally inconsistent, each direction it stretches drastically different in presentation. Bright, white-and-red patterned tendrils reach west while dark, thorny spikes reach east. Every protrusion north of them combines somewhere down the line into a single, massive lump of a tendril that crushes the city wherever it lies, and to the south is a mess of twisted arms that wrap together in complex patterns, growing over the city like moss. Some parts of it even jut upwards, as if in mockery of the flattened skyscrapers left in its wake.

    Yet the St. Louis Gateway Arch is, somehow, intact. The city-sized monster crawls all over it, its tendrils winding up the sides and draping off of it like hanging moss. There''s absolutely no way it''s incapable of destroying the city''s most iconic monument. No, the Queen has chosen to preserve it on purpose, holding it greedily as if mocking our attempts to reclaim it.

    Twisted Wasps hover through the air around the city. Lines of Behemoths can be seen preparing next to the Mississippi. Countless Raptors doubtlessly lie in wait, hidden in strategic parts of the city. The aliens may not understand our technology, but they understand war. They see we''re preparing, and they''re doing the same.

    This is what I''ve been training for, these past several months. What we''ve all been training for. It''s time to see how much of a difference that training makes.

 35. Ever Most Welcome

    "Alright, you boots. From here on out, keep your eyes on your assigned area. We might not be in the Queen''s territory yet, but she''s not going to let us just walk in. Seraphim, are we fully covered?"

    "Out to twenty feet, ready to expand if needed," I report. "No aliens nearby that I can tell."

    "Let us know the moment that changes," my team leader orders unnecessarily.

    "Will do," I confirm anyway.

    Weapons ready, we advance. We''re approaching down the street in the suburbs east of St. Louis, our area of operation assigned to us after we landed in the staging area set up in a former golf course nearby. Slowly but surely, we established our defensive line of armor and artillery, just the right distance from the Queen''s domain to be oppressive, and now it''s up to the infantry to press forward.

    You''d think that tanks should be part of the forward push¡ªthat''s part of what they were originally designed for, after all¡ªbut while their armor is exceptional against Raptors and even Behemoths, Wasps find them to more or less be free targets. Wasp acid chews through metal just as easily as it does everything else, and tanks are too large and too immobile to avoid being vomit-bombed into oblivion. And since everything outside a domain can be killed with bullets anyway, there''s not a huge need for them.

    Inside a Queen''s domain is even worse of the vehicles: bullets and even tank shells tend to get negated the moment they leave a super''s zone of control, and Wasps can stay high enough in the air to ignore the domains of ground-bound supers. Airborne supers and superhuman aircraft pilots can still shred Wasps, but they tend to bring out the Angels, and then it becomes an Angel fight which is something we only want to invite with due preparation.

    Fortunately, we''re prepared. Helicopters buzz overhead, ready to rain down lead and phosphorus on any aliens stupid enough to get spotted between here and the Queen''s domain. But it''s a long way there on foot, and we unfortunately still need to be on foot. The terrain is full of dense forests and abandoned houses, and every inch of it needs to be meticulously cleared to ensure no swarms of aliens are packed inside, ready to tear open our asses when we focus our fire ahead.

    I am, of course, almost completely certain that there aren''t any aliens around, but I know better than to try and convince all of military protocol to bend just because I can smell things real good. I don''t begrudge anyone insisting we make sure when it''s something this vital. My entire sensorium has been cranked up to the best possible configuration I can manage, balancing sensitivity with the fact that, when things get rolling, there are going to be a lot of very loud noises and very sharp smells and very bright flashes all around me basically all the time. I of course don''t need to worry too much about damaging my eyes and ears, since I can just fix them, but it''s better to not have to do that in the first place.

    It feels good being in a maximum-specs body for once. The anxiety of walking into an active warzone buzzes in the back of my mind, spiking my heart rate and keeping my muscles tense, but then I think about those muscles and remember all over again that if I figure out any improvement, no matter how slight, I can just adjust immediately. No one cares if my face shifts when I''m not paying attention to it. No one is worried about how normal I seem. They don''t even see Lia when they look at me anymore. They see Seraphim, their guardian Angel.

    Our nine-man team reaches our first temporary emplacement zone, quickly setting up our LMGs as I expand my domain, checking for living things in as large a radius as I can without compromising the safety of my team. There is, of course, most of the life there usually is¡ªgrass, trees, insects, birds¡ªbut there''s a surprising lack of small terrestrial creatures like rodents, toads, and rabbits. I imagine the Raptors have hunted them out of the area; within the domain of the Queen, I doubt there will even be insects. The aliens don''t really seem to understand the value of a healthy ecosystem. Maybe I should ask them about that.

    After making our way through a fairly open field, we reach the dense part of the suburbs. The fight-or-flight response moves from a hum at the back of my head to a roar at the forefront of my consciousness. Logically, we are in a lot more danger here among the buildings, but I doubt that''s actually the source of my stress. Part of me is still looking for houses that seem like they were only recently abandoned so that we can stock up on food and rest before the circle of monsters closes in around us. I let a wave of fur grow and vanish over my skin to try and calm myself down.

    We clear the first house, making sure there''s nothing waiting to ambush us inside, and then we set up another encampment and cover Anastasia''s team as they move forward to take the next. When the soldiers she''s protecting are done, they set up their own encampment, and Ed''s fire team moves up past us both. Rather than a wheelchair, which wouldn''t be very effective in the complicated terrain, Ed is just straight-up strapped to another soldier''s back, his power making that soldier more than strong enough to handle the extra weight on top of the rest of his gear.

    I think that initially, everyone who didn''t get placed on Ed''s team was secretly relieved that they wouldn''t have to worry about the extra thing to manage, but from our time training together I can tell that his group has quickly decided that they are the lucky ones. Their fire team lugs a heavy machine gun alongside the LMGs standard to everyone else, and they''re still moving with greater ease than anyone bar me. When the normal humans in our squad watch them pass, I can almost feel the pangs of jealousy from their bodies as their eyes wander away from their target areas to briefly linger on their luckier squadmates.

    Sometimes Ed will give a thumbs-up to someone staring at him. It doesn''t make them feel better, but it makes me laugh. My fire team, originally thinking that they had the best deal on superheroes, is quickly learning to lament the fact that they''re stuck with the one person who knows exactly where everyone is looking and how much they''re paying attention to their target area at any given time.

    "Wandering eyes," I comment blandly, and Jimenez swears before refocusing where he''s supposed to.

    "You''re going to put me out of a job, Sera," our corporal smirks, and I do my best not to twitch at the name.

    "I just don''t want to get stabbed by a Raptor," I answer easily.

    "Couldn''t you walk that off?" one of the privates comments. I think his name''s Manning.

    "Sure, but I''m at the center of the formation here. If I''m getting stabbed, who''s going to carry all of our stuff back?"

    "Cut the chatter," our corporal orders, though there isn''t much heat in it. "It''s almost time for us to move."

    We leapfrog forward like this for over two hours, coordinating with dozens of other squads to ensure every street and every house is covered, before I smell the first alien. We''re still a bit too far away for me to make out anything very clearly, but they''re definitely there. Next time it''s our turn to head forward, I have enough information to make a report.

    "Control, this is Seraphim. Be advised that I am detecting enemy presence approximately a quarter mile ahead of my current position. No visual. Over."

    "Seraphim, this is St. Louis Control," my radio crackles back. "Information received. Do you have a force size estimation? Over."

    Hmm. Let''s see¡­ the scent is faint and muffled, probably because they''re hiding indoors somewhere. My assumption is that they would still leave a window open or something so they could continue receiving communications, but I''m not confident enough in that to risk judging exact numbers on.

    "Negative, Control. I anticipate more information as we get closer. Over."

    "Understood. Keep us updated. Over."

    "Wilco, Seraphim out," I say, ending the radio communication. I turn to my team leader. "I''d like to take my helmet off."

    He''s clearly not happy about it, but he nods anyway. Poor guy probably hasn''t been trained long enough to know exactly what to do when a superhero asks you something weird and normally stupid. I quickly eat my helmet so I don''t have to drop my gun, growing much more comfortable sucker-covered tentacles out of my scalp and tasting the air unimpeded with my alien senses. There we go. In four or five different houses, separated into groups of twenty to thirty, the Raptors wait in ambush in the upstairs and basement areas of the buildings, planning on taking advantage of the close quarters to kill the teams sent to clear the houses. I make my report.

    Control asks me more questions and I give as many answers as I''m able, before they eventually disseminate the information to the other squads. My fire team doesn''t end up clearing one of the marked houses, but I can tell more or less what''s going on based on the smells flying through the air.

    "Ambush formation three: failure. Detected on entry."

    "Ambush formation five: failure. Detected on entry."

    "Report: this unit (signature six) is dead."

    "Report: this unit (signature nine) is dead."

    "Report: this unit (signature one) is dead."

    "Report: this unit (signature fourteen) is dead."

    "Report: this unit (signature sixteen) is dead."

    "Report: this unit (signature four) is dead."

    "Ambush formation seven: failure. Detected on entry."

    "Report: this unit (signature twenty-three) is dead."

    The aliens, disturbingly, aren''t shouting out the reports of their own demise with their dying breaths; they''re shouting with their dead ones. Each of them is simply configured to let off a given scent upon expiring. That scent is not different from their normal language in qualia or delivery, the messages from beyond the grave especially eerie given that I can''t tell if a given communication is from someone alive until they say they aren''t. The reports about ambush formation failures are made by living Raptors, conversely, although I imagine the state of affairs is quite temporary. The Raptors are fully aware that they are doomed the moment that they are detected, but they die fighting nonetheless.

    "Order modification: cease ambush formations one, two, four, six, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Retreat to indicated location (safe, distance run, sprint thirty pace fifty)."

    Those were an Angel''s words. It was obvious, not just from the content but from the way it felt in my mind. There''s a fundamental difference in even the most innocuous words of an Angel compared to our lesser kin. And of course, it''s also obvious that this was an Angel because shortly after the words are conveyed, Raptors pour out of the houses yet to be breached, sprinting in a tide away from our troops. The forwardmost fire teams kill as many as they can, but Raptors are fast and there''s no reason to chase after them.

    Our spotters just tell the artillery to do it.

    It would be very nice if we could just shell the hell out of this ghost of a city and approach through the ruins, but it just isn''t practical to lay waste to that much area. When the enemy is in plain view and far enough away from our own troops, though? They''re gone. Really, if not for Queens and Angels, this wouldn''t even be a war. At least not on land.

    It''s hard not to feel a little bad, though. I just have to try not to think about it. Thankfully, I find that particularly easy while my brain is mostly alien. Low empathy is a hell of a drug, an addicting relief from the usual unnecessary pains in my life. It probably doesn''t reflect well on me to think things like that, but oh well.

    It''s the results that matter.

    We continue pushing in once the shelling has stopped, but I can still make out more or less where the enemy forces are, at least in this area of the battlefield. The enemy is basically shouting their current strategies and positions out loud; the only way I could stop overhearing it is if I switched to a physiology incapable of it.

    "Control, this is Seraphim. Another group of targets is waiting ahead, approximately a quarter mile out from my position. Over."

    "Understood, Seraphim. Relaying now."

    Nervousness aside, I feel like I''ve proven myself to be very helpful. This is still the easy part of invading the Queen''s territory, but so far things have gone almost perfectly, at least for our platoon. It''s not really my job to know how well anyone else is doing, so no one wastes time telling me.

    As we approach the next set of trapped houses, though, I can tell that my fire team is going to be responsible for clearing one of them out. Now it''s time to see if our success streak still holds strong when I''m the one executing rather than merely advising. It''s difficult not to be anxious. It''s been a long time since I''ve killed anyone, after all.

    We move in as a group, our steps careful and quiet as we cover the various possible routes in, out, and through the home. The Raptors here intend to break through the ceiling of the first floor, dropping from the rooms above to surround us the moment we enter. I communicate my plan as best as I''m able with silent hand signals, and our team leader picks up the gist, nodding in confirmation. Peering up through the window, I mark the target locations one after another with a laser pointer, and everyone gets into position. When the command comes, we fire.

    Bullets erupt out of our weapons, punching through the glass windows of the house, through the wooden ceiling of the first floor, and finally into the Raptors waiting above. It''s easy for me to tell where they all are, even with the barrier in the way, and our weapons have plenty of penetration from this close. Not all the Raptors receive a fatal wound, but their plan is thrown into immediate disarray, members both dead and alive sounding off their failure.

    "Ambush formation nine: failure. Detected before entry."

    "Report: this unit (signature twelve) is dead."

    "Report: this unit (signature three) is dead."

    "Report: this unit (signature one) is dead."

    "Report: this unit (signature eight) is dead."

    "Report: this unit (signature four) is dead."You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    The smells are so potent this close up, my mind struggling with instincts to repeat and extend the range of the transmission. The surviving Raptors attempt to carry out what remains of their plan, but we aren''t in the house and so dropping to the first floor doesn''t let them surround us, it only gives us line of sight. The rapid cracks of rifle fire are the only sounds to punctuate the resulting massacre. It feels awful. Why are these poor Raptors even being ordered to try and hold this territory? They don''t stand a chance outside the domain of the Queen. It''s just senseless slaughter.

    "Sorry," I mutter soundlessly before I can stop myself, and the alien communication network explodes with confusion.

    "Sympathy received. Source unidentified!?"

    "Sympathy received. Source unidentified. Please resend identification?"

    "Sympathy received. Purpose not comprehended. Please resend identification and clarify."

    "New primary directive, battlezone thirteen, units nine through nineteen: identify source of unknown transmission."

    Shiiiit.

    "Unit ten, approaching last known target location."

    "Unit eleven, approaching last known target location."

    "Unit twelve, approaching last known target location."

    "Unit thirteen, approaching last known target location."

    "Unit fourteen, approaching last known target location."

    "Bunker down, they''re charging us!" I shout out loud.

    "St. Louis Control to all units: we have confirmed sightings of an airborne Angel approaching the battlezone. We have confirmed sightings of an Angel approaching the battlezone."

    Fuuuuck! Damn it, why am I so stupid!? I don''t have time to lament my idiocy, though, as Raptors start pouring out of nearby houses and rushing towards my squad. We''re set up and ready, though, and automatic fire starts tearing through them as they continue their suicidal charge. Why would they¡­ oh no!

    "They''re going to drop from the roof!" I call out. We''re still so close to the house that they can use it as cover to approach us by scaling the walls and dropping from above. We have to get into the street! Shit, too late!

    I grab one of the guys as he looks up just in time to see the Raptor falling towards him blades-first. Yanking him back, I grow a thick tentacle out of my head, catching the enemy weapons in my own flesh. With a grunt, I whip the Raptor away, returning my head to normal as one of my allies shoots it dead. Together, we make it to the middle of the street, our firing lines open and ready for the swarm.

    "Order to unknown signal: identify yourself."

    "Seraphim, Vermillion, Leonidas, the Angel is on heading to your location, be prepared for domain coverage."

    Yeah, I kind of figured that. What should I do here!? Do I just fight it!? The Angel is flying, and that is not exactly an area of combat I''m very experienced with. It''s possible their domain can''t stop bullets, but it seems absurd to assume that to be true. Why would the Angel be approaching us alone if it wasn''t confident it could handle whatever we were throwing at it? Are we really prepared to fight this thing?

    "Repeat order: identify."

    "Identifying," I respond. "I am here. Please cease hostilities."

    Might as well give it a shot, right? It already knows where I am. Let''s give peace a chance!

    "Identification confirmed. You who are blessed by Division are neither wanted nor welcome. Leave immediately, and we may deign not to hunt you down."

    Wait, crap. I just instinctively used whatever identification the brain I''m using considers to be its, so I apparently posed as the Angel I murdered. I mean, I suppose I totally would have rolled with that if it seemed like it would have worked, but I guess that Angel and this one aren''t friends.

    "I am not blessed by Division," I respond silently.

    "This is St. Louis Control. The Angel has ceased approaching and is holding position."

    Yeah, I think I can guess as to why. The confusion and surprise I feel over the network is enough to stop somebody in their tracks.

    "The only answer to Contradiction is denial. Explain your existence."

    Or, translated another way, ''what the fuck are you talking about?'' I''m not really sure how to answer that, though. Do I pretend to be some other kind of alien? I don''t think that would work, because I have no idea what alien politics are like or how I would even impersonate something other than one of my templates. So do I tell the truth? Claim I''m a human with powers? That just doesn''t seem like the right answer either. I generally prefer to keep as many cards close to my chest as I can when I''m in a volatile situation like this.

    "One cannot be of Division and not of Division," the Angel posits before I can continue. "As your claim cannot be true, it can only have been made in ignorance. Further, I feel no foolish one from your direction. Therefore, I see only one answer: you are native. Confirmation demanded."

    Well, no other way out now.

    "Confirmed. I am native."

    "Seraphim? Hey!" I flinch in shock as something touches my shoulder, shaking me lightly. "Are there any more of those things around, or not!?"

    Oh! Oh, right, um¡­

    "There are a few more," I confirm. "They aren''t attacking. Sorry Corporal, can you give me a minute? I need to¡­ figure something out. Super stuff."

    "This really isn''t the best time, Seraphim!"

    "I know, sorry. But it has to be now."

    He stares at me in exasperation, but ultimately the fact that I''m his only real lifeline wins out again.

    "Alright, do what you need to do, but do it fast."

    I nod. Okay. Now what was the Angel saying? I sniff the air, as the conversation still lingers.

    "This is very interesting information. We were not aware your kind could understand us, let alone speak."

    "It''s just me," I admit. "I am still learning."

    "Learning¡­?" the Angel echoes with confusion. "Your speech is fully comprehended, if arrogant and devoid of respect."

    "I am ignorant as to how respect is given and when it is deserved," I respond, trying to seem contrite.

    I sense something over the connection that can only really be translated as laughter.

    "That is very amusing. Please do not request to be educated."

    "Okay¡­?" I respond.

    "You have been deemed valuable to the Council," the Angel says, which is simultaneously a very exciting and absolutely terrifying thing to say. "You are offered safe entry to our Domain, provided you cease hostilities and agree to an escort."

    Okay, scary or not, that is¡­ incredibly massive. It certainly sounds like the start of diplomatic relations to me. But do they want to negotiate or just keep me as a pet or something? The other aliens I talked to responded more or less automatically to every question I asked; is the same true for Angels? Can I just ask? I guess it doesn''t hurt to try.

    "Would the purpose of my visit include a possible negotiation of peace terms between our people?" I ask.

    "Significant confusion. Peace terms? What need is there for peace terms? You are encroaching on our Domain. We are defending ourselves. Leave, and you will not be pursued," the Angel responds.

    "The land you claim as yours was originally ours," I remind them. "You and the people like you have been taking more and more space from us since you arrived. We need to reclaim safe places to live."

    "But this land was no one''s Domain. It was not claimed."

    Oh my god. ''Domain.'' An area of territory owned and controlled. Was all of this really so simple as a cultural misunderstanding? Do they use Queens to mark territory?

    "My people are very different from your people," I tell the Angel. "The way we measure ownership does not seem to be the way you measure ownership. By the standards we use, we owned the land, and you took it from us. We would like it back, but this is our first chance to negotiate with one of your kind. Would it be possible to come to a mutual agreement?"

    The Angel is silent for nearly half a minute, giving me time to devote more of my attention to secondary tasks like monitoring my surroundings and appeasing my squad. Sorry guys, but the potential for world peace is definitely more important here.

    "We understand the situation now," the Angel says. "This makes many things clear. Of course you do not use Domains. Your people coordinate, yet they have no councils, and no Queens. In your lands, the Chosen of many gods work together, indistinguishable from their weightless brethren. Tell me, native. Do you feel no pull? Do you speak with no god?"

    I hesitate. This conversation feels like it''s going¡­ well? Should I continue being honest? It feels wrong, but I guess I will. What lie could I tell, when I don''t know the wants or needs of the being I''m speaking with?

    "I feel a pull. I speak with that which granted me my Domain occasionally," I tell them.

    "And yet you work alongside your god''s enemies, and speak cordially to your own?"

    "...Is there a reason I shouldn''t?" I ask hesitantly. "If any god disapproves of what I do, they''ve yet to inform me. And though we may be on opposite ends of the battlefield, I see that as no reason to be rude. I would prefer our people not have to fight, if at all possible."

    "Seraphim!" my corporal hisses at me. "They''re asking for you on the radio!"

    Huh? Oh, right, I need to stop focusing so hard on this. I mean, I definitely still need to focus on it, but I should probably pay attention to what''s going on around me, too.

    "This is Seraphim, say again, over," I say.

    Let''s see, enemy status¡­ there are still a few nearby.

    "Your questions continue to amuse. No, there is no reason you should not defy your god''s will and nature."

    "I see," I answer, frowning to myself. So they have gods, and they clearly care a lot about their gods, but they don''t think it''s important to follow the will of their gods? I mean, I suppose it''s a literal alien religion, maybe it has a different purpose in their culture than religion tends to have in ours. Either way, I should focus this conversation a little.

    "I do not mean to threaten or coerce you; if your troops remain nearby they will likely die," I say.

    "You are correct. Feel free to kill them."

    "You do not wish to preserve them¡­?" I ask hesitantly.

    "Consider them a gift."

    Something smacks my arm, and I jolt back to attention.

    "What the hell''s the matter with you?" my corporal snaps. "You''ve been acting spacy ever since that Angel started coming at us."

    "Yeah, I''m trying to make sure it doesn''t kill us," I tell him, the half-lie coming out on impulse. "There are still scattered aliens in the area but they aren''t moving."

    "Wait, you stopped that Angel? How?"

    "Weird power crap," I explain impatiently. "Can you handle the radio for a second? I really don''t wanna have to fight that thing."

    "Yeah, I mean, shit," he swears at nothing in particular, contacting Control back in my stead.

    "My culture does not generally accept individuals as gifts," I tell the Angel. I feel delight in response.

    "All the better of a gift, then. To further corrupt one as delightfully unique as you is a rare pleasure."

    What? What the hell does that mean?

    "Hey, the bigwigs want to know what you''re doing with that Angel right now," a human interrupts me again.

    "Just distracting them, mostly," I frown. "Tapping into their pheromone system, gumming up their communication."

    If I think peace is possible, it would be worth it to just admit everything; no amount of my own personal secrets are worth potentially failing to end the entire war, and nobody is going to care too much about prosecuting me for identity theft when I am saving the entire world. But I just¡­ I don''t know if that is a possibility yet. So I don''t want to tell anyone. I need more information to know what the right decision is. I can''t risk trusting anyone else until I know how it will turn out.

    "Corrupt me?" I ask.

    "I desire you, ignorant Chosen. What is your god? Tell me, that I may tear you from its good graces."

    "I do not know the name of my god," I answer. I have my suspicions, and I have the name What If, but if he''s going to call me ignorant I''ll take the excuse to leave him in the dark.

    "Exceptional! Come to us. Abandon your people and let us raise you up!"

    What the hell is he talking about?

    "I feel like we have gotten distracted away from my intentions for this conversation. I would like to return to them, if you are amenable."

    I smell what I''m pretty sure is the pheromone equivalent of an exasperated sigh.

    "You consider this land yours," the Angel reaffirms.

    "It was ours, and many people died when you took it. We do not take deaths lightly, nor give lives so casually."

    "And so you seek peace."

    "Yes."

    What follows are a series of wordless impressions and emotions, likely born from the Angel considering my question, or discussing with their council. The hidden Raptors nearby dutifully project every scent and therefore nearly every thought, the message chained down the arm of the hive to reach me.

    "Wonderful ignorant Chosen. These lands are unfamiliar to us. Your kind is a mystery to us. You are dangerous, fascinating, and doubtlessly knowledgeable of countless things that still confuse us. We do not know how to properly walk under this world''s weight. Your silence made your knowledge useless to us, but now that you can speak we can understand. You are, perhaps, the single most valuable thing we have discovered since we came here so long ago. And you want peace. It is a very easy thing to grant you."

    "That''s wonderful!" I manage, shocked and delighted.

    "Therefore, the Council of Blasphemy has decided you shall have war."

    What? The Council of Blasphemy?

    "You shall be beaten, taken, and tainted," the Angel decrees. "But first, we shall break your armies. We shall shatter the lives you deem so valuable. And when all you value has been crushed, we shall excise your virtue and replace it with vice. That this land was once yours makes it all the sweeter to bring to ruin. May your god weep for every moment you still breathe!"

    Pure, unfiltered joy radiates over the pheromone network, a gleeful anticipation of what is to come, like a child waking up on Christmas morning.

    "You and your allies are ever most welcome! Allow us to formally invite you in! New primary objective, all units outside our Domain: reveal yourselves to the natives, and die."

    What the hell!? Why would they¡ª

    "Contact!" someone calls, and a burst of gunfire drops an emerging Raptor. Then, more follow, but instead of charging our position and rushing to cover, they simply plod slowly in our direction, allowing themselves to be shot down. One Raptor collapses as the hydraulics in its leg burst open, and as my team switches to prioritize other targets, I watch it raise its own blades and impale itself through the chest.

    The death calls now have all changed their scents.

    "Report: this unit (signature thirteen) has completed all objectives."

    "Report: this unit (signature four) has completed all objectives."

    "Report: this unit (signature eight) has completed all objectives."

    "Holy shit," I mutter out loud, my heart hammering in my chest. A thunderous buzz drowns out sound from above us, helicopters advancing forward to intercept the Wasps slowly rising out of their hiding spots and into the sky. They stay hover in place, allowing themselves to be cut down. Then the helicopters clear the area, and the artillery starts to crash down far ahead of us, spotters noticing the large groups of Raptors and Behemoths moving to simply present themselves as easy targets. All the while, confused and concerned radio reports fly over the comms channels. The one for me ends up being fairly straightforward.

    "Seraphim. Did you do this?"

    Not even proper radio protocol. My mind''s sticking on that for some reason.

    "This is Seraphim to St. Louis Control. There are no longer any targets remaining outside of the Queen''s domain. Over."

    "Seraphim! Did you do this!?"

    I swallow. My mouth feels dry.

    "I doubt I could repeat the trick. Over."

    "Your squad is ordered to withdraw immediately. Head to the closest LZ for air extraction. You will be debriefed on arrival. Over."

    "Copy, wilco," my sergeant responds for me from over with Anastasia''s team. We swap over to squad comms and start coordinating our withdrawal. In my ears, Control''s question keeps ringing over and over. Did I do this? No, that''s not what I should be asking.

    What have I done?

 36. If Youre Going To Shoot Me, Avoid The Head

    It would be inaccurate to say that the top brass is mad at me. They certainly aren''t happy with me, but the general panic and wild speculation over an unprecedented situation is at the very least quite stressful for everyone involved.

    I think I might now have the highest unconfirmed kill count of anyone in the army? Maybe that''s being arrogant. I''m sure other superheroes have done some crazy stuff. Either way, I''m not really sure how to feel about it.

    "Okay, Seraphim. Explain. What did you do?"

    An excellent question, officer. I''d like to know myself. I''ve learned two important bits of information today: one, it''s absolutely possible to negotiate with aliens. Unfortunately, two, aliens are batshit insane. Or at least the worshippers of Blasphemy are, which I suppose is only reasonable in hindsight. How do you worship the concept of disrespecting the sacred? Wouldn''t any act of honoring a god of blasphemy itself be against the concept of blasphemy?

    Whatever, it''s not important. These aliens might be crazy, but that doesn''t mean all aliens are. The possibility of negotiating with another faction therefore exists, and that''s¡­ huge. Impossibly huge. I can no longer reasonably justify lying to the government about my ability to communicate with them. We have officially passed the point where the risks to me are too outweighed by the potential benefits to¡­ basically everyone. Including me.

    But I don''t want to admit that I just straight-up lied about it. Especially to a colonel. I''m currently sitting in a tent on a former golf course outside St. Louis, my debrief apparently having been thrown way up the chain. I wonder if that''s normal for superheroes. I''ve already noticed a lot of difference that, by rank, I probably shouldn''t have.

    "Sir. Are you familiar with my ability to insert myself into the alien pheromone network?"

    "There was a report," he answers noncommittally. "But my understanding is that you couldn''t control alien units."

    "That''s correct, sir," I answer. "But I can understand a lot more of what''s going on than just enemy position. Their communication is exceptionally complex and robust when they''re actually in groups rather than cages. And I may have, uh, accidentally said something that they understood. And then they flipped out a little before the Angel ordered them to find me."

    "And that''s when their forces started converging on you?" he asks. "You said the Angel ''ordered'' them to find you?"

    "Yes sir, they''re definitely troop commanders of some sort, sir," I say. "I''m figuring it all out, bit by bit. They''re smart. Really smart. It might be a full-on language."

    "You''re ''figuring it out?'' Is that why you suddenly stopped responding to communications? Your team claims you ''suddenly froze up, grew scales, and stopped talking to anyone.''"

    "Yes sir, apologies for that. I could tell the Angel was targeting me, so I tried to¡­ distract it. And that succeeded for a while, and then it ordered all of its troops to commit suicide. I do not have any idea why."

    And that''s the honest truth. What the hell is that crazy thing thinking?

    "How did you distract it from so far away?" he asks me, and I scrunch my eyebrows in confusion.

    "What do you mean?" I ask. "I used the pheromone network."

    "Warrant Officer, you were miles away from the Angel. Smells can''t travel that fast. A ''pheromone network'' could not, cannot, work like a radio. According to the eggheads there would be minutes of delay, at minimum."

    Huh. Huh. That''s¡­ a good point, I hadn''t thought of that.

    "...That''s really interesting," I hum, tapping my knuckle against my chin as I think. "The other aliens act as relay points for the network, but¡­ no, the smell would still be traveling the same speed regardless of concentration or intensity, wouldn''t it? And the scents are more like data packets than discreet words, they''re very complex. I''m¡­ I''m almost certain it''s scent, though, alien olfactory organs are so dramatically more complex than any of their other senses that I don''t know what else they could possibly be using them for."

    "Alright, we''ll table that mystery for later. There are only two things that are important right now. One: freezing up in a combat zone is unacceptable. The circumstances may have been extenuating, but your squad needs you to be present in the moment. If an Angel''s mere presence is all it takes to put you out of action, you''re useless."

    I grimace. That''s a fair point. Why did I freeze up? I suppose part of it was that I was putting extra effort into ensuring everything I was saying was conscious and deliberate; I didn''t want to screw up first contact, that would just be embarrassing. Of course, since I am now thoroughly embarrassed, that won''t be a problem anymore. I think there''s more to it than that, though. Communication was a little more difficult than I''m used to. It''s like¡­ oh, wait, I''m so stupid. It''s because I was using a human-alien brain mixture, wasn''t it? Whatever part of the Angel brain that does communication probably wasn''t all there. I am kind of winging it a little when it comes to brain mixing.

    "It won''t happen again, sir," I promise. "I''m still a little new to all this, but I learn fast. It was an issue with my power that I won''t repeat."

    "I''ll hold you to that," he nods. "The second thing, then: is that Angel going to come after you again? Have you painted a target on your back, soldier?"

    My first instinct is to lie and say no, but¡­ why? It would be kind of stupid not to be honest here.

    "Quite possibly, sir," I confirm. "I don''t know if that Angel is very mad at me or very excited about me, but it''s definitely very something."

    "Good," the colonel grins viciously. "Every good trap needs bait."

    I blink. Alright, maybe I should have lied.

    What happens next flashes by me at a rapid pace, the situation growing more and more out of my control with every step. The Army continues to sweep forward with its usual protocols, but as I expected they find nothing but corpses until they reach the Queen''s domain. With our rallying points established just outside it, our army prepares to move in. It is at this point that the wing ripper squads will need to be deployed, ready to counter the inevitable assault from Angels. One of the major challenges of this is the fact that we don''t have very many experienced squads, and a given squad can only be deployed so quickly; a Queen''s domain is an enormous amount of space to cover, and Angels can often move around the battlefield very quickly, retreating before reinforcements capable of defeating them arrive.

    So naturally, the Army is very excited about the potential to know in advance where at least one Angel is going to show up. The problem, of course, is that it means I and the rest of my squad are probably going to have to survive the direct attention of an Angel for a while.

    If I''m being honest, I''d probably prefer to just not have my squad backing me up in a situation like this. Having to keep them all in my domain means that domain needs to be spread out, and therefore much weaker. It also limits my mobility, which is probably bad, and just generally gives me a lot more to focus on in a fight. Anastasia and Ed will be there to back me up¡ªstandard procedure during an Angel attack is to consolidate the squad¡ªbut of course I don''t actually want Anastasia anywhere near an Angel, regardless of how helpful she would be.

    It''s all moot, though. I naturally do not have a choice. And while I have a bit of experience killing Angels, I doubt I''ll be lucky enough to have such a favorable power matchup this time around. I''ll have to rely on the support of the wing ripper squad that will be lying in wait behind us. I hate relying on other people.

    When I finally return to my squad, I''m met with a lot of uncomfortable looks. I suppose no one likes watching the superhero whose job it is to protect you from Angels go borderline comatose at the first sign of an Angel. They probably like it a lot less when they are then told said superhero is about to become Angelbait.

    "We''re gonna die, aren''t we?" Jimenez asks me.

    "We''ll be fine," I reassure him, having no idea if I''m lying or not this time. But with morale being what it is, it''s better for him to have false hope than despair. Nearly everyone here will instantly die if they get too far away from me. I have to make sure I''m at least a somewhat reassuring presence, in that light.

    "Easy for you to say," Jazz smirks, elbowing me in the side. "The rest of us can''t put ourselves back together from vaguely human-shaped goop."

    "Nah, I''ve survived Angels before," I boast with false confidence. "Just stay close and I''ll keep you safe while the offense team handles things."

    "Listen to the kid," someone else butts in. "The best thing you can do to survive is to stay out of our way."

    I turn to meet the eyes of a fellow superhero, the leader of the wing ripper squad that will be backing us up. His name is some kind of hard-to-pronounce Irish phrase. S¨ª Gaoithe, I think. I reach out and poke his domain with my own, tasting growth, camaraderie, and the many swallowing the few. It reminds me a bit of Maria''s domain, if substantially more aggressive. He pushes back against me, and I make the conscious effort to let him inside like I would do with Anastasia, just to signal my lack of hostility. Minutely, his eyebrows raise in surprise, and he reciprocates, letting me scan his biology. Just a normal human, if a very strong one. Oh, but his brain is gonna be useful!

    "S¨ª Gaoithe," I greet him with a nod, relying on his own habits to make sure I pronounce it correctly. It''s kind of like ''she gee-ha.'' Not at all what I expected from the spelling. "It''s good to meet you. It''s a big relief to have someone so experienced backing us up."

    As I expected, managing to actually pronounce his name seems to impress him further, and I even earn myself a slight smile and nod of acknowledgment.

    "It''s good to be working with such a promising newcomer," he says. "I wasn''t informed that you were trained in domain synchronicity. That''s good information to know."

    "I wasn''t trained," I admit. "It''s just what Vermillion and I default to when we''re around each other. I''m already trusting you with my life out there, I don''t see why I can''t trust you with my life in here, too."

    He gives me another nod. For being a wing ripper so experienced that even I know his name, S¨ª Gaoithe doesn''t look very much like a superhero. He''s a fairly small man, slightly shorter than my Seraphim form and thin enough that he almost certainly would have been called ''stringy'' before the military forced him to put on some muscle. Now, I think the correct term is ''wiry.'' His muscles are drawn so tight against his bones and skin that you almost don''t even need my powers to think he looks like an anatomy diagram. His bright red hair is cut to short military standard, his face is a mess of freckles and the occasional spot of acne, and his nose is deeply crooked from what was almost certainly a bad break sometime in his past. All in all, he''s a pretty ugly man, traditionally speaking. But his power is as strong as they come.

    Full domain-range telekinesis, with the ability to simultaneously control and manipulate nearly any number of objects. Even more frightening, the act of carrying more objects doesn''t make his power harder to use¡ªit actually makes him stronger. The more things he''s moving at once, the more strength and speed his telekinesis gets. The only known upper limit to this is the fact that he eventually becomes so powerful that he starts crushing everything he''s holding on to without even trying, dropping it all when it gets too small.

    "If you and Vermillion can synchronize, then your first priority when the Angel comes at us is to link up and reinforce each other''s domains. Angels have all kinds of nasty tricks to get through your defenses. Be ready for both tangible and intangible threats at any time."

    "Yes sir," I nod seriously, and he nods back, seemingly satisfied.

    "Good. Respond quickly to any orders I give you and your squad will make it out alive."

    He walks off, probably to talk to Ed and Anastasia, while I and my team finish getting ready. Soon enough, we will be heading back into a Queen''s domain. I wonder what it will be like, after all this time.

    I don''t have to wait long to find out. The Queen sits on the west side of the Mississippi River, draped over the city of St. Louis like a pile of rotting spaghetti. She looks a lot smaller than the Chicago Queen at a glance, who was more of an enormous, ever-present tumor on the horizon. But between her countless tendrils snaking in and around the buildings and landscape, it''s much less practical trying to figure out the size of the Queen of Blasphemy. With how spread out she is, though, we''ll run into some of her tendrils long before we push deep into the city. I have to wonder how she''ll react to that, and if I might be able to scan some of her biological information. The thought is uncomfortably exciting.

    First things first, though. The Queen''s domain extends over the river and about half a mile past the east bank, forcing us to push into and over an area where our enemy will be at its strongest. Humans are not particularly adept at fighting underwater, and even without enough space for Leviathans, the aliens have no such weakness. There is simply no way to effectively sweep an entire body of water that is protected by a Queen''s domain. Inevitably, we will be ambushed when we cross and we will be flanked from behind after pushing past. All we can do is minimize the risk as much as possible. Which means, of course, offloading most of the risk to me.

    "Ready to take a dip, Seraphim?" my team lead jokes, flashing me a nervous smile.

    The aliens have no need for bridges, so they''re all smashed. We have to cross the thing in amphibious vehicles, each super protecting a transport. For most supers, that means they get to ride along. For me, though, I''ll be a lot more effective underneath the boat.

    The aliens themselves are amphibious, so their pheromone network presumably works underwater. I''m not entirely sure how, but I''ll just add that to the list of questions and accept it for now. The point is, I think I can probably act as an early warning system in conjunction with the sonar, and even if I can''t I''m just generally going to be a lot more capable of killing stuff in the water if I can reach it. Bullets can only go so deep.

    "Almost," I say. "I''m flesh bubbling if you want to look away."

    Nearly everyone other than Jimenez does so immediately, but I don''t wait to envelop myself and all my gear to swallow it into storage before emerging as a sleek fish woman. The body is embarrassingly unoptimized; I just haven''t really done much amphibious training, so lacking a better idea on how to move underwater I''ve mostly just given myself organic diving flippers and made my body as sleek as possible to reduce drag, with the exception of the tentacles I have growing out of my back that I''m going to use to attach myself to the bottom of the boat.

    I have to make sure the whole thing remains in my domain, after all, so maneuverability isn''t really the goal here, anyway. Realistically, I need to turn myself into some kind of organic weapons platform, something with enough reach to intercept any approaching monsters and enough weight to actually stop them before they try to breach or board the boat. But of course, I can''t make myself too big, or the drag will stop the boat from efficiently crossing the river. I wonder what the best way to attack underwater even is? I suppose I''ll need to grab on to things, maybe with large jaws on the ends of limbs? But that isn''t a super efficient way to kill. What about venom? Do I have any examples of venom that will work on alien biology? Damn it, I should have looked into all this stuff before, I just never have any time!

    That trend doesn''t change today. I have to hop in the water and attach myself to the boat before I can finish optimizing my plan, but I suppose that''s alright. Restrictions enhance creativity, and all that. With all my tactical gear consumed except for the underwater radio I''ll be using to signal if something is up, I latch myself to the underside of our ride and settle in to cross the river. It''s wide, but it''s not that wide, so at the very least I won''t have to deal with all of this for long.

    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

    I open my senses, hooking myself up to a Raptor brain to best interpret them. Yeah, there are aliens in here alright. And they''re definitely going to try to kill us. It would be bad to draw in an Angel while we''re still crossing the water, so I stay silent, waiting for the enemy to come to us while I shift my body into a longer and longer series of tentacles, ready to latch on to my prey and not let go until their demise.

    As I had a feeling might be the case, the pheromone system does indeed work underwater, partially in defiance of the water''s current. I can still smell some of the aliens downriver from me, which almost certainly isn''t how smell normally works. I''m not complaining, though, and I quickly send the predetermined radio code for an incoming attack before reaching out my many arms to engage the enemy.

    Raptors are just as fast underwater as they are out of it. The first few dodge around my tentacles, more used to swimming than I am with catching, but I can always grow more tentacles to even the odds. With my domain covering the ship itself, my squad is only in moderate amounts of danger as the Raptors I miss leap onto the deck and try to stab something. Gunshots ring out, muffled from all the way down here, but I can feel the enemies on the deck fill with holes and die.

    We had to shoot a few enemies on approach, as well, and during that I saw what happens when the bullet leaves my power radius. It''s¡­ weird. The Queen in Chicago was fairly straightforward¡ªit cut things. When a bullet (or a person) left the protection of a domain it got shredded into pieces so small they became unrecognizable. The dust formerly known as bullets rapidly decelerated into harmlessness from the air resistance and that was that. Something similar happens here, but rather than merely cut the bullets are¡­ changed.

    Blooming outwards, the metal opens into fractal branches the instant it leaves its protective domain, expanding into a thin mess of lines that looks more or less like a tumbleweed made of foam. It decelerates like a balloon shot out of a cannon, collapsing harmlessly against anything it actually manages to impact after the change.

    The Queen''s domain is heavy against my own, not trying to crush me or demand my death but instead pressing gently, rubbing around the outside and carefully inspecting for the tiniest crack it could use to leak in. It''s a corrupting influence, an ooze hungry for the chance to devour reality and shift it into some twisted mirror of what it once was.

    A haze settles over my mind as I focus my thoughts on the fight for the boat, tapping into the unnatural focus of alien minds to push away everything but my task. A dozen Raptors die by my hand before we finally make landfall on the west bank, and once we do I have to quickly change form and return to dry land, forming up with my squad to intercept the defending forces on the shore.

    I surface, spotting multiple Behemoths charging our position with Raptors backing them up. There''s no time to get all my gear; I inflate my arm, form my gun inside it, shift a new hand around the grip, and let the bubble of flesh pop as I push my domain forward and let the bullets fly.

    Unfortunately, the effective range of our weapons has dropped to a pathetic thirty feet; I''m not comfortable with expanding my domain an inch more with the Queen waiting to pour inside. Alien corpses fall one after another, but there''s no way for us to stop the entire swarm. The aliens of Blasphemy are much thicker and stockier than those of Division, with greater strength and resilience and less emphasis on oversized blades. A Behemoth gets too close, our bullets absorbed into its thick skin and failing to penetrate anything vital, so I swallow my gun and shapeshift into an elephant, matching its charge with a headbutt. Multiple bullets aimed at the Behemoth end up sinking into me, but I swallow them too and return to human size now that the enemy has been halted. This close, a bullet finally scores a hit deep enough to disable one of the Behemoth''s legs, and it dies shortly after.

    "Warn us, Seraphim!" my squad leader barks.

    "Taking point! If you''re going to shoot me, avoid the head!" I shout back.

    "Okay!?"

    I spit a new magazine out of my mouth and quickly load it into my gun, stepping forward to kick a Raptor before it can stab me. I need a better body for this. The human form is very good at fighting simply because it can hold a gun, and guns are very dangerous. I still need to be able to do that, but I need to be larger. If I don''t match the Behemoths in mass, I can''t stop them when they get close.

    Well, I guess there''s an easy way to match enemy Behemoths in mass. I shift into one, honestly preferring their bulky, practical template over the spindly Division ones quite a bit. My legs are thick, with crystalline growths that act more like hooves than blades. This is the body of a living tank, and I rise up on it, my humanoid form attached from the waist up on top of its back so I can still rain down lead.

    To help people shoot me less, I''ve also conveniently color-coded my body to match the military''s preferred shade of green. Hopefully the fact that I''m stomping Raptors flat and acting as an elevated gun turret will also help people determine what side I''m on, but who knows?

    From up here, I can see Anastasia''s and Ed''s squads, each fighting just as hard as my own. One of Ed''s men gets stabbed and just shrugs it off, the blade failing to draw blood before a rifle butt to the head caves in the Raptor''s skeleton. They aren''t quite as lucky when a Raptor gets their maw around a man''s arm, but the wound probably isn''t lethal. Ed flinches as the man gets bit, like he felt it himself. Maybe he did.

    Anastasia''s side of things, of course, is a whirlwind of death. Her soldiers barely even have to do anything, a storm of her blood creating a barrier so impenetrable I feel an Angel order their troops to stop even trying to attack her, redirecting them down the battle lines to try and find a weakness elsewhere.

    Then the enemy forces start to emerge from the river.

    We were prepared for this, for a certain definition of prepared. What could we do? Drop depth charges down the entire length of the Mississippi? Our rear-facing gun emplacements light up, having been waiting for this moment, but now the real battle has started.

    My heart pounds as a rain of gunfire pours over the eerily silent aliens, my vantage point letting me see soldiers getting overrun and impaled well down the length of the river. But the bodies of our enemies pile up far higher. There''s no way we''ll lose this, not until the Angels descend.

    "Push forward!" our commander orders, and we do as we''re told, the ambush from behind rapidly petering out after the initial attack. We''re in the thick of things now. Protecting our flanks is going to be difficult from here on out, as the Queen can feel every bubble of domain inside her own and direct troops accordingly, slipping Raptors past when we aren''t paying attention. I can listen in on any orders traveling near me, but this is a very large battlefield.

    Not to mention, the orders coming in are¡­ different than before. Simpler, quieter. The aliens have adapted to the idea that we can listen in on them remarkably quickly, but I suppose they''re probably used to warring with others of their kind. I can still tap the communications¡ªthey don''t have any kind of scrambling or encoding¡ªbut there''s a degree of care that wasn''t present before, and the amount of information I''m getting out of it is dramatically less.

    Which is¡­ weird, right? If they knew how to do this, why not always do it? Opsec doesn''t work if you only practice it after an information breach. Are they just bad at war? They''ve been kicking our butts for years now, so that would be embarrassing if so.

    "All units be advised, we have confirmed Angel movement towards sector nine. Confirmed Angel movement towards sector nine."

    Yeah that''s where I am. Of course that''s where I am. I just had to go and make myself seem interesting to the crazy extradimensional zealots.

    "Squad three, form up!" our sergeant shouts, and I don''t do anything because everyone else is supposed to form up around me. I shrink back down to human size, forming my gear inside my body and hatching out of the egg of flesh fully dressed and indistinguishable from any other human. Hopefully.

    "Still weird!" Jazz tells me, though the genuine disgust from before has been replaced mostly with teasing.

    "You''re just jealous of my superpower-sculpted ass," I joke.

    "Only when you have one!"

    "Target spotted, two o''clock!" another member of my squad shouts, and the banter ends instantly, heads swiveling up to the sky. I spot the Angel, enhancing my vision to pick up on the details of its appearance from afar. It looks like some kind of horrific flying spider the size of a human being, a thin body with eight limbs dangling down as it buzzes towards our location with Wasp-like wings. The front two legs are long and bladed while the back two legs are relatively short, tucked up against the monster''s stubby tail. Its sideways-opening mouth drips with acid.

    Anastasia''s and Ed''s team forms up with our own, configuring to ensure everyone is covered with as tight and dense a domain as possible. Anastasia and I synchronize, giving each other a determined nod before she shifts her attention to double-checking her gun. Ed just gives me a grin and a thumbs-up, his domain pressed firmly against mine to empower both of us from the resonance.

    "Where are you, little native? We''ll be ever so sad if you''ve failed to attend your banquet!" the Angel calls out. I take a deep breath.

    "Drawing in the enemy," I report.

    "Wouldn''t miss it," I answer at the same time. "Please show me to the meal."

    "It''s all around you!" the Angel laughs, and then they start rapidly accelerating.

    "S¨ª Gaoithe to Seraphim, a second Angel has engaged our position. Reinforcements will be delayed, over."

    What!?

    "S¨ª Gaoithe, the target will be in range in under thirty seconds, over!"

    "We''ll get to you as quickly as we can. You''ll have to handle it until then, wing ripper. S¨ª Gaoithe out."

    "Well, fuck!" Jazz swears.

    "Ed, Ana, can you cover the squad if I draw it away!?" I shout out.

    "Who the fuck authorized you to draw it away!?" my sergeant snaps at me.

    "I don''t have any room to move if I''m busy protecting you!" I tell him. "I''ll be fine, the damn thing doesn''t even want to kill me!"

    "The hell you mean it doesn''t want to kill you!?"

    "Are you hiding among your lessers, native? Ha! How delightfully profane!"

    It''s here. It''s already here. How the hell did it start moving that fast? Is that part of its power?

    "Well, I suppose I''ll just take a guess then! Are you¡­ this one?"

    I feel something strike my domain, thin and piercing, a needle the length of a spear. It''s more than dense enough to skewer its way through my stretched-out domain, even with Ed''s resonance effect powering me up, just because it''s so small. The Angel shot its domain like a projectile, skewering one of my squadmates from shoulder to leg. It feels like a river of oozing pus rushing upstream, disgusting and upsetting merely for the sake of it.

    And then, I realize my squadmate is dead.

    Time seems to slow as that thought hits my consciousness. The man''s heart still beats, at least for the next split-second. But I failed. An enemy domain got in my range, dense enough to overcome my defenses. It all happened so fast. To do this, the Angel must have sacrificed all their own defenses, dropped all protections their domain grants them in order to launch it out at a range, all to be sure of one swift kill.

    And then the domain retreats, carrying a thin line of my squadmate''s flesh with it like someone put a finger over the hole of a straw and pulled it out of a drink. My squadmate''s corpse falls, and the bullets we send at the Angel simply never make it, the Queen''s domain still rendering them useless from this far away. The Angel scrapes its forelegs together with satisfaction, hovering tauntingly above our heads.

    "Reciprocation. Failure. Possibility. All working together! How very wonderful. Of the three, I can only imagine you must be one of Possibility''s favorite toys. It is rare for the eldest to grant its gifts! Rarer still is our chance to grant it anguish. We shall enjoy sealing off your future, little native."

    "I am going to kill you," I huff back.

    "Ooh! Violence for violence! Perhaps you are Reciprocation''s after all? Let''s see!"

    Shit.

    "Ana, look out!" I shout, but I quickly see I needn''t have bothered; my little warrior dodges to the side, the ground kicking up dirt where she was standing moments before as the bolt of domain impacts and does¡­ whatever the domain does. Grabs things? Some kind of telekinesis, maybe?

    "You, then!" the Angel determines with glee, the spear of domain twisting towards me. On instinct, I shrink my domain to keep it out, to block it away, and at the edge of my radius a soldier''s arm is exposed to the power of the Queen. In an instant, his flesh shifts, as his glove and the sleeve of his clothes turn to liquid and melt into a pool at his feet. I cover him back up as quickly as I can as I dodge out of the way of the spear, but the damage is already done.

    It''s¡­ hellish. The arm feels more like a deadly parasite to my power than an actual part of the man''s body, despite the fact that the two are still connected. His skin is a solid mass of hardened material, locking his limb down like a cast, but it sorely needs the support as his bones have been reduced to a wobbling jelly, the marrow within pumping poison instead of fresh cells into his bloodstream.

    Oh, shit.

    "Cut his arm off!" I shout. "Ana! Amputate him!"

    She doesn''t hesitate, her domain entering mine and quickly slicing him free from the mutation at the shoulder. The already-screaming man collapses in agony, but someone on my team picks him up and carries him towards Ed, causing the bleeding to rapidly clot.

    Beside me, another man dies as the Angel rips a line of flesh out of his heart.

    "Shit! Aren''t you supposed to be protecting us!?" someone shouts.

    "He''s leaving himself open to do this!" I protest. "I''m telling you, Sarge, you have to let me take the fight to him! I''m the only one here that can fly!"

    "God, fucking¡­ fine! But you''d better not die, Seraphim, or I''m kicking your ass in hell after the brass sends me there!"

    "Take me with you!" Anastasia demands, and haha no fucking way!

    "I need you to protect everyone, Ana! Stay here, I''ll be fine!"

    "Come on, everyone, form in tighter!"

    "There are so many of you natives! So much power distributed among you! But none of you know how to use it!"

    As we try to converge so I can safely engage, the Angel''s domain snakes past us and passes through the man carrying Ed in three different places, yanking out more flesh and leaving them both collapsed on the ground. One of Ed''s other men immediately rushes to quickly release the harness holding him and pick him up, but he, too, is killed on the way.

    With each death, Ed''s domain flares. The horrible Failure his god had been anticipating has come to pass, granted so graciously by Blasphemy''s hated spawn. The Angel radiates irritation, and Ed¡­ he stands up.

    I can''t help but stare a little in shock. I can feel him in my domain now, and biologically he should still be paralyzed below the waist. But somehow, in some horrible way, I understand. The alien brain I''m using finds it almost obvious. His power wasn''t just to empower others. It does do that, of course. It is an aegis of life, a promise of victory, and a radius of protection. It is all these things so that its true power can be unleashed when they fail.

    "Careless of me," the Angel admonishes itself, its domain rushing back up into the sky as Ed''s blooms forward, forming a tunnel to the target. Ed reaches down, grabs the gun of the man who had carried him all this way, and with his perpetual smile finally gone he fires down the tube of his own sovereign territory. The bullets reach, the Angel losing two whole limbs from the spray of automatic fire, held firm and accurate in spite of the recoil, before it manages to escape back into its Queen''s territory.

    But once it is high enough again, I can already tell it''s going to resume the attack.

    "Seraphim to St. Louis Control, we''re receiving heavy casualties from the enemy Angel. Detaching from my squad to engage in powered combat. Any estimate on reinforcement ETA? over."

    "Acknowledged, Seraphim. Reinforcements are still tied up, you''re on your own out there. Tear them till they fall."

    "Roger wilco, Control. Seraphim out."

    I start to shift, shoving as much power into my legs as I''m physically able before making a straight vertical leap, shrinking midair into a barely organic mass of aerodynamic bone to ride the momentum as high as I can. I''m not great at flying; I don''t have much practice. But I''ll need to make it work.

    I shift into a streamlined Wasp before I start to fall, adjusting the body as much as I can on the fly to discard the parts I don''t need and enhance the parts I do. Rocketing upwards as fast as I can, the Angel makes one more stab through me with their domain, but I''ve shrunk my own into a purely defensive cover along the edges of my body. When it moves through me, my flesh isn''t torn clear out of a hole in my side, but I can still feel the power try, a gravity-like force wrapping around a thin tube of my innards and yanking me in a direction that distinctly isn''t down.

    I stumble in the air, spinning upside-down and ruining my flight, but I shift into a cat, right myself, and grow right back into a Wasp to continue my ascent. Ugh, this form is so bulky I can probably just attach these wings to the back of my Seraphim form and fly just as well, swapping out feathered wings for functional ones. I make the shift. It actually works. Nice.

    "Come then, Possibility''s toy!" the Angel laughs, seeming largely unbothered by the fluids leaking out of their shot-off limbs. "Let us engage in a harmonious exchange of our cultures! Teach me so many more values to profane!"

    "Oh, gladly. I have a divine command I''m already planning to violate all over your ass."

    "You will tell me!" the Angel states. Not orders.

    "Sure I will, buddy," I confirm. The Wasp parts of my brain want acid glands, so I remove one of my hands and form them at the end of one arm for flexible aim. "It''s an easy one: thou shalt not kill."

    The world shudders around me. The ground trembles. The air becomes naught but mirth. The Angels are laughing, and so is their Queen.

    "We like it!" they praise me, and I swallow an urge to shudder.

    "Yeah. Figured you would."

 37. Observe My Disregard

    I wish I had a better plan than just ''gain altitude.''

    My borrowed instincts insist that it is an important first step, and the logic is sound. Acid spit isn''t pressurized enough to fight gravity for long, nor is it particularly aerodynamic. This is a bomb, not a bullet or missile. Wasps are slow enough that acid spit can be used in air-to-air combat, but only from an altitude advantage. My opponent is a lot faster than a Wasp, and therefore currently a lot faster than me, but if I can get gravity on my side I should have plenty of bird forms that can hypothetically pick up enough speed to close the distance with this Angel and put them out of my misery.

    Unfortunately, the Angel knows this, so they are simply also gaining altitude, and I have no idea what to do about that. I am outclassed in both skill and physiological design, which is really annoying, but what other choice do I have? I need to find some way to bait the Angel into making a bad move and allowing me an opening. I don''t deserve this win, so I need to fight dirty.

    The Angel vomits out a glob of acid, forcing me to dodge to the side, but a burst of excitement from them has me immediately regretting the decision. My squad is still below me! Anastasia is forced to block the shot with a shield of her own blood, which is rapidly eaten through and rendered useless, draining her supply. Shit, I need to get away and draw the Angel¡­ no. They wouldn''t even follow me, would they? They would make a point of killing the rest of my squad first, just for fun.

    My enemy shoots again, and they''re even more delighted to see me take it head-on this time. God this fucking hurts. Worse, even with my ability to rapidly reform the damaged areas, I still lose a lot of height. This isn''t sustainable, but what else can I do? Ana is going to run out of blood long before the Angel runs out of acid, but I can''t defend her and attack at the same time.

    "So unnervingly uncommunicative," the Angel sends between bursts of entertained joy. "Will you not at least share your pain and injury? Inform me the degree to which you suffer."

    Why does this jerk jabber so much while they''re fighting? Ugh, I know the answer to that. It''s partially because they''re a freak, but mostly because constantly projecting everything on their minds is pretty normal for aliens. Despite the fact that I''m an enemy combatant, this Angel fully expects me to obey their orders to chat, because that''s just what aliens do. The concept of privacy is barely even acknowledged in their culture, and usually isn''t considered to be possible.

    So¡­ I could probably just lie, right?

    "Not at all," I tell them. "This aggression is irrelevant to me."

    "Confusing. Your actions indicate a desire for their continued survival."

    "Observe my disregard," I respond, twisting around and firing my acid cannon directly at Anastasia. Her eyes widen as the shot accelerates towards her, but then a grin lights up her face. The projectile reaches the edge of her domain and halts in the air, the enormous glob of her own blood that I just loaded my weapon with having successfully reached its target. That should be more than enough to defend against the remaining ground troops.

    "¡­That payload appears to be exclusively beneficial," the Angel remarks, seeming irritated.

    "You have assembled this belief exclusively through ignorance," I brazenly gaslight them. "Your intelligence is lacking and your aesthetics are displeasing to the eye."

    The Angel gets substantially more irritated, which is hopefully a good thing because it''s part of my plan now.

    "Contradiction," they accuse angrily.

    "I am not performing a contradiction," I gaslight them some more. "You are simply performing a failure."

    "Insolence!"

    "Negative. Observation."

    They furiously fire another acid glob in my direction, which I comfortably dodge by shifting into a bird and swooping out of the line of fire, making rapid distance and hoping my taunts are enough to get the Angel to follow. Thankfully, they do, allowing me to make the necessary space to safely ascend to their altitude. Or so I thought, but the moment my bird form starts outspeeding what the Angel should be capable of, the damn thing folds its wings and starts flying without using them, accelerating towards my position frighteningly quickly.

    Okay, change of plans! There''s no way I can outmaneuver this thing in the air, but now that I''m away from my squad I might be able to force it to engage on the ground. I''m not super worried about getting swarmed by Raptors when I rush into a building; frankly, as long as I can eat their corpses fast enough, it''s unlikely that they''ll remove more of my biomass than they replenish. Wasp acid and superpowers are the only two things that I''m actually worried about chewing through my reserves, and while the Angel unfortunately has both, most of the alien ground troops have neither.

    I swoop towards a window, remind my bird brain that windows are still solid at the last second, and quickly shift into an armadillo before impacting the glass, mostly as a panic pick. The organic armor plates aren''t anywhere near as effective as I was hoping they''d be, and I still shatter nearly all of my bones when I hit the floor, but those are both mild problems at worst. I rise into my humanoid combat form as I shapeshift away the damage, sniffing for nearby enemies.

    Luckily, the house smells empty. I quickly head for the kitchen by force of habit, opening up the cupboard and surprisingly finding quite a bit of food still in it, though most of it has been ransacked or rotted. The canned foods are almost entirely untouched, though. I get that a Raptor would probably struggle to use a can opener, but they could probably just bite them open. I guess they haven''t bothered. Well, waste not want not.

    I drop a cylinder of tomato soup concentrate down my throat as I listen for the telltale hiss of acid eating through the ceiling. A new plan bubbles slowly up in my mind, pieces of the puzzle coming together to assemble a flowchart to victory. Step 1: Hide out in one of the copious nearby buildings. 1a: The Angel follows me to fight me mano a mano. I eat them or something. (I''m just sort of hoping and assuming that I can succeed if I manage to get the fight on my own terms, but I can worry about that when I get there.) 1b: The Angel refuses to follow me and instead vomits acid to destroy my cover. At this point, I simply retreat to more cover and repeat Step 1 until the alien engages in melee or runs out of vomit. As long as I keep them angry enough that they don''t just leave and do something else, there''s no way I''ll run out of buildings before they run out of spit.

    A steady noise above me creaks and groans, indicating that we are dealing with a 1b situation. It doesn''t quite sound like how I''d expect acid to sound, but instead more like the house is being caught in a windstorm and the wood is straining to remain in place. ¡­Yeah, this is probably not good. Should I exit to figure out what''s going on, or do I just¡ª

    With a wood-tearing snap, my answer is chosen for me. The roof of the house I''m hiding in rips itself off its foundations and accelerates into the sky, passing by the Angel before ultimately tumbling back down to the ground on the other side of the street. I quickly dodge to the side as another glob of acid gets fired my way, but the projectile swerves in midair and hits me in the chest anyway. I drop every part of my body that got struck, quickly reforming it and ducking behind the broken remains of a wall to block the next shot. What the hell!? Does this thing just have telekinesis? What''s blasphemous about fucking telekinesis!?

    "You flee, but you do not let me taste your fear!" the Angel sneers. "Must you ruin the happy day this was to be?"

    "Yeah, I do that a lot," I tell them. "I was infamously unfun at celebrations until I figured out how to be unobtrusive."

    "That is not an enjoyable sadness," the Angel responds, actually seeming like they''re empathizing? Which is not where I thought this conversation was going to go.

    "What can I say? When people start falling out of the sky and slowly driving your species to extinction, life tends to get a little sad. If you don''t like it, you can always stop killing us."

    "I decline your proposal, though once again offer you a haven within the pull of Blasphemy, after the elimination of all you once knew and worshiped," the Angel responds, hucking another deadly glob of flesh-eating liquid at my face.

    Sorry dude, I''m just a cynic, not an outright contrarian. That''s a solid no-go.

    "I reject the self-destructive farce you call Blasphemy," I tell him. "I worship nothing and no one. There are values which ought to be profaned, but profanity itself is not a value. It is a zealotry of the very breed that you deride, and I have no patience for the hypocrisy of your devotion. I will support any who support me and blaspheme any who stand in my way, be they Possibility or Blasphemy itself. I do not care that you reject the gods. I never acknowledged them in the first place. Now cease breathing at me, and die."

    Silence, or at least the olfactory equivalent of it. Even the rain of acid halts as I finish my response. I don''t have time to get comfortable, though, because the air soon fills with incandescent rage.

    "Wasp squadrons, ascend. Groups three, five, seven to my position."

    I spit out my radio.

    "Seraphim to Control, Wasps are on the move, over."

    "Acknowledged, Seraphim. Please confirm your status, over."

    "Still engaging the Angel. Power appears to be some kind of versatile telekinesis, notable Strike and Transit, possibly Artillery. Ripped a roof off of a damn building. Armor rating unknown; they haven''t let me get close so far, but Leonidas clipped them with a shot while they were focusing their power elsewhere. Over."

    "You''re too far forward for reinforcements, Seraphim," Control informs me. "A power like that will crush any birds we try to send your way. You have permission to disengage. Over."

    I hesitate. Wouldn''t that just reset the situation to where it was before¡­?

    "I can continue delaying this target, Control," I tell them, ducking to avoid another splash of acid. "They''re good and mad. Anywhere I run to, they''re going to follow. Over."

    "Acknowledged, Seraphim. Be advised that the enemy has the sky."

    Boy do they. A buzzing roar fills my ears as Wasps hidden around the city rise into the sky, assembling into formations to begin their bombing runs.

    "Understood. Seraphim out."

    Wasps occupy an irritating corner of this particular game of Rock Paper Scissors Gun. Helicopters beat Wasps. Angels beat helicopters. And while I hopefully beat Angels, Wasps beat me. Even without their powers, this Angel is annoying because they can fly and spit acid. Even if I can beat a Wasp one-on-one, what about one-on-five? One-on-ten? One-on-fifty? I''ll be out of places to dodge and out of biomass faster than you can say ''Br?nsted¨CLowry.''

    So what do I do? The Angel has me beat in the skies, but I clearly can''t do much to them from the ground. I might be able to outmaneuver Wasps and prevent them from ganging up on me, but there''s no reason to believe the Angel can''t just accelerate them directly at me the same way they have with themselves and everything else. Come on, what tools do I have at my disposal? I need to figure something out!

    I regrow my wings, inflating one arm to summon my gun as well. Detaching my domain from my body like the Angel does would be doubly stupid; if it didn''t already cause my brain to stop functioning the Queen would certainly be happy to help me with that. Still, I might be able to take advantage of the trick where they shape their domain into something long and thin in order to create a firing line. And even if not, well¡­

    The Angel spits at me as I rise into the air, and I respond with a burst of bullets. The projectiles inflate into rapidly crumbling foam tumbleweeds as the Queen''s power inverts them on some weird conceptual level, and while this makes them terrible projectiles they serve as adequate shields. The acid eats through them in moments, but they halt its momentum in the process, giving me a much broader window to get out of the way.

    The Queen could almost certainly choose not to corrupt my projectiles at basically any time, of course, so I always make sure to aim them at my enemy just in case she wants to try and help out.

    Altitude is still a problem, of course. I can''t make up the difference in maneuverability by just trying really hard (and isn''t that the story of my life), which means I have no choice but to lean on the one skill¡ªI suppose it would be more accurate to call it a ''natural talent''¡ªthat I''ve tried to avoid using for most of my life.

    Pissing people the hell off.

    Alien brains are noticeably less emotional than human brains, which is why I like them so much. It''s much easier to remain in a rational mindset during high-stress situations when using them. Some aliens barely even feel certain emotions at all, like Raptors and fear. But Angels are different. Raptors have a neutered fear response because they are designed to react quickly and immediately to orders no matter how suicidal. Angels, on the other hand, are significant investments. Whatever method is used to create them, they''re clearly a rare commodity, and as a result they need to be able to preserve their own well-being above that of others. That''s what fear is good for, so they can feel it. I''m not totally clear on what anger is supposed to be good for¡ªzealotry, I presume¡ªbut if you want to erode someone''s rationalism and self-preservation, that''s the emotion to focus on, and boy howdy have I proven Angels can get mad.

    "That is quite a lot of help to summon just for me," I muse. "You feel rage, but you should feel shame. You are pathetic. Blasphemy weeps at your orthodoxy."

    "There is no need for a shame that I will wash away with your blood," the Angel silently howls.

    "But there will be no blood, and certainly not for you. You gather your lessers to fight me, because even with your gifts, they exceed you."

    Without warning, I feel the Angel''s domain suddenly surround me. I keep my own tight against my body, ready to ward off intrusion, but the power suffuses the air around me until a sense of sudden vertigo twists me around in the sky, my body tumbling into a spiraling freefall as my wings suddenly start to beat the wrong way. I''m falling! How did¡ª

    A building''s roof passes by underneath me, and I realize I''m not falling towards the ground, but parallel to it. Then, my body exits the Angel''s domain, and I am once again forced to right myself as gravity returns to the proper direction.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    Gravity? Not telekinesis? Well, I suppose they accomplish the same thing in practice, at least in a broad sense. The Angel isn''t picking things up so much as violently causing them to fall in a direction of their choosing.

    I can work with that.

    "Are you quite certain you are a Blasphemer?" I ask. "The evidence appears to indicate you worship the god of Failure."

    Their response is wordless fury, along with¡­ amusement? But not from my Angel. My taunts have started to get my foe''s own allies to laugh at them. Perfect. I feel another tug of gravity take hold, this one yanking me in a different direction, so I shift into a bird, tuck in my wings, and let myself dive sideways.

    A swarm of Wasps are in position, waiting for me. Well, that''s another good opportunity for an insult. I do my best to weave around them as I speed by, avoiding any direct collisions with their bodies but still getting splattered with a couple globs of acid. I slough off my epidermis, regrowing my feathers mid-flight.

    "I detect denial. Apologies for the mistake. Upon further review, you obviously worship Legion."

    The Angel''s power flings me towards the ground, but birds are famously good at ignoring that particular problem and I''ve built up quite a bit of speed. Snapping my wings out, I launch myself outside the Angel''s domain, getting more distance before beginning to circle my target in a wide arc.

    "Had I known your true allegiance," I continue to taunt, "I would not have come out all this way to fight you alone. But clearly, your god prefers that you outnumber your foe."

    The abject fury of my target builds, and the surrounding amusement of their peers does too. I''ve inadvertently started a show, the Queen''s gaze heavy on my wings. Again, I am thrown around by gravity, but this time it''s not towards any reinforcing units. Just one last push.

    "Come, you who claim to love Blasphemy. Is that unique body of yours so weak that you cannot profane me yourself?"

    With one final tug, gravity shifts and multiplies manyfold, finally yanking me in the one direction I''ve been waiting for this entire time: directly towards my target.

    And I haven''t just shifted into any bird. I''m a peregrine falcon.

    By the time the Angel realizes their mistake, I''m already going too fast. Though a quick reversal of gravity slows me considerably before impact, I still finally make contact, slamming into my target''s body dead-on. The extreme difference in current mass means that I may as well be impacting a brick wall, and my avian body just about splatters on impact, my brain briefly blacking out before I reshift the entire structure, twisting my shattered limbs into tentacles and wrapping the Angel tighter and tighter as I gain more and more weight.

    Gravity splits between us, the Angel''s body being pulled one way while my body gets pulled in the other, but I hold on tight and just allow my rapidly-increasing mass to force the Angel to fall in my direction. After all, they can no longer do anything but fall: I have my limbs wrapped so tightly around their wings that the frail things have long since broken. And the larger I get, the more muscle I can add.

    "No!" The Angel shrieks. "No! You!"

    They try to spit acid at my flesh, uncaring that they''d be caught in the burn as well, but my domain worms its way into their body and tells me exactly where to puncture the glands. A blade grows on one of my arms and drives itself deep into the Angel''s chest, detaching while the acid leaks out with abandon.

    "I''ll kill you!" The Angel howls.

    "If that is your goal, I must have been right the first time," I answer. "You clearly worship Failure."

    I make another blade, a larger blade, and thrust it into the Angel to puncture their hydraulic pressure tank. The explosive release of fluid tears an even larger hole in their body, and the hold their domain has on gravity crumbles along with my enemy''s consciousness. We fall back towards the Earth, impacts shaking us as we crash through a wall and bounce off of the ground. I ride the body the whole way down, using them to cushion my landing.

    And then we stop, the only sound is my own breathing.

    "Report: this unit (Thief of Divine Love) is dead."

    Dead. Dead! I can''t stop my body from making the celebratory shift into a new template, and frankly, I don''t particularly want to. The Angel of Blasphemy''s instincts light up in my mind, the communications suffusing the air suddenly gaining that much more nuance.

    Ah, yes. I should also make my report, as well.

    "Report: this unit (Thief of Torn Wings) is victorious."

    The air churns in tumultuous answer.

    "So noted."

    "So noted."

    "So noted."

    "SO NOTED! PROPOSAL TO COUNCIL: MAY THE THIEF OF TORN WINGS BE CONSIDERED AN ALLY TO BLASPHEMY, AND SO BE GRANTED ARMISTICE WITHIN WAR."

    "Agreed."

    "Agreed."

    "Agreed!"

    "Agreed."

    "AFFIRMED. WELCOME, THIEF OF TORN WINGS. WE GRANT YOU REST THAT YOU MAY ENJOY THE FRUITS OF YOUR VICTORY."

    What? What the hell!? I shift back to my Seraphim form to recover at least a little bit of human brain to feel less insane with as I figure out what the fuck is going on here. My heart hammers like a drum, my breaths heavy from adrenaline.

    "Confusion? But thank you, I think?"

    "YOU ARE AND SHALL ALWAYS BE FOREVER MOST WELCOME!"

    Oh. Okay. Shit. I don''t know whether or not it''s a good thing to be beloved by Blasphemy, but I''ll take it I guess? A reprieve is¡­ nice. Ah, I''m still standing on a corpse, I should get off of it maybe. The damage I dealt to them has the body leaking all over, a puddle of blood and hydraulic fluid spreading out from the enormous hole blown through their side, exposing ravaged organs. Should I eat them? Do I have time to? My reserves are a lot lower after that fight, but I could keep going if necessary.

    ¡­Is it necessary. Okay Julietta, calm down and think. I fought the Angel, got it away from my squad, and killed it. What am I supposed to be doing now? Ah! Right. I need to tell Command about all of this.

    I spit out my radio, turn it on, and hear¡­ nothing. It and my entire helmet are corroded to hell, eaten away by acid. Crap. Is all of my gear¡­? I vomit out my stuff and find none of it to be in usable condition, not even the gun. Did I eat some of that Angel''s acid without even thinking about it? When did I do that? Not that much got in my mouth.

    Well, whatever. It''s time to head back to base, or maybe just find Anastasia. Anyone with a radio, I guess, but Anastasia would be preferable. I stretch out the phantom soreness from my wings as I walk around. Where the hell am I, anyway? I am¡­ a lot farther away from the fighting than I thought.

    I suppose that''s what happens when you''re thrown around by superpowers for the better part of ten minutes. I guess I should get walking. I could just fly back, and maybe I will, but I just kind of feel the need to have solid ground beneath my feet for a little while. That was¡­ a lot.

    I killed my second Angel. Wow. Well, I''m definitely not getting assigned to a normal squad again, that''s for sure. I wander down the street, marveling at the surrounding destruction. We were moving sideways very fast when the Angel finally lost consciousness. I think we might have crashed into the wall of that house, judging by the enormous hole in it. I''m hungry. Maybe I should turn back and eat that¡ªwait.

    Who the hell is that?

    Through the torn-open wall of the partially destroyed house, I can see a small dining room. The furniture inside, like most of the furniture left behind in incursion zones, is untouched. If the aliens have any use for it, they have yet to disassemble this particular area of the city. But unlike most furniture, one chair in particular has a rather androgynous human being sitting on it, sipping what appears to be a freshly steaming cup of tea.

    They turn to me with a smile.

    "Hey Jules," they greet me. "Been a while, huh?"

    What the actual¡­ what the¡­ what¡­ huh!?

    "In-Joke!?" I gape at them. "What the actual fuck are you doing in the middle of an incursion zone?"

    "Same thing as you, I suspect," they answer. "Just enjoying a bit of respite within an ally''s territory. The Council of Blasphemy really is quite hospitable if you''re fucked up enough."

    I blink, gears slowly turning in my head. Allied with the Council of Blasphemy? How would they even speak to the Council of Blasphemy? Did they need to, or did they just have to walk inside and sacrifice a baby or something?

    Wait, more importantly, why are they in that specific house? There''s no way that''s a coincidence. They must have some kind of precognition. ''In-Joke.'' The name is entirely based around knowing things other people don''t. Precognition and something else, maybe? They have the same god I do, and my god is apparently Possibility, so are they looking into possible futures? Do they get to determine possible futures? Sitting in a collapsing house seems like an enormous risk to take just for a flex, so their power probably made them certain they would survive some way or another.

    "Hello? Nothing to Jules?" In-Joke calls out to me, snapping my attention back to them. "You doing okay, sweetheart? That was a nasty fall."

    Am I going to have to fight them? I don''t want to fight them, I''m so tired. But they''re not doing anything aggressive¡­

    "It wasn''t so bad," I tell them. "I had a cushion."

    They chuckle obligingly, like they didn''t think it was that funny but wanted me to think they did.

    "Well, I wish I could say the same for these chairs, but the tea is quite good. Come have a cup! You''ve never had tea before, right?"

    "¡­Sure I have," I answer, but the too-knowing grin on their face doesn''t waver.

    "Right, right. But this will be your first time tasting it. Don''t worry, this is your favorite."

    "Do you really have nothing better to do than make ominous declarations?" I ask, and their smile dips a little.

    "Ominous? Oh, I guess I can see how that would be a little ominous. But it''s just tea! Come on, take a load off, the caffeine will help."

    I narrow my eyes. This feels very different from the first time we talked. Is this even the same person? They certainly look like the same person, and they have that same smug fucking grin.

    "Is it poisoned or something?" I ask.

    They respond with a slow, drawn-out blink and another sip from their cup.

    "No," they answer. "It wouldn''t even work on you if it was. Look, I get that I was a little¡­ aggressive last time we talked. I regret going for the hard sell. So let''s just, uh, start over, shall we? We could be friends, right Julietta?"

    I frown. I don''t like this weirdo, but I suppose I don''t really want them to be my enemy. Reluctantly, I make my way towards the table, still trying to figure out what exactly is going on here.

    "The problem with a hard sell is that it tends to poison any attempt at a soft sell in the future," I tell them idly, sitting down opposite to them after crawling over what''s left of the wall.

    "Hence why I regret it," In-Joke answers, pouring me a cup and passing it over.

    "This entire situation is crazy," I continue, noticing In-Joke wince. Problematic word choice? I suppose I wouldn''t be surprised if this weirdo had sanity problems. "Who even are you? Why''d you come out all this way to meet me when I''m exhausted and alone?"

    "Didn''t I introduce myself last time? I''m In-Joke," In-Joke answers. "And I came out here to¡­ I came out here to¡­"

    Their gaze unfocuses a little, signs of panic briefly crossing their features before their attention snaps back to me all at once.

    "I came out here to invite you to a tea party, I suppose! Haha! I guess I just changed my mind and decided I didn''t want you to be upset with me."

    I frown, not really knowing how to take that.

    "You seem to know a lot about me," I prompt.

    "More than anyone!" In-Joke confirms happily. "But don''t think you''re too special, I could say the same about a lot of people. I mean, not that you aren''t special, but you''re not that special. In the general case. And most specific cases!"

    "¡­Okay," I answer, deciding not to press too hard over apparent nonsense. "Well, I don''t know anything about you. I don''t even know if you''re male or female. Or neither, I guess."

    "Yeesh. No wonder Christine doesn''t come out to you."

    "What?" I blink. I already know Christine is gay.

    "I suppose you could consider me neither. Or both. Or one or the other, really, I think at some point I just ran out of the ability to care. Overall, though, I like to consider myself some secret extra thing. It adds to the sense of mystique that is one of my few remaining pleasures."

    "It sounds like you''re older than you look," I prod.

    "Mmm. The reality, I suppose, is that I feel older than I am. But enough about me, I''m boring, and horrible. How have you been getting along? Do try the tea before it gets cold."

    Eh, why not. I take a sip. Shit, it''s actually really good. It''s like¡­ spicy water. I mean, I guess that doesn''t sound good, but it is.

    "I don''t know. Bad?" I answer, because fuck it, why not be honest to someone who seems to know anyway? "I''m in the middle of fighting a war and trying to manage the mental health of a nine-year-old child soldier. Also I just killed somebody and all of their former allies got really excited because of it and want to be my friend, which is a little fucked up."

    "Ha-HA!" In-Joke suddenly laughs loudly. "Yes! Imagine someone wanting to be your friend over something like that!"

    Well that''s certainly a way to respond.

    "¡­Are you trying to be my friend?" I squint at them.

    "No! Well yes. No. Maybe. But not because of the killing-an-Angel thing, although that was really cool."

    "You already knew it was going to happen," I frown. "Because you were already sitting here. Waiting for me. With a freshly brewed pot of what you claim is going to be my favorite tea. ¡­Am I never going to find a tastier drink than this?"

    "No, sorry, this is the best one," they answer. "I''ll send you the brew sometime."

    Damn. This really is good, though. I take another long sip. I''ve never tasted anything like this! No, wait. Focus, Julietta.

    "So you can see the future?" I press. They shrug. "If so, do you know why the world is apparently going to end in three years?"

    "Hmm? Oh, yeah, it''s the moon," they answer immediately. "I mean, obviously it''s the moon, just look at the thing. Honestly, I don''t know why it isn''t everyone''s first thought when someone mentions an impending apocalypse. I suspect everyone with powers instinctively feels some level of reverence to the Grand Queen, but maybe we''re all just stupid."

    "Wait, the tentacle monster the size of a major celestial body isn''t dead!?"

    "It''s mostly dead," In-Joke answers. "Unfortunately, in our case, there''s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive."

    I blink.

    "The Princess Bride?" I ask, recognizing the quote.

    "Eyyy!" In-Joke grins, pointing at me in acknowledgment. "Grandma movies are so much better than modern ones."

    "They really are," I sigh. "Only about half of them are propaganda."

    "That''s fifty percent less than all of them!" In-Joke agrees happily. "RIP Hollywood. Despite all odds, you will be missed."

    I nod, taking another long sip of tea. I can''t believe this is the best one. Like I mean damn, it''s good, but now I want to try more just to prove them wrong.

    "So I''m going to have to kill the moon or something?" I prompt, and In-Joke spits out a bit of their drink as they fail to hold back a laugh.

    "Are you what!? The moon? How would you even do that!?" they chuckle between coughs. "Ha! Hahaha, oh man. I forgot how¡­ you you are. Pffahaha. Gods, do you expect people to just put you in a rocket and fly you off to eat some continent-sized calamari? Calm down, girl. I know you''re a one-woman murder machine but tap the brakes just a bit, okay Jules?"

    I bury my face in my teacup to hide my expression, having already stopped my capillaries from expanding into a blush. My head-wings are what ultimately betray me, covering up my eyes and squishing tight against my face as if to squeeze out the mental pressure. In-Joke''s knowing smirk implies that, somehow, they can read the body language despite the fact that this is literally the first time a body like mine has existed in the history of the world.

    Then, just as quickly, the smile fades.

    "...Julietta, I mean," they correct to my surprise. "Tap the brakes, Julietta."

    I give them a long look, trying to figure out how to respond. I¡­ appreciate the correction. A lot. I do truly hate that nickname, and I''ve dearly missed hearing my real one. But they know that. They know a frighteningly large amount about me, for reasons I don''t quite understand. Who knows what kind of manipulation they could pull off with that kind of knowledge? They could be leading me around with ease.

    ¡­Or they could just be apologizing. I guess I have no way to know.

    "I suppose I should," I agree. "Unfortunately, I''m still lying about knowing how to drive."

    They stare at me. I stare back. They break first, erupting again into laughter. I smile too, though once again I hide my expression behind the teacup. This was far from the reception I was expecting after my most recent battle to the death, but I suppose I don''t hate it.

    It really is absurd how good this drink is.

 38. Someone Super Creepy and Suspicious

    Come to think of it, I wonder if this qualifies as the weirdest thing I''ve ever done.

    It''s certainly up there, but I suppose whether or not it takes home the gold depends on where I set the bounds of what ''this'' is. Drinking tea with a supervillain? Yeah, pretty weird. Drinking tea with a supervillain in the middle of a warzone? Okay, hold on, that''s nuts. Drinking tea with a supervillain in the middle of a warzone next to the corpse of the Angel I just killed with the tentacles I can grow out of my body? Alright, now we''ve hit the top.

    It occurs to me, now that the adrenaline is dying down, that I should probably not be doing this at all.

    "This has been surprisingly nice," I admit, setting my cup back down on the little china plate sized for it. "But I should be getting back."

    "Anastasia and the others are fine," In-Joke tells me, cutting to the core of my worries immediately. "Are fine and will be fine. You have plenty of time to take a load off. You have my word on that, for what little it''s worth. I''m not here to distract you from anything you''d actually care about today."

    "Which is to say you are distracting me from something, currently?" I frown.

    "Well maybe, but like I said, you won''t actually care," In-Joke shrugs.

    "It also implies you may be intending to distract me in the future," I point out.

    "I can''t honestly discount the possibility, yes. You know my type. Such capricious little tricksters, we are. And I will usually have an agenda of some sort, if I come knocking."

    They say it all so blandly, an undertone of self-depreciation oozing through their words.

    "I find it hard to believe you don''t have an agenda today," I respond frankly.

    "I know you do, honey," In-Joke sighs.

    I frown. That sounded rather condescending, but it would be stupid to believe anything else, wouldn''t it? This is quite a dramatic production. They wouldn''t have set up the meeting this way, in such a complicated and dangerous show of confidence, without a good reason.

    "Oh, don''t look at me like that," they scowl. "I''m sure we''ll have plenty of antagonistic battles of wits in the future if you''re so eager for them. But not today, alright? At least not right now. I''m tired and unusually sane. Right now I just want to take the rare opportunity to relax and enjoy a little tea with company."

    I don''t answer, conveying my concession with silence and a sip of more tasty spicy water. At the very least, if they do have an agenda, they aren''t planning to tell me about it. But for someone so knowledgeable, who does ultimately seem to be willing to talk, this is a tempting opportunity.

    "Do you mind if I ask a few questions?" I prod.

    "...Fine. But I''ll only answer if they''re good questions."

    What even defines that? I suppose whatever the criteria, it probably doesn''t include asking about said criteria. Oh well, just roll with it.

    "Do you have a name other than ''In-Joke'' you''d like me to refer to you by?" I ask. "It seems only fair to ask, since you''re calling me Julietta."

    In-Joke says nothing, just frowning and looking away as they drink more tea. Alright, not a good question, I guess. Maybe I''ll try lightening the mood.

    "Was this furniture all here before you showed up, or did you have to carefully drag it out to my predicted path so you could sit in it dramatically?" I ask.

    They snort, rolling their eyes.

    "You actually kind of care about the answer to that one, don''t you?" they ask. "If you don''t ask me here you usually end up asking sometime later."

    "It''s kind of funny to think about," I admit. "It''s quite the fancy setup you prepared for me. Actually, follow-up, how did you heat the tea? I assume the power''s down. Did you bring a generator? Start a fire?"

    "You realize that I am almost certainly the most knowledgeable human being on the planet, right?" In-Joke sighs. "That''s the purpose of the setup, if you must know. To prove I''m not just hot air and threats. And I know what you''re doing here, too. These questions are very cute, very disarming, but we only have so much time to work with here. Skip the social manipulation for once and go for a big one."

    Uh. Huh. Okay. What question is likely to be helpful to know and difficult to figure out elsewhere?

    "What exactly are domains?" I ask. "How do they work?"

    "Hmm," In-Joke hums, sitting up a bit. "Okay, that''s a good question. Counter-question: how exactly did you beat that Angel rotting in the street over there?"

    "Uh, mostly by getting him angry enough to engage me in melee combat," I answer. "Why?"

    "How did you get him angry?"

    I frown.

    "I took my best guess at insults that poked at his zealotry. Implied his actions were working in the favor of gods other than Blasphemy."

    "Okay!" In-Joke nods. "So you know about the gods already. That''s good. So¡­ those exist. Gods are just straight-up entirely real, in case that was in question. But notably, I don''t think they were real. I''m pretty sure they hopped to Earth alongside the first aliens."

    "Makes sense," I nod. "If they''re where superpowers come from, and those didn''t exist until the moon exploded, it stands to reason the two were connected. I''m assuming the tentacle monster wasn''t secretly inside the moon the whole time?"

    "Obviously not," In-Joke waves off. "We landed on the moon nearly a century ago. All our sensors and samples agree: that thing was a solid lump of rock. Personally, my guess is that the first attempted incursion into our universe just got botched and the Grand Queen telefragged herself, but I can''t really be sure. This is, admittedly, one of the few areas where even I still need to speculate."

    "Right. Okay. So¡­ the alien gods are real," I prompt, steering the conversation back on track.

    "Ah! Yes. The gods are real. And domains¡­ well, honestly, our name for them is remarkably accurate and, I hear, very similar to the alien word for the same. A domain is something both owned and lived in. They are literal fragments of godhood, in which a piece of the god who gifted them to us resides, and with which we assert sovereign control over some fundamental aspect of reality. In a very real way, we own the part of the world our domain resides in. Everything the metaphorical light touches is our kingdom."

    "So when two domains overlap, the gods have a territory dispute?"

    "More or less, yes," In-Joke nods. "You know how you were paired with Ed in your squad because the two of you have a resonance effect with each other?"

    "Oh, is that why?"

    "Wh¡ªyes, that''s why. Of course that''s why. It makes both of you more powerful to stand next to each other, the military loves that kind of thing. But ironically, it only occurs because your gods hate each other. When your domains overlap without synchronicity, your gods assume you''re trying to fight and each tries to one-up the other. And then bam! More power for their favorite little blorbos."

    Oh. Oh, that''s interesting. The Angel said Ed''s god was Failure, so I suppose Possibility and Failure don''t get along? Let''s see¡­ I also had resonance with the Queen and Angels of Blasphemy, which¡­ well, that makes sense, I doubt any of the other gods like Blasphemy.

    "What are ''blorbos?''" I ask.

    "You, you dingus. I''m saying our god likes you. That''s why it gave you superpowers. You embody Possibility''s values to some degree, or maybe it just thought you looked funny."

    On instinct, I do my best not to outwardly show offense.

    "According to a certain scientist I met, looking funny seemingly is one of the values that decides whether or not someone is¡­ chosen, I guess," I comment.

    "I think it''s protagonist syndrome," In-Joke nods. "It''s much easier to get the attention of the divine when you''re the only person in the classroom with purple hair and a unique model."

    "...What?"

    "Never mind," In-Joke dismisses. "The point is, that''s what domains are. Fragments of gods broken off and gifted to us by those gods. They are ours to do with as we please. The more you work with yours, the more you make it yours, the more powerful it becomes."

    "Huh," I frown. "What does that entail, exactly?"

    They just quirk an eyebrow at me. Okay, not a good enough question, I guess. Or maybe they just don''t want to help make me more powerful when I''m obviously not on their side. Although, speaking of¡­

    "Okay. Let''s pivot, then. What about you? The first time we met you said the Defenders of Nothing exist more or less to dodge the draft, but considering you know about the end of the world I''m suspecting there''s more to it. Am I on the right track?"

    "Perhaps," they answer, which is an answer. "I went to the trouble of founding it, after all."

    "Someone who knows as much as you do could probably get a lot of people working towards a goal of your choosing, if you put your mind to it."

    "But why would I put my awful, awful mind to something?" they ask. "Nothing deserves that."

    "Interesting phrasing," I note. "What do you use the Defenders of Nothing for?"

    "You''ll understand that when you get the joke," they smirk.

    "Does it have to do with the God of Nothing?" I ask. "Is there a reason it needs defending?"

    "Ha!" In-Joke laughs. "Well, that''s a matter of perspective, I suppose. One could argue that you''re defending Nothing right now, and have been for some time. Whether or not that''s a good thing is up to you."

    "If I join you, will I find out?" I ask.

    They freeze, teacup halfway to their lips, the occasional flare of nostrils and twitch of a neck muscle the only indication that they''re still alive for a solid ten seconds. Something about the situation compels me to stay silent and motionless as well, as if I just started bleeding in front of a very hungry predator.

    "...It doesn''t matter," they say. "It''s not a decision that you make in these circumstances."

    "You seem to have a lot of confidence regarding what I will and won''t do," I frown. "Perhaps I''ll surprise you."

    "I know everything about you," they hiss, the clatter of china hitting china ringing out as they place their cup altogether too firmly on its plate. "I know more about you than you do, Julietta! Your present, your future, your past. Everything!"

    The outburst makes me freeze up again, trying to figure out how to navigate that obvious contradiction more delicately.

    "...If that were true," I begin carefully, "if you really can predict exactly what I will and won''t do in any situation, then why''d you try to get me to join the first time? Back at the Waffle House. You made your pitch, and you seemed surprised when I said no."

    They don''t answer for a long time, staying motionless for a moment before picking their cup back up and taking a drawn-out drink to finish it off. Letting out a long sigh, they look up with an unusually serious stare.

    "Landlocked Queens can''t move," they say, ignoring my question.

    "What?" I blink.

    "They can''t move," In-Joke repeats. "It''s too heavy here on Earth. Each one that comes here is making a one-way trip. Even if the humans and the aliens are willing to negotiate, the Queen can''t return whatever land it''s lying on back to humanity."

    "...Why are you telling me this?" I ask.

    "I''m saving you the trouble of trying to play negotiator," they answer. "It won''t work. It never works. Even if you return to the army and inform them that you have a good chance of negotiating an armistice with the local Queen of Blasphemy¡ªwhich is absolutely true, I suspect she is quite enamored with you¡ªnothing will come of it."

    "...Okay," I allow for the sake of argument. "Walk me through that. What happens?"

    "You''ll be ignored," they answer. "Unless you aren''t ignored, in which case you will be suspected, and if you aren''t suspected you will be useless. The Queen can''t move, but her removal is a non-negotiable issue to the United States military. They will not accept any outcome that involves the local aliens doing anything other than packing up and leaving sovereign American soil. The battle will continue until the Army or the Queen ultimately falls. This is true for every landlocked Queen. Every single one. Even the ones that would happily coexist with humanity if the situation were explained to them."

    "What?" I ask. "Why? I mean, at minimum we could just share the land, couldn''t we? The aliens don''t even seem to use most of it."

    "And I''m sure you''d be perfectly comfortable living with Behemoth neighbors and a Queen looming out over the horizon, but try to imagine selling the idea for even one second to the propaganda-guzzling American public. Try to explain, to the government of the United States, that your solution involves having people just living unprotected in the middle of a Queen''s domain where they can and already have killed countless people just by willing it."

    Oh, god. They''re right, aren''t they? The only viable solution would be to relocate the Queens to the ocean, but how could we ever possibly do that? They''re as large as mountains, and we''d need to move them all at once. It''s completely impossible.

    "You cannot stop this war, Julietta," In-Joke decrees solemnly. "But you can decide who wins it."

    What? Oh. That''s a concerning prophecy to get dropped in my lap.

    "I find it hard to believe the decision is really in my hands," I tell them frankly. "But at least for this battle, it seems fairly straightforward. The Angels here are sadistic, contrarian maniacs. There''s no way I''m choosing them over the good of humanity."

    "Indeed," In-Joke agrees. "But what about when you find a colony that isn''t obviously evil? What do you do when humanity insists on forcibly retaking land from people who aren''t invaders, but refugees?"

    "Refugees?" I ask. "Like, they''re running from a war in their home dimension?"

    "Not quite, but essentially. None of the aliens on Earth could return home if they tried. And some of them probably ought to be exterminated for the greater good, certainly, but some of them are quite pleasant. Much like humans, really."

    "That''s not at all a concerning thing to say," I mutter.

    "No? I intend for it to be. You are the singular link between our species. Even if we assembled the world''s finest biologists and linguists and chemists all in one place and tried to decode the alien pheromone network, the apocalypse would arrive before we establish a successful method of communication that doesn''t rely entirely on you. You are, and have always been, the most important person in the world."

    That''s¡­ insane. That''s completely insane. Even if they''re right and there''s no other way to translate between species, how important can I really be if negotiation is as hopeless as they''ve made it out to be? Do they expect me to fall for¡­ for an absurd ego-filling ploy!?

    "It''s true," In-Joke insists. "You''re that essential. I think that''s probably why I hate you."

    Uh?

    "Pardon?" I ask, a little whiplashed by that sudden turn. In-Joke laughs.

    "Right!" they say, a sudden realization dawning on their face. "That''s right! I hate you! I fucking hate you!"

    They continue to giggle, an increasingly unhinged smile splitting their mouth open wide.

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    "Oh, you know, you really should join the Defenders of Nothing! You would be so miserable with us! I''m glad you know how every death in the war now hinges on you. On your damn unearned power. Do you have any idea how infuriating you are? Prancing around, always trying to help people, always just thinking of yourself. So much of this could have been avoided if I had just told you sooner, but I couldn''t stand to look at your fucking face! And now you don''t even have your face anymore and it''s even more excruciating to be around. I could probably get Emily to kill you, that could be fun. Given enough fire, I doubt you''d make it even in your prime. It would be so easy! Just promise myself to murder her if she ever stopped pouring gasoline!"

    "Excuse me!?" I snap, standing up and preparing for a fight.

    "I told you, didn''t I? All it takes is conviction, and that girl pulls all of her own strings for you. She''d do it, too. She''d slaughter every last one of you if it was the only way to stay alive. She''d even kill Anastasia. I could make her do that, too."

    I step forward, shifting my arm into a blade and holding it at their throat.

    "Are you trying to get me to gut you!?" I demand.

    "Ha! I don''t know! Maybe?" they laugh. "But I probably shouldn''t, so your precious little sister can stay safe for now. You should be getting back to her, though. This is a warzone, after all. What the hell have you been doing, sitting here and drinking tea while people die around you? You''re an awful person, Julietta Monroe."

    I snarl at them, but they''re fucking right, aren''t they? What the hell am I doing here? I don''t know why I let this nutjob take up so much of my time with their nonsense. I leap up into the sky, once again shifting into a bird to fly off towards the front lines. We still have a battle to finish. The only question is how.

    Hmm. Questions. I''ve gotten far asking questions today. Why not push my luck?

    "The Thief of Torn Wings requests an introduction," I send, scent glands forming comfortably between my feathers.

    "Request accepted. This unit''s designation: Swallower of Virtue."

    "Request accepted. This unit''s designation: That Which Rends Joy."

    "REQUEST ACCEPTED. THIS UNIT''S DESIGNATION: CORRUPTER OF ALL CREATION."

    "Request Accepted. This unit''s designation: A Cold Flame Tempts Endings."

    One after another, the Angels (and, rather more loudly, the Queen) announce their names and locations to me. I grow larger, giving my body more space for my most recently acquired brain, and information about the state of battle flows into me from all directions. Locating the closest Angel currently in combat, I accelerate towards them.

    Hmm. How do I tell the local forces to fuck off or die?

    "This unit (Thief of Torn Wings) approaches combat area thirteen. Bifurcated order to all area thirteen units: full retreat from combat/remain and be devoured for fuel by this unit. Utilize personal tactical discretion to determine optimal goal pathing."

    There we go, that feels right.

    "This unit (Swallower of Virtue) to Thief of Torn Wings: your authority is not recognized in area thirteen. All area thirteen units: disregard unrecognized orders."

    "This unit to all area thirteen units: my orders remain valid even when disregarded."

    "Confusion!? The recently made statement is false!?"

    "Incorrect," I insist. "Intentionality of obedience is irrelevant to orders given. The future has been narrowed to two possibilities. Utilize personal tactical discretion to determine optimal goal pathing."

    "...Understanding," Swallower of Virtue allows.

    "Delighted amusement!" A Cold Flame Tempts Endings chimes in.

    "CLARIFICATION REQUEST: THIEF OF TORN WINGS INTENDS TO PERSONALLY RESTRICT ALTERNATIVES?"

    "Affirmative," I answer the Queen. I have given my ultimatum. Let''s see if it works.

    "DELIGHTED AND ENTERTAINED. FEAST FREELY ON MY CHILDREN. SLAY SWALLOWER OF VIRTUE IF IT PLEASES YOU."

    What!? Jesus, does she just not care?

    "Interjection: repeated intentional sacrifice of forces inevitably pleases Failure," Swallower of Virtue whines.

    "DISREGARDED. FAILURE IS DENIED IF OBJECTIVES CHANGE. BLASPHEMY SUPERSEDES DEATH."

    "Blasphemy supersedes death," That Which Rends Joy agrees.

    "Blasphemy supersedes death."

    "Blasphemy supersedes death!"

    "Bravery is not a value blessed by lesser gods, so there is no Blasphemy in cowardice. Let our guest profane herself upon your corpse if necessary."

    The Angels all roar in approval. They are, apparently, incredibly down to just flat-out let their own people die for the sake of their unique brand of madness. I suppose I''m not complaining.

    "Challenge: retain your cheer during the imminence of Possibility''s chosen interfering with your duties," Swallower of Virtue grumbles. Translation: ''bitch I''d like to see you be that excited when it''s your life being threatened!''

    "Demonstrate a superior adherence to the tenets if you wish for favor," another Angel counters.

    "The tenets?" I ask.

    As one, a half-dozen Angels answer.

    "Thou shalt not respond in kind."

    "Nor seek purity in body or mind."

    "Thou shalt face thine challenges alone."

    "Thou shalt never need to atone."

    "Thou shalt join more than thou breaks."

    "Thou shalt always leave less in thine wake."

    "Thou shalt acknowledge only what thou can explain."

    "And thou shalt treat falsehood with disdain."

    "AND THOU SHALT EVER TEMPER JOY WITH PAIN!" the Queen finishes.

    "In all things, profane these nine! In all people, evoke only disgust! To Blaspheme is to love what others hate! To embrace what others fear! Never waver from the heart of Blasphemy!"

    Oh cool, they have a whole-ass manifesto. These guys just keep getting more and more cracked in the skull.

    "Such an inconsolable tragedy that the Thief of Torn Wings has received Possibility''s blessing," an Angel laments. "To embody our tenets so successfully without any knowledge of them¡­ no doubt Blasphemy would have adored to claim you, if only allowed the chance."

    "A gloriously hideous and wretched thing, to so effortlessly swim in all we hold dear," another agrees.

    "A member of our family in spirit and deed," a third praises me.

    I stay silent, disturbed and offended by their saccharine praise. I can''t ask them to stop, as much as I''d like to. Somehow, I think telling them my opinion would only make them happier with me.

    "Advisory: this unit (Thief of Torn Wings) is approaching area thirteen imminently. Utilize personal tactical discretion to determine optimal goal pathing."

    "Suggestion: adjust pathing to area twelve. Engage A Cold Flame Tempts Endings instead of Swallower of Virtue. Justification: A Cold Flame Tempts Endings is a malodorous simpleton, deserving of the scorn of the worthy."

    "Rebuttal: Swallower of Virtue''s accusations ring true only on themselves."

    Translation: ''no you.''

    "This unit''s intentions have been established," I tell them. "Suggestions will be disregarded."

    Swallower of Virtue''s response can only really be described as an irritated harrumph. Sorry, buddy. If you don''t want me to eat you you can always just leave.

    My stolen brain feels the change in the air that marks my entry to area thirteen, and so I move to make good on my promise. A decent number of Raptors and Wasps are retreating, and therefore they are to be ignored, but many others remain in the fight. Close to me, I feel a squadron of ambushing Raptors hiding in a home below me, so I swoop down, break through a window, and fall on them with a predator''s precision. I don''t have any real need to worry about defense; any wounds that they could inflict are more than made up for by devouring their corpses. Those that attack find their blades easily sinking into my skin only to learn that this just makes it easier for me to eat them. Bubbles of flesh grow around my victims in moments, spikes impaling them from several directions before I swallow their bodies whole.

    It''s quick, efficient, and delightfully satisfying to my ravenous appetite. I move on to the next group, and the next, all the while confirming my suspicion that the Angel here has decided not to retreat. Which is honestly very annoying. I don''t really want to have to kill a second Angel today.

    Ignoring the other Raptors for now, I fly towards Swallower of Virtue, only to find them engaged in combat with S¨ª Gaoithe and his team. They engage each other in the skies, a whirlwind of rubble surrounding S¨ª Gaoithe and occasionally launching itself towards the Angel, who responds by opening black voids in the air that harmlessly devour the incoming projectiles.

    Swallower of Virtue themselves is little more than a winged gaping maw, a wide jaw hanging open towards the ground, small insectoid legs emerging from the lips and kicking intermittently between the teeth. Three pairs of translucent wings hold the grotesque beast aloft, one supporting the hinge in the middle and the other two at the edges. Unlike Thief of Divine Love, Swallower of Virtue''s power does not seem to assist them at all in the art of flight, leaving them plodding and clumsy in the air, barely capable of staying aloft let alone maneuvering enough to be useful in a fight. Fortunately, what their power does supply is an unyielding defense, effortlessly intercepting every attack from one of the Army''s most-renowned wingrippers.

    This seems like it would be an enormous pain in the ass to fight. I''d rather not, if I can avoid it. Shifting into my flight-modified Seraphim form (mostly for S¨ª Gaoithe''s sake, since I don''t want to get shot by him), I take a deep breath and shout in two languages at once.

    "Swallower of Virtue, this is your final opportunity not to venerate Failure."

    "Swallower of Virtue, I thought I told you to FUCK OFF!"

    There is a brief pause in the battle as I become the center of attention. S¨ª Gaoithe stares at me in calculating confusion, as if trying to figure out whether or not I''m a target. Swallower of Virtue hesitates visibly. In reality, I have absolutely no idea if I could beat them in a fight. I can''t do much if I don''t get close, and not letting anything get close seems to be their power''s whole thing. But there is something to be said about simply projecting confidence, and while I''m pretty good at that in human contexts, in the Angel language I am running on easy mode. Simply conveying my intent to kill as a fact is enough to make the Angel decide they don''t want to test me.

    "¡­I will withdraw," Swallower of Virtue concedes. "All area thirteen units, fall back to area six."

    "Booooooo!"

    "Immeasurable disappointment!"

    "Vote to consider this denial of bloodshed unjust in the eyes of Blasphemy? Assertion: yes."

    "Suggestion: rename unit to Swallower of Pride."

    The jeers of the Angel''s own allies permeate the air, but Swallower of Virtue still retreats with all due haste, living to blaspheme another day. I watch them go, passing by as S¨ª Gaoithe fires a few parting shots, stopping only when I approach close enough to have a conversation.

    "Seraphim!? What the hell was that!?" he demands. "Why haven''t you been answering your radio?"

    "Acid," I answer succinctly. "All my stuff is trash. You should see the other guy, though."

    "You get him?" S¨ª Gaoithe asks.

    "Yeah, they''re dead," I confirm. "How have things been going here?"

    "Better than usual, honestly," he says. "Did you just make that Angel retreat by yelling at it?"

    "Yeah."

    "Fucking hell," he shakes his head, pulling out his radio. "Control, this is S¨ª Gaoithe. I have Seraphim here, confirmed alive. Claiming a successful wing rip, chased off my current target as well, over."

    "Copy that. Send her back to base for debrief and resupply. Over."

    "Wilco, S¨ª Gaoithe out."

    "The other aliens in the area are also retreating," I supply helpfully.

    "''Course they are," S¨ª Gaoithe sighs. "What, do you speak alien now?"

    "Yep."

    He stares at me. I''m not really sure what he was expecting me to say.

    "Okay, whatever. You heard Control. Get your ass back to the brass."

    "Can do," I nod. "Is the rest of my squad okay?"

    "A couple casualties, but the kid''s fine," S¨ª Gaoithe shrugs.

    Well, that''s good. If Anastasia''s alive, I did my job. Rising higher up into the air, I shrink back into a bird and fly east, heading for my designated landing zone back at the staging area. What an insane day. It''s a bit selfish, but there''s a part of me that hopes I don''t get sent back out there after the debrief. Objectively, it''s probably a bad thing if it happens because there aren''t a lot of nice reasons they''d withhold a two-time wingripper from the front lines. I''m just so tired, though. I''d almost prefer suspicion and scrutiny if it meant I didn''t have to do any more murder.

    I shift back to Seraphim form when I get close, making the landing approach nice and slow so that nobody feels the need to shoot me. Come to think of it, a surprisingly large number of my decisions are motivated by a desire to not get shot by my own allies. You''d think that wouldn''t be a super necessary consideration most of the time, but I guess it''s hard to shake first impressions.

    The flat bit of terrain marked off as the powered landing zone has exactly one person waiting for me there. A young woman that, at first glance, appears to be an ordinary soldier, but inconsistencies in that facade quickly start to pile up. She''s wearing the full dress uniform, but with the addition of a hip holster and pistol that slightly ruins the entire ensemble. Her long blonde hair flows freely to her shoulders in violation of dress code, and neither her thin body nor her blemishless skin imply the regular exertion part and parcel to a soldier in wartime.

    I touch ground, approaching her given that she''s the only other person here and she''s staring right at me. The irises of her eyes are ever-so-slightly larger than it seems like they should be, and once I notice I can''t unsee it, every glance at her face becoming a deep blue dive into uncanny valley. I reach out my domain, insatiably curious about whatever might be going on under her skin, but of course I run into a domain.

    It is an all-consuming certainty, a declaration of uncontestable truth. It is, I suddenly recognize, a domain of Perfection, a power that claims to know the ultimate state of the universe and intends to create it. To my stolen brain it is particularly repulsive, and my domain agrees, bubbling with resonant power.

    "Come with me," the young woman orders, neither her voice nor expression betraying a hint of emotion. "I will escort you, Seraphim."

    "Understood¡­" my eyes rove over her uniform for some indication of rank, and I realize that''s yet another thing missing. "¡­Ma''am?"

    She declines to clarify, simply turning and walking away from the landing zone. With her eyes no longer staring at me, her domain watches me instead, spreading out to wrap around me as if to contain me within. It''s not a weak domain, but it''s far from the most powerful I''ve encountered. It''s more average than anything, but I have no way to know exactly how much that matters, and the implicit threat is as clear as if she had drawn her gun.

    She leads me to one of the many tents set up around the area, ducking inside. An older colonel and a younger chief warrant officer are chatting inside in low tones. Their conversation halts immediately when we enter, both of the men gliding their eyes up and down my technically-naked body before actually noticing the person escorting me. Both of them react with visible surprise and fear.

    "Presenting Warrant Officer Lia Morgan, codename Seraphim," the woman announces me. I quickly stand in parade rest, a bit confused as to why I''m not announcing myself. Some kind of protocol is going wonky here, and it''s all because of this lady.

    "¡­Danielle?" the CWO asks. "I wasn''t aware you were deployed here."

    "I have been instructed to maintain an escort for Seraphim."

    "By who?"

    "I have been instructed to maintain an escort for Seraphim."

    I take it that this is a bad sign. It would appear that someone has sent their personal boogeyman to ensure I don''t eat the base, and everyone is even more scared of her than they are of me. That''s arguably a good thing, as it means most of the brass hasn''t completely lost all faith in my sanity, but somebody has clearly lost a lot of it. The two officers exchange concerned looks.

    "I''ll find out who gave the order," the colonel states. "In the meantime, let''s proceed with the debriefing. Seraphim, did you not consider showing up in uniform?"

    "Destroyed in combat against the Angel, sir," I tell him. "I could grow more feathers if this is too immodest."

    "¡­It''s fine," he allows, clearly preferring to continue ogling me. I don''t really mind; if people are going to think I''m an Angel anyway I''ll benefit as much as I can from the halo effect. "You got the thing, at least?"

    "Yes sir. The Thief of Divine Love has been eliminated."

    The colonel looks slightly baffled, but the CWO leans in, laser-focused on me.

    "The ''Thief of Divine Love?''" he asks. "Why did you call it that?"

    "That''s their name," I shrug. "Or I suppose it was their name."

    "Are you implying that you spoke to the Angel?" he presses.

    "I spoke with a lot of aliens," I admit. "I''m getting increasingly fluent at it."

    "You spoke to multiple Angels?"

    "Yes sir, and Raptors, and Wasps, and the Queen. She''s quite talkative, actually. Also batshit insane. Sir."

    For the first time, the colonel glances towards the girl who escorted me and actually relaxes a little.

    "What reason do we have to believe any of this is true?" he asks.

    "Well, I told the Angel S¨ª Gaoithe was fighting to leave, and they listened," I answer. Honestly, I''m not really sure why I''m divulging everything like this. Part of it''s probably because I want to prove In-Joke wrong, to assert that it is possible to be taken seriously as a communicator and negotiator. Part of it is probably because I''m eighty percent Angel brain and I just have an instant question-answering instinct that for some reason I haven''t suppressed. Part of it is because trying to hide it any longer would probably just get increasingly silly. I killed an Angel and made friends with their Queen. The entire battlefield moves around me when I want it to. Better to control the narrative surrounding what I am and what I can do than to let people catastrophize in ignorance.

    "Could you do it again?" the colonel asks.

    "Maybe?" I hedge. "I am not asserting direct control over anything. I just have the ability to talk to them. This particular colony of aliens happens to be a bunch of mad zealots, and frankly they are¡­ really easy to manipulate? Their obsession with their own insane philosophy is more important to them than actually winning any battles, so I did my best to take advantage of that."

    "It sounds¡­ unreliable," the colonel frowns.

    "It sounds like it could change everything," the CWO grins.

    "Personally sir, I expect it is probably both," I report. "I believe alliance negotiations with alien factions to be genuinely possible. Potentially even this faction, though I''m not sure whether or not that would actually be desirable."

    "And how, exactly, did you figure out an entire alien language that our best linguists have been unable to even confirm the existence of?" the colonel interrogates. And this, I have to admit, I don''t have a very good answer to.

    "It¡­ just sort of comes to me while I''m incorporating part of an alien''s form?" I hedge. It''s not even a lie, as much as it probably sounds like one. I didn''t learn the language, I didn''t ''figure it out,'' I just¡­ know it.

    "You take the form of aliens?"

    "I¡­ yes sir, I have been for some time? My powers allow me to hybridize from a variety of sources, as¡­ well, as evidenced."

    I flex my wings, focusing the many eyes on them to stare in his direction all at once.

    "That''s part of how the PR team chose my name," I continue. "I use Angel parts a lot. They''re often well-optimized."

    Despite my entirely reasonable explanations, the colonel seems more and more perturbed as I continue to speak, so I forcibly cut myself off there. Was this guy not briefed on me? There''s no way, right? Perhaps the same information just feels a lot different when it''s coming directly from the mouth of the half-alien hybrid standing in his makeshift office.

    It''s quite common, after all, for people who have heard of my powers to still seem shocked and disturbed after seeing them in action. Jazz is a particularly noteworthy example, and while she got over it pretty fast I''m sure there are plenty of people who never did. The more I develop my powers, the more fluid and dangerous my shapeshifting becomes, the more I start to understand why the military might have an irrational fear of me. I just have to prove those people wrong through my actions, because what else can I do?

    "Warrant Officer Morgan here has ripped her second pair of wings today," the CWO chimes in, clearly also picking up on the uncomfortable atmosphere. "I think that''s more cause for celebration than anything, don''t you?"

    I''d want to thank him if not for the hungry look in his eye, the way he judges me more like a prize than a person. Chief Warrant Officers of his rank are usually specialists and consultants in some field or another, experts of some esoteric knowledge or skill that a commanding officer might need to efficiently perform their duties. I don''t know what this man''s specialty is, but it clearly has his mind churning with the exciting possibilities that I enable. I''m sure my god must be proud of me.

    "¡­Yes, I suppose you''re right," the colonel agrees unconvincingly. "I think we will place Seraphim on standby for now. Do take advantage of the opportunity to rest while we¡­ confirm a few lingering questions."

    I want to grab him by the throat, shake him, and yell ''I''m not an alien spy!'' in his face, but that seems unlikely to be productive so I take his dismissal for what it is and excuse myself with a brief "sir." My Perfection-aligned handler follows me.

    "Your name is Danielle, if I heard correctly?" I ask her.

    "I am Danielle," she confirms.

    "Do you have a last name? A rank? Superhero name?"

    "¡­I am Danielle," she denies.

    Cool. Cool cool cool. Super glad the fucked-up black ops agent is involved. I think I''m going to go ahead and assume talking about this girl with my squad will get me severely disciplined in a manner that somehow never makes it onto the books. Maybe that''s too paranoid, but I''ve yet to actually encounter a situation where I''ve been too paranoid so far.

    "What are your powers?" I ask casually. Like this is just a normal conversation and not with someone super creepy and suspicious.

    The girl tilts her head just enough to glance at me out of the corner of her eye, the oversized crystal blue threatening to swallow me whole.

    "I am Danielle."

    Part of me wants to assume the repetition is just automatic, but she''s said other things. She has responded coherently to questions. I don''t think that was a failure to communicate.

    I think that was her honest answer.

 39. PR-Approved

    I will say that, other than just being passively creepy, I don''t have anything to complain about with Danielle. She''s not rude, aggressive, or actively threatening. She doesn''t seem to be of the opinion that I''m going to be a problem, and since I don''t plan on being a problem we''re coexisting rather amicably.

    She''s taken me to a tent set up as a meeting room, and the two of us have been waiting there alone. I wish we had a radio or something to keep up with information on the battle, but that''s just what I get for letting mine be melted, I guess. Still not sure how that happened. I hope I didn''t accidentally digest the stuff; I just figured out how convenient this part of my powers can be, I don''t want to lose it already.

    And speaking of things I don''t want to lose, I hope I''m still mostly trusted. It feels weird finally admitting my ability to communicate with the enemy, and it seems to have gone¡­ less than perfectly. More or less exactly how In-Joke said it would, in fact. It''s frustrating.

    "I wish I wasn''t constantly mistrusted," I sigh out loud.

    "You were trusted enough to be invited into the same room as Colonel Baker," Danielle comments to my surprise. "That is better than many of us."

    I glance her way.

    "Well, you were also allowed in," I point out.

    "Allowed, yes. Invited, no. Colonel Baker was an acceptable sacrifice."

    "Sacrifice for what?" I ask.

    "For order," Danielle answers. "For victory. For the human race."

    Hmm. I can''t help but shift a bit, the wings on my head ruffling slightly to better cover my six facial eyes.

    "I think," I say slowly, "that it''s always a bad sign when the people in charge start talking about ''acceptable sacrifices.''"

    Danielle smiles primly, her glassy-eyed stare focused professionally on a camera behind my head that does not exist.

    "You''re dangerous," she says. "They wouldn''t have let me out for you if you weren''t. Not many of us can kill an Angel in a Queen''s own territory. Alone. Surrounded by the enemy. Without equipment. But you can. I can too. It''s easier with a gun, though."

    Her slender hands, unblemished by the calluses my body knows to associate with weapon training, clench and unclench at her sides, gripping a memory before letting it go.

    "...They have to ''let you out?''" I ask. Are they going to have to let me out someday, if we''re as similar as she thinks?

    "Of course," Danielle says, like it''s the most normal thing in the world. "I must always be monitored and contained. It''s only right."

    "You don''t seem to be monitored or contained right now," I point out.

    "I am monitored," she assures me. "And due to the parameters of the mission, I must remain uncontained in case of emergency. I am doing my best not to enjoy it."

    Wow, that is a terrifying response on several levels. This woman seems rather psychologically unstable. Half of me wants to try to become her friend, since I doubt she has any and that''ll make the process pretty easy. Buuut I think I''ve had enough frighteningly powerful and deeply insane people for one day. As useful as it would be to potentially power-of-friendship this girl onto my side, she freaks me the fuck out.

    "Well, hopefully there won''t be any emergencies," I say, moving to conclude the conversation.

    "Yes," Danielle nods in agreement. "I''m doing my best not to hope for one, too."

    Yeah Command strapped a bomb to my ass and they don''t even care if she needs to be set off in our own FOB. That paints a very clear picture of what their real feelings about me are.

    I see two possibilities for why Danielle is here: one, this whole offensive doesn''t matter to them and we exist as a distraction, testing ground, or some other primarily sacrificial purpose where it doesn''t matter if a loose cannon goes off and takes everything down with it. I hope it''s not that, because if it is I need to take my family and run, damn the consequences. And oh, there will be consequences.

    Possibility two, however, is that they want us to win really, really badly. Enough that Danielle, whose power is supposedly strong enough to solo Angels but dangerous enough that they don''t want to use her to actually do that except as a last resort, is here as the last resort. Considering her talk of ''sacrifices'' I have a few vague suspicions about why someone this powerful is exclusively a last resort, and I don''t want anyone I care about nearby if it comes to that. But here, at least, we have a solution: win the battle.

    Danielle is only going to do her thing during an emergency, so let''s avert an emergency situation. Difficult, but straightforward. The Angels of Blasphemy are laughably easy to manipulate, and some of their religious tenets discourage basic tactical sense like ''ganging up on people.'' Victory should be a lot more likely against the St. Louis Cult of Counterculture than against the Chicago Cult of Cutting You The Fuck In Half.

    I just wish I could get back out there and actually contribute some more. But instead, I''m stuck here in creepy lady jail, waiting for someone with enough balls not to panic at merely hearing the word ''Angel'' to let me out.

    "Seraphim?" a man with a clipboard says, sticking his head into the tent.

    "Present," I nod at him.

    "Ah! Jolly good. And¡­ who are you?"

    "I am Danielle."

    "Oh," the man blinks, his cheer quickly dropping. "Well, I''ve come to fetch Seraphim, so¡­"

    "Feel free," Danielle says.

    He nods stiffly and motions me to follow him, so I do. Danielle, of course, silently comes with us.

    "Anything you can tell me about what''s happening?" I ask the man. No harm in a little polite information gathering.

    "Oh, nothing too fancy, just shuffling your assignment around. It''s taken a little longer than usual for a tactical situation like this. The precognitive recon corps can''t seem to come to a consensus on what to do with you."

    "I guess I''m just full of possibility," I respond flatly.

    "Ha! I suppose so," he agrees. "Precognitive abilities are notoriously unreliable, so I don''t think it''s anything to worry about. Here we are; in you go."

    Which means some people are worried about it. As expected, I guess. We head into another tent, where inside I find none other than S¨ª Gaoithe and his team of supers. He takes one look at me and groans.

    "No, no, come on, no."

    "Mr. S¨ª Gaoithe, I have a new addition to your squad."

    "Are you kidding me?" he complains. "You people always do this shit. She''s not trained for this!"

    "And she has two confirmed wing rips despite that lack of training," the clipboard guy argues. "With proper guidance, she''ll be quite the asset."

    "This is not the time and place to give her guidance," S¨ª Gaoithe insists. "We''re mid-deployment! It''s gonna be maybe ten minutes before they send us back out there! You''re putting my entire damn squad in danger for a pet project."

    Yeah, it''s kind of hard to disagree with that. This feels like a complete mess. There''s probably a different reason they want to make sure I''m around one of the country''s best wing rippers.

    "I''m sure she''ll be able to hold her own," clipboard guy insists. "Now you should all get acquainted, because as you''ve guessed you''ll likely be heading out soon."

    "Could I have a replacement radio?" I ask before he can leave. "And all the other equipment I''m missing, ideally."

    "I''ll see what I can do," comes the noncommittal response, and then clipboard guy just walks out, leaving me with four very annoyed superheroes.

    "This fucking country," S¨ª Gaoithe swears, pacing around in frustration. "This is absurd. Alright, Sera. Fast, practical rundown. What do you do?"

    Fast and practical. I can do that.

    "I can heal from basically anything and if you get me close to grab something I can almost certainly kill it. Problems are that I have moderate mobility at best and not much capacity to threaten targets at range."

    "Okay," he nods to himself. "Alright, we can work with that."

    "Also, please don''t call me Sera."

    "Sure, Sera. Now who are you?"

    "I am Danielle," Danielle says. "I will not be joining you; I was merely guarding Seraphim until she could be delivered to your care. Please watch over her."

    And with that, the spook departs. S¨ª Gaoithe scowls, staring at me for a moment before turning back to his team.

    "Alright, everyone. Introduce yourselves."

    "Waylaid," a thin, pale-looking man nods. "Defensive specialist. My domain redirects and upsets attacks, among other things. If you feel my power on you, don''t try to do anything too important."

    "And don''t break synchronicity," S¨ª Gaoithe adds. "Just let the man work."

    "Understood," I nod. Poking Waylaid''s domain to get a feel for it, I notice an obvious similarity to Emily and Ed. A Failure power, then?

    "Eruption," the next man introduces himself. He feels kind of like Ana. Reciprocation, I guess? "I can launch directed heat-based attacks out of surfaces within my domain. The limit is that I can only launch shots out of locations that have been recently damaged, with the power proportional to the amount of damage taken."

    Shit, yeah, that sure sounds like a power a god named Reciprocation would grant.

    "We work well together, since my power is all about destroying things," S¨ª Gaoithe says. "Collecting more ammunition for myself gives more ammunition to him."

    "Good to know," I nod. "Do living things count as surfaces?"

    "I¡­ yes, in theory," Eruption frowns. "Shooting a heat beam out of someone''s body would do a lot of damage to them, though."

    "Which would make your power more efficient, right?" I point out. "I can heal off whatever you do to me, so feel free to use me as a firing platform if you see a good shot."

    "What the hell?" the woman who hasn''t introduced herself yet mumbles.

    "I am¡­ not going to do that," Eruption says, furrowing his eyebrows.

    "Don''t try to act tough, kid," S¨ª Gaoithe says. "All powers have a limit. You might be strong, but you can''t heal forever."

    "I''m well aware of that," I tell him. "My limit is based on the amount of food I eat. But I''ve been stockpiling food for months. I have enormous reserves at the moment. I''m not saying you should chew through them at will, but if you see a shot that burns a hole through my chest but kills the Angel? Take it. That''s extremely worth it. I''ll be fine."

    "You can survive getting a hole burned through your chest?"

    "I''m pretty sure I could survive getting my head blown off," I say. "I haven''t tested it, for obvious reasons, but I''ve had basically everything less than that happen."

    "When? How?" Eruption asks. "Didn''t you just get out of basic?"

    "She did her first wing rip before basic," S¨ª Gaoithe explains with a frown. "Extenuating circumstances. No point getting into it right now."

    "She was a supervillain, wasn''t she?" the yet-unnamed girl scowls.

    "What? No," I deny.

    "Not that we know of," S¨ª Gaoithe sighs. "Though with powers like hers, who can say. Anyway, introduce yourself, newbie."

    "...Rafflesia," the woman says. "Temporary member. Here for resonance and dissonance support, mostly."

    Resonance and dissonance support? So she''s supposed to empower our domains and weaken theirs, which means her god hates our gods and loves Blasphemy. Which¡­ almost certainly means her god is Blasphemy, right? If In-Joke is correct and resonance happens because the gods are fighting and want their chosen to win, dissonance happens because the gods don''t want us to fight each other, so they make us weaker. The Queen and her Angels have synchronicity with each other, so Blasphemy knows they aren''t trying to kill each other and doesn''t do anything, but when one of our Blasphemy-blessed is involved, Blasphemy quietly discourages them from killing each other.

    ¡­The problem with this theory is, of course, that this has the complete opposite effect in practice. In order to get optimal domain usage, you''d want to team up with people your god hates and beef with people your god likes¡­ with friends as backup. If the gods don''t want their chosen killing each other, the current setup makes no sense. There''s no way a chosen of Blasphemy would be the optimal choice for a domain support to kill Angels of Blasphemy.

    I reach out my domain and prod at Rafflesia''s. She pulls back, but I still feel it. Rot, corruption, disgust for the sake of disgust. It is, without a doubt, a domain of Blasphemy. Huh. Maybe it''s a Blasphemy-specific thing? Part of Blasphemy''s whole deal is being an intentional outlier, but that seems a little too convenient of an answer.

    Maybe the gods don''t really understand the consequences of their actions. That¡­ might honestly explain a lot about the world.

    "Tell her your actual power, Raff," S¨ª Gaoithe orders.

    "I make meat plants," she sighs. "I grow fleshy vines out of things. They are very gross."

    "Oh, that''s handy," I hum. "How much can you make at a time? Are they edible?"

    She squints at me.

    "¡­There''s something wrong with you."

    Rude.

    "Many things, I''m sure," S¨ª Gaoithe agrees. Rude!

    "Do you want me to be less gross or more dangerous?" I ask, a bit of my irritation slipping out. "You get to pick one or the other."

    "What I need is for you to focus on protecting Eruption," S¨ª Gaoithe says. "That''s going to be your job. We haven''t worked together enough to not get in each other''s way on offense, but you''re dangerous up close and he''s in danger if anything gets close. His power is a bit too indiscriminate to be used for self-defense."

    There we go, back on track. I nod.

    "I can do that," I confirm.

    "That means no going off on your own," he presses.

    "Got it," I confirm. "Trust me, I didn''t detach from my squad to duel an Angel out of any particular love for it. I''ll follow orders."

    "Good," S¨ª Gaoithe says firmly.

    "I have a question," Rafflesia chimes in. "Why are we just ignoring the bit where she screamed at an Angel to go away and it just did that?"

    "Because it was batshit insane and we probably don''t have time to get into it," S¨ª Gaoithe says.

    "The important part of the answer is that the alien communications network is biological and I can therefore tap into it," I explain. "Angels are surprisingly chatty."

    "Tap into¡­ you yelled at it in English!" Rafflesia says.

    "I was speaking out loud for your benefit. Alien communication is entirely nonverbal, so I just did both at once."

    "Are you claiming that Angels are smart enough to have a language?" Eruption asks.

    "Yep," I confirm. "All aliens, actually. They''re a bit weird, but they''re definitely people. I can translate for you, if you like."

    "If this is true, why the fuck are you with us and not some intelligence corps?" S¨ª Gaoithe asks.

    That is an extremely good question. I grow an extra pair of arms so I can shrug twice as hard.

    "Hell if I know."

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Before anyone can respond with more than a weird look, the radio in S¨ª Gaoithe''s helmet crackles to life and delivers our orders. I don''t hear much of it, but I feel my new squad leader''s domain wrap around me so I let him in. An invisible force grasps my body, holding me stiffly in place as it lifts me up into the air.

    "Alright, we''re deploying," he declares. "I guess you don''t even get a gun, Sera."

    "I''m starting to get the impression the upper brass doesn''t like me," I admit.

    "Couldn''t imagine why," he says sarcastically. "Up we go."

    I''m telekinetically pulled out of the tent and into the sky, and while it freaks me out a little at first I figure my new lead knows what he''s doing. I force myself to relax and let him yank me along, the five of us rising into the sky as one. Ahead of us I can clearly see our new front lines, successfully solidified on the far side of the Mississippi. That bodes well. I hope the trend continues.

    I wonder which of the people I chatted with today we''ll be killing.

    It''s a bit of a morbid thought, but I suppose that''s war for you. I can''t bring myself to be too sad about slaughtering the worshippers of Blasphemy, but it''s still a little melancholy. They''re weird and evil, but this is still genocide, right? Is there really no better way?

    "Looks like Command is sending us after the bastard Sera scared off before," S¨ª Gaoithe says.

    "Fucking damn it," Eruption grumbles. "That thing is a brick wall."

    "Nonetheless, we can''t let it do what it pleases to the ground troops. We''ll have to overwhelm it, one way or another."

    "Its power looked like some kind of defensive portal thing?" I press for information. "It''s called Swallower of Virtue, so I imagine it eats stuff. Feeding it might be a bad idea."

    "The Angels have names?" Rafflesia asks.

    "Of course they have names," I frown. "Hell, the Queen has a name, albeit a rather pretentious one. But I guess she''s a queen, so¡­"

    "Cut the chatter. Sera, if you think you have reliable, relevant intel, share it. I''m not interested in anything else."

    "Yes sir," I tell him, shutting up.

    We break into the Queen''s domain soon enough, and as we get closer to the front lines I start smelling more and more alien chatter. Soon enough, the Queen greets me herself.

    "THIS UNIT ADDRESSES THIEF OF TORN WINGS: WELCOME ONCE AGAIN TO OUR BANQUET."

    "I am unhappy to be here and intend to slay you."

    "THEN BE WELCOME AND MERRY. WE OBSERVE ONE OF OUR GOD''S BELOVED RIDES WITH YOU. IT PAINS US THAT WE ARE UNABLE TO CONVERSE WITH ONE OF OUR OWN. REQUEST: DELIVER OUR CHOSEN TO US THAT SHE MAY BE PROPERLY REBORN."

    What? They must be talking about Rafflesia.

    "Unknown concept: ''properly reborn,''" I respond.

    "CONFUSION. CONSIDERATION. UNDERSTANDING. YOUR PEOPLE LACK QUEENS. I WILL EXPLAIN. CONSIDER: ARE NOT ALL CHOSEN BORN UNTETHERED? IT IS MY DUTY AND PURPOSE TO GRANT A FLESH WORTHY OF BLASPHEMY TO THOSE LOVED BY BLASPHEMY."

    Oh, that''s interesting.

    "It had been the assumption of my people that the bodies of chosen were crafted in advance, and blessed in response to their forms. Clarification request: this assumption was false, and Angels are given their forms after being chosen?"

    "CONFIRMATION. THIS UNIT BEARS THE CHILDREN OF OUR GOD, AND BEARS THEM ANEW IF BLASPHEMY SEES FIT TO GRANT THEM A BLESSING."

    "Understood. Unconditional denial of request."

    "YOUR RESPONSE IS LACKING IN TACT AND CONSIDERATION TO A DEGREE THAT SHOCKS AND UPSETS ME, CONSIDERING OUR PRIOR INTERACTIONS."

    Translation: what the hell, girl. I thought we were cool.

    "I disregard your traditions as I would any other, when it suits my purposes," I remind her. "I am unable to relinquish the chosen you desire as I intend to use her to assist with your demise."

    "COMPREHENSION DAWNS LATER THAN EXPECTED. CONTINUE AS YOU WILL WITH OUR ETERNAL SUPPORT."

    Translation: oh, that makes sense now that you spell it out. Gosh, I just can''t stay mad at you.

    "Your support baffles me but will not be rejected, insofar as it is understood that I still intend to slay you."

    "YOU MAY, IF YOU CAN."

    "Coming up on our target, team," S¨ª Gaoithe announces, pulling my focus back to the battle. "Stay sharp."

    Right, okay. Focus, Julietta. I doubt most of the team can fly without S¨ª Gaoithe''s support, so we''re either going to be yanked around all mission or set up nearby on the ground or rooftops. Probably the latter, so our main offense doesn''t have to micromanage us. Since my job is to protect Eruption, it''s also possible we''ll get dropped off while the others stay in the sky, depending on their effective ranges.

    I spot Swallower of Virtue''s disgusting form, hovering above the front lines and slaughtering forces on the ground by creating portals over the heads of troops and dropping them down, leaving nothing behind. The ''portals'' may or may not actually be portals to anywhere in particular; they simply look like floating, two-dimensional discs that hold some hard-to-perceive darkness within them. What matters is that the things that go in them don''t come out. Even the domain coverage of the connected supers doesn''t seem to protect the soldiers below, the slow form of Swallower''s mass leaving death below wherever it flies. A dozen are devoured in the bare moments I spend gawking.

    "Greetings, favored guest," Swallower of Virtue says. "It disappoints me that you have brought others to assist you."

    "Then die disappointed," I respond, unfurling my wings in preparation. "Ready to be dropped."

    "Dropping," S¨ª Gaoithe says, and I feel the invisible force vanish, though of course all my momentum remains. We were going really damn fast, so I just direct my fall, reinforce the shock absorption for my cranial cavity, and remove any unnecessary bones before making impact, my body splattering, rolling, scooping itself back up and reforming me on my feet all in one motion. Eruption gets dropped much more gently onto the roof next to me, so I leap over and form up with him.

    "Jesus," he says. "Doesn''t that hurt?"

    "I guess so," I admit. "There''s worse things than pain, though. Heads up."

    "I see it."

    One of the void-portals flies towards us, so I ready myself to grab Eruption and leap off the roof, if necessary. Thankfully, S¨ª Gaoithe scoops a huge mass of rubble into his control, firing some of it at Swallower and forcing them to block.

    The battlefield below is a mess. Huge chunks of people got slaughtered as the Angel floated through, the standard power support not enough to handle Swallower''s massive offense and defense. Not needing to keep their domains on themselves for protection against their own Queen, they can focus down targets while remaining relatively safe from retaliation. I don''t even want to know how many squads got taken down before we got here, but thankfully we seem to be filling the gap with new troops before the enemy can rush in and attempt to flank us.

    "How much damage can you do to the things around us?" Eruption asks.

    "Plenty," I answer, turning one arm into an acid cannon.

    "Right. Where I direct you. There!"

    I vomit acid onto the ground, and as the splashes hit, cylindrical glowing beams erupt upwards from the impact zone, converging towards Swallower. S¨ª Gaoithe harasses with shots of rubble as well, but most of what he fires gets twisted into something largely harmless by the Queen''s power and the rest gets eaten by portals.

    What a fantastically annoying power. I''m honestly not sure how we''re going to beat it.

    "Waylaid! I''m getting you in close!" S¨ª Gaoithe shouts. "You too, Raff! We''re not gonna get that thing unless it fucks up!"

    "Makin'' him fuck up, sir."

    "Ugh."

    S¨ª Gaoithe launches his entire payload¡ªincluding Waylaid and Rafflesia¡ªat the Angel. As Swallower sends portals towards them to intercept, the ones heading towards Waylaid jitter and curve slightly off course while Rafflesia''s mere presence reduces their range and power. Eruption expands his domain over as wide a range as he can, relying on me to protect him as he maximizes his possible angles of attack. I launch more acid, and between all of us we saturate the air around the Angel with an overwhelming number of attacks. In response, they shrink their domain and focus entirely on defense, still managing to avoid injury under the unrelenting onslaught.

    "Keep up the pressure until he cracks!" S¨ª Gaoithe orders, telekinetically circling Waylaid and Rafflesia around Swallower to preemptively avoid retaliation. The complex dance ensures a constant stream of rubble is sent towards the Angel, all of which barely misses S¨ª Gaoithe''s own teammates in order to attempt contact.

    I''m a little worried we''re letting the Swallower swallow too much, but I suppose that''s a complete guess on my part. Maybe his power is actually less likely to build up a charge to retaliate just because that would be so similar to what Reciprocation gifts its chosen. Perhaps the Blasphemy that the Swallower of Virtue represents is that of infinite endurance, a refusal to retaliate in kind. But he also just straight-up eats people with weird floaty portals, which could definitely be classified as retaliatory, so I''m probably just overthinking all of this.

    The good news is, barring some unknown aspect of his power, we are at the very least stalemating him. That is much better for our forces than it is for theirs.

    "Greetings, Thief of Torn Wings. Please look over here."

    Huh? I glace over to where I hear the indication coming from, and spot an ethereal blue flame spreading from building to building a couple blocks down. It dances across the wood, spreading greedily as it devours fuel in abundance. The flame''s cerulean fingers flicker and flash as they grow ever larger, an unearthly beauty demanding my attention. Though the fire roars across wooden buildings, they don''t seem to be consumed or burned. The buildings don''t wither away into charcoal, gasping their last breaths as the whole of their beauty is used up in a short, glorious moment. There''s something profoundly, overwhelmingly sad about that. That''s not how fire should be.

    I need to go. I need to let the flame burn me properly.

    Wait, what?

    I have to! The fire could be so much more. It could be a worthy end to everything! Beside me, the flames catch Eruption''s gaze, and he is similarly transfixed¡ª

    Wait hold on, I''m not transfixed, right?

    ¡ªas he starts to approach the pyre. I follow¡­ and then I force myself to stop, because what the fuck is going on here?

    My body twitches and rebels against my commands, some part of me yearning to leap into the flames more desperately than I''ve ever yearned before. But another part of me, the sane part of me, feels detached from it all. My brain wants me to go kill myself. However, I''m pretty used to telling my brain to stop being a dumbass at this point, so I command it to shut the fuck up and grab Eruption before he does anything stupid. To my surprise, my body only thrashes helplessly in response to the conflicting commands. That''s annoying. I guess I''ll just have to do this directly.

    I bypass telling my brain to tell my arm to grab Eruption and straight-up shapeshift the arm into a new position. The clumsy limb fails to get a firm grip and Eruption continues walking, so I drop the pretense of needing fingers and extend a tendril long enough to wrap him up and pull him back. He seems to snap back to attention when I accidentally cover his eyes, so I unshift my own as well, returning my body to my full command.

    "What the¡ª oh, shit!" Eruption swears, toggling his radio. "This is Eruption, we''ve got a line-of-sight mental compulsion in C-11, requesting smoke on the area. Compulsion effect in C-11, requesting smoke on the area. Over."

    He turns to me and clasps me on the shoulder.

    "Good shit, kid. Now get the others!"

    I can feel him point up with my domain, but I of course do not see anything he''s pointing at since I have temporarily blinded myself. I reform eyes in that direction, making sure not to look towards the flames again, and sure enough the rest of our squad seems to be having trouble. S¨ª Gaoithe has clearly gotten entranced. The good and bad news is that this has caused him to drop Waylaid and Rafflesia. This is good because it ended up breaking both of them out of the trance; it''s bad because it has left them relatively defenseless against Swallower of Virtue.

    Rafflesia and Waylaid have both been caught before hitting the ground by giant growths of what appears to be human skin and organs. If you saw only the outline of the mess of flesh it would look like a twisting beanstalk, the kind a fairytale character might climb up into the clouds. But it is very much not a beanstalk. It is an enormous, squishy tube of meat with drooping leaves of skin.

    I really, really want to know if it''s edible. That would be beneficial to my power reserves and for the inevitable cleanup that using this power likely requires.

    The flesh stalks are doing their best to shift and move their occupants out of the way of Swallower of Virtue''s attacks, so my focus needs to be S¨ª Gaoithe. I leap off the roof and thrum my wings, taking to the air to try and intercept him, but even while entranced he is significantly faster than me. I just need to break his line of sight for a moment!

    I shift into a falcon, dive down at an angle, and shift into a cheetah shortly before touching the ground. I break a leg on impact, but that''s easy to repair, and then I''m sprinting as fast as I can down the street, overtaking S¨ª Gaotihe from below. Once I have a bit of distance, I jump and shift back into a bird, using my momentum to quickly gain height and interpose myself in front of my squad leader. Launching myself right at him, I do one more shift into an octopus midair and smack right into the front of his face, latching on and blocking his eyesight.

    His reaction is instantaneous. At first, his power instinctively tries to tear me to shreds, ripping into my body and pulling in every direction at once, and while that is exceptionally painful it stops almost as quickly as it starts. S¨ª Gaoithe turns around and faces away from the flames, then taps me lightly twice on the tentacle.

    "Good save, Seraphim," he says. "Give me my eyes back."

    I unfurl my tentacles from around his face, secure myself to the top of his helmet instead, and then grow myself some air-breathing lungs because it''s easier than manually oxygenating my blood. Oh yeah, I should give myself vocal cords while I''m at it. I am now an octopus with a weird human mouth where my beak should be, which feels a bit wrong but it gets the job done.

    "Figure I should stay close in case you accidentally glance that way again?" I ask.

    "Sounds good," S¨ª Gaoithe confirms. "Did you see that coming from their comms?"

    "No, I just shook it off," I answer honestly. I''m not sure how I did it, frankly. The whole thing was kind of like being under Commander''s power. Maybe my weird relationship with my own brains naturally makes me resistant to mental effects?

    I am tempted, very tempted, to look back at the flames to test my theory. And I give into that temptation, my large eyes swiveling back in my head to once again see that dazzling blue. Immediately, my body wants to detach itself from my squad leader and throw itself into the fire, but I''m expecting it this time and force my eyes away from the beauty with my power. And then, again, my mind is fully my own.

    Well, at least the trick is reliable. But nonetheless, I thoroughly regret taking that backwards glance. I didn''t need to see the dozens, possibly hundreds of people rushing forward to feed the pyre with their bodies.

    S¨ª Gaoithe starts picking up rubble, scraping chunks of road free from the ground as we fly overhead, his speed picking up all the while. The rest of our squad is struggling to survive against Swallower of Virtue without us, so we need to resume the stalemate as quickly as possible. It''s frustrating, horribly frustrating, that even with the five of us working together that''s the best we can do. I feel like I''ve barely even contributed, but what am I supposed to accomplish against a power like that? At any given moment, Swallower of Virtue only has the tiniest gaps in his defenses, their portals appearing and disappearing out of nowhere with startling speed, capable of intercepting nearly anything. A projectile would need to do an enormous amount of course correction mid-flight in order to even have a chance of breaking through.

    ¡­

    I really shouldn''t do this.

    "Throw me at them," I tell my squad leader.

    "What? No!" he shuts me down immediately. "Are you crazy?"

    "I''m flexible, maneuverable, and exceptionally dangerous at point-blank range," I say. "I can do it."

    "You''re a cocky moron is what you are," he fires back. "We have no idea what those portals do, we just know that nothing that goes in ever comes back. They could cause instant disintegration. They could teleport you to the fucking sun."

    "They''re always circular, and he can only make them so big," I say. "He only blocks everything by creating multiple layers of shields, but there are still gaps. If I''m fast enough, I can slip through."

    "And if you''re not fast enough, you die," S¨ª Gaoithe counters. "Look kid, I''ll admit you have talent, but that''s all the more reason we need you to not throw your life away doing stupid shit. You can''t get stronger unless you live."

    "I''ll live," I promise him. "He can''t kill me."

    The words come out of my mouth before I''ve fully processed them, but I''m surprised at how confident I am in the claim. He can''t kill me. Right? Why can''t he kill me? Why do I feel like there''s something he lacks? Am I under another mental compulsion?

    Out of the corner of my eye, I spot something on the ground. A human figure, leaning nonchalantly against a wall. They turn to me, and with a smile, In-Joke gives me a thumbs-up.

    "Boss, I promise you, I will not die," I insist again. "Nothing that thing can do can kill me. It wouldn''t be enough. Get me in there, give me a good shot, and I won''t let you down. I guarantee it."

    "Are you crazy? There''s no way I''ll¡ª"

    A portal opens up too closely to one of Rafflesia''s flesh plants, devouring the stem and causing the woman on top to tumble towards another portal. Another plant grows out of the earth to redirect her, but not quickly enough. She falls partway into the portal, her right arm landing inside the boundary, while the rest of her body topples past. The arm is consumed by the power. The rest of her just keeps falling as if it never made contact with anything at all. Blood gushes from the wound, painting her plants red.

    "Sir, please."

    S¨ª Gaoithe grits his teeth, but I feel his power peeling me off of his helmet and into the air, so I give him control.

    "Fine," he says. "Get it done, wing ripper."

    He thrusts me at the Angel, and I curl up into an aerodynamic ball of flesh. Portals appear to intercept me, but S¨ª Gaoithe maneuvers me around them, getting me closer and closer to my target. Soon enough, I''m at the same distance Rafflesia and Waylaid were orbiting around the Angel before, and I, too, am given a part in that dance as S¨ª Gaoithe lifts up Waylaid to join me. Rafflesia is pulled away from the Angel instead, moved onto the roof with Eruption so he can try to give her first aid.

    I''m spun around at incredible speeds, the g-forces enough to make it hard to think before I reorganize my internal structure to better accommodate. This close to the Angel, the portals overlap like a solid wall of scales, tracking our rotation and trying to box us in to carve off more body parts. Yet the Angel can''t create a perfect defense. There are gaps between the layers, tiny delays whenever he has to react to an unexpected assault, and though the imperfections haven''t been enough to hurt him so far, we simply haven''t had the right ammo yet.

    Waylaid makes my opening, a pair of portals shifting just barely in the wrong direction, but it''s enough to give me a gap. S¨ª Gaoithe sees the opportunity, launching me at my target with such a sudden and violent acceleration that I black out for a split second before forcing my body back into functionality. A portal appears in front of me, but I''m already taking the form of a swallow, a twitch of my tail careening me off into a different direction, barely making it around the shield. I dodge another barrier, and then another, but suddenly a portal appears far too close for me to possibly avoid. So I don''t try to avoid it.

    I grow larger.

    I extend tendrils out in every direction, and then the core of my body impacts the portal and ceases to exist. Disintegrated or teleported, that matter is no longer my own. I feel it as my body hits the edge of that tear in space, the vast majority of my mass getting swallowed up all at once. My eyes, my ears, my mouth, my nose, and my entire brain.

    The pain is gone. Sight is gone, sound is gone, smell is gone, touch is gone, everything is gone because the flesh in my domain no longer possesses any way of perceiving it. But my domain itself can perceive the flesh, and the little tips of my tendrils that survived annihilation are still my own. I know their biology, and though it is worthless, possessing nothing that could possibly sustain its life for more than another few seconds, it is still mine. And so, I make it grow.

    I can''t see, feel, touch, or taste, but I recognize the Angel''s flesh within my domain and record its template as my own. Why do I need to see, when I can simply know? Each cast-off fragment of tendril is commanded to extend, to burrow, to impact the body of my foe and dig into its heart with roots of bone. My power detects the Angel''s olfactory systems churning in response, releasing countless chemicals in a silent scream, but I can neither hear nor smell it. It is simply a fact of the flesh that I consume from within, a footnote to a rapidly breaking template, devolving into a more and more suboptimal state as its organs fail from punctures and lacerations. My target thrashes, still not my own for its domain holds strong, but not strong enough to keep out the many thin needles the Thief of Divine Love taught me to penetrate with. As I reach my roots within, and my prey begins to fall from the sky, I extend around the outside of it a cage of bone on which I will grow around to swallow it. We impact the ground, and while the damage that deals to me can be fixed, the Angel is not so fortunate.

    My prey can no longer even twitch in its death throes, its hydraulic fluid leaking all throughout the inside of its broken form. I grow deeper and deeper within, and finally find my prizes: the heart, and the brain. I tear them apart until the cloying, desperate domain of Blasphemy dissipates to nothing, and all at once the flesh becomes mine in totality.

    What a suboptimal form. I repair it in moments, but this body is not built for practical methods of traversal, only sturdiness, so with a shudder of displeasure I twist it into something more pleasing. Stronger legs, a sleeker core, limb-mounted weapons with which to stab and tear and devour. The heart should be stronger, the lungs should be bigger, and the brain¡­

    Ah, yes. I should have a working brain.

    Awareness returns to me all at once. Copying the totality of the Angel''s nervous system without any modifications would be suboptimal, and so with my hybrid brain I can immediately recognize the humans as what they are, my allies and squadmates who are neither food nor foe. They appear to be extremely concerned. I suppose all of that might have looked a little strange from the outside. I should try to reassure them.

    With a shudder, I swallow most of my new flesh back up into my domain, returning myself to two legs, two arms, and only a couple other limbs. I keep the Angel''s skin, since it''s a much better defense than anything the human body could offer, let alone the feathers I usually cover myself with. Making sure to have plenty of weapons ready in case of attack, I finish my shift by looking up to where S¨ª Gaoithe is staring at me and snapping him a crisp salute, a wide-mouthed grin on my face so he knows everything is okay.

    The humans staring at me all flinch in fear. I guess I''m doing something wrong. That''s annoying, I''m usually good at this. Consequences from not having a brain for a while, maybe? Probably. Come on, think, what am I¡­ oh, I kind of look fucking terrifying, don''t I? Right. Right right right. I shift back to my PR-approved Seraphim form, folding my wings tight up against my back for good measure. A little sheepishly, I clear my throat.

    "Um, wings ripped, sir," I announce.

    "Holy fucking shit," Rafflesia hisses, a smaller version of one of her flesh plants growing out of the stump of her shoulder. It seems to be stemming the bleeding. "And I thought my power was nasty."

    As my squad continues to stare at me in horror, I make sure to stand still, not wanting to spook anyone into shooting me. On the wind, I can still smell my most recent meal''s dying screams, and of course, their last words.

    "Report: this unit (Swallower of Virtue) is dead."