Chương 43: 42. I'm A Soldier, Not A Cop

"I'd like to volunteer for cleanup duty." The organizer I'm speaking to looks up from his clipboard and raises an eyebrow at me.

"Really?" he asks.

"You know they're having a victory party, right? Some of the guys found intact wine cellars underneath some of the local bars. They're going nuts with it."

"That sounds illegal," I answer.

"Plus I'm underage. And I don't like parties anyway."

"Well, being underage isn't going to stop the rest of you super types, but I won't say no to more help. You're a shapeshifter or something, right?"

"Yes, but I think I can use my powers to remove most of this stuff pretty directly," I answer. If there's one thing that is always plentiful after a battle, it's corpses. Aliens take a startlingly long time to rot for some reason, but nobody wants the land we just reclaimed to be covered with dead aliens for any longer than necessary. It would hurt PR if our pictures of the reclaimed city weren't pretty enough, and it all has to be removed before we can safely start putting the city back together.

Not to mention that any of the human corpses around will rot quickly, and will become fetid disease pits, so removing them is priority number one. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be a good look if I started eating human bodies in front of an audience. I think it should probably be okay if I eat the Queen, though. It's what she would have wanted.

"Okay, show me what you've got, then," the guy with the clipboard nods, motioning towards a giant, deceased tentacle. I happily accept his request, jumping on top of it, extending my domain, and expanding my body to match it, wrapping myself around as large a chunk of meat as I can, burrowing through part of it to cut it off from the rest of the body, and then finally swallowing it whole. Though I want to immediately move onto the rest, I shift back into Seraphim form first, glancing towards the organizer.

"That was the most disgusting fucking thing I have ever seen in my life," he says frankly.

"Efficient, though. Keep at it." Finally, someone with sense. I give him a thankful nod and continue devouring Corrupter of All Creation's body. I can certainly see why she was struggling to move. Though I have to do some level of extrapolation to understand what her musculature would have been like while she was actually alive and full of all the fluids she's supposed to have, it definitely doesn't seem robust enough to support something of her size.

Of course, like the rest of Blasphemy's chosen, her body contains numerous inefficiencies chosen for style rather than practicality, her dedication to counterculture far greater than any desire for function. Blasphemy worshippers are like the gothpunk of aliens, full of enormous piercings just asking to get caught on something and torn out, but what do they care? They think it looks sick as hell, and that's the important thing in their minds.

Still, even given all of that, it seems clear that the Queen's body was not designed for life on Earth, or at least not on land. I can't really be certain, but it's entirely possible that she would have been able to support herself in the ocean. Her body isn't collapsing under its own weight, it just can't move that weight, so the pressures of the deep sea would likely be a lot more friendly to it than the open air. The Queen is a beached whale, but on an even more massive scale.

She was probably struggling just to stay alive. I work quickly, consuming huge chunks of biomass in hopes of making it down the tentacle in time to pick up some of the more complex internal structures. I'm particularly curious about the Queen's womb, as she made it sound like it was responsible not only for birthing most of the aliens we fought today in the first place, but also taking already-living aliens and reforming them into Angels after they were chosen.

That must be an insane level of biological control, and I can't help but think about the parallels to my own power. Do the Angels retain continuity of consciousness when they are transformed this way? If so, how? From my own experimentations I've learned that it is very difficult to get a brain to adapt to a brand-new body, and while I admit that alien brains seem to be better at this than Earth-born counterparts, it's still a bit of a mess. But I've confirmed today that aliens do not fear death.

So it is entirely possible that they aren't worried about a discontinuity of consciousness, and the process of becoming an Angel destroys one's own ego entirely. If that's the case, then I have to wonder how the gods feel about Queens taking their chosen and transforming them into completely different people, but it also provides an answer to a question that I've been wondering about for a long time now. Why were the Angels of Division trying to kidnap Christine, back in the Chicago incursion zone?

My memory of the conversations I had with the Angel at that time is hazy at best, colored by my own lack of familiarity with my powers, a combat high so potent I thought I might be hallucinating it all, and just sort of not being very coherent in general. But I'm pretty sure the aliens were kidnapping Christine because they could tell that she was blessed by their god—Division. That's why Christine's power felt so familiar to the Queen; it literally comes from the same source.

If, in alien culture, the immediate response to someone being blessed by a god is to turn them into an Angel, why wouldn't they do the same for the humans they come across? Why would they allow these poor, silent natives to continue being unable to speak with or understand their own kin? As far as the aliens were concerned, Christine was one of them, and I was attempting to stop something beautiful and sacred.

I kind of regret not thinking about any of this back then, but I suppose I was rather overwhelmed at the time. Still, I should have done better.

"Seraphim, you're being relieved." Huh? I swallow my current morsel and shift into human form, looking towards the voice. Some low-ranking officer I don't know. Why is he bothering me…?

"I volunteered for this," I tell him.

"I don't really need… relief."

"You're one of the big damn heroes of the battle, Seraphim. You should be taking a break."

"I am taking a break," I scowl.

"Like I said, I want to be here."

"You've killed three Angels today, kid," he insists.

"People want to meet you. Shake your hand. Your name's getting around. Your face should be, too." Oh, I get it.

"This is a PR thing, sir?" I clarify.

"This sounds like the exact opposite of taking a break, but I'll do it if it's an order."

"… Then consider it an order, Seraphim. Go take a rest and celebrate your victory," he says, seeming irritated. Well, that makes two of us, buddy. But of course, I snap a quick salute to acknowledge the command and head off to obey it. I'm more than a little disappointed that I don't get to see more of how Queens work, but I'll submit a formal request as soon as I can. The information is probably strategically relevant, so it might actually go through. Not looking forward to this damn party, though.

It'll be like being home all over again, except I can walk now so I'll be expected to actually do that, wandering around and mingling with people for the sole purpose of making them happy. Hopefully I'll run into some people I actually care about, at least. I can't exactly say I'm thrilled by the idea of Anastasia being at a drinking party, but I can trust Christine and Maria to keep her out of too much trouble.

It's easy enough to follow the loud and unpleasant noise of revelry, making my way to what seems to be an old abandoned bar, temporarily no longer abandoned as the massive crowd of partying soldiers spreads out in every direction along the street attached to it. God, this is going to be miserable. It begins with a drunken catcall, which I ignore, but it quickly leads into a surplus of attention from all sides as people quickly notice me one after another.

I unfurl my wings just a little to encourage people to keep their distance, to mixed results. Whatever. It's what I'm here to do. I smile and nod at everyone who calls out to me, reciprocating platitudes with those who congratulate me and politely rejecting those who brazenly hit on me with varying degrees of drunkenness. It's slow going moving through the crowd, but my hope is that I'll run into someone who can help me out sooner or later. Unfortunately, the first person I recognize happens to be Peter.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the sexy pinup girl of the hour!" he grins at me, elbowing a couple of people out of the way on his path to make my night worse. At least it's a nostalgic sort of worse.

"Please never call me that again," I tell him bluntly, suspecting it won't amount to much.

"I thought that's what you were going for, Lia! You've got that ice queen dom vibe that people will die for. Extra helpful, during war." I glare at him.

"You know perfectly well that I'm not interested in that sort of thing right now," I say, keeping my voice even.

"Do I?" he says.

"Because it seems to me that if you don't want people thinking that you're horny, you should probably put some clothes on in public."

"Or maybe people shouldn't assume what women want based on what they wear," I grumble.

"Or don't wear, I guess."

"Oh, sure," Peter shrugs.

"But come on. You and I have similar opinions on the inherent goodness of humanity. Is that ever actually going to happen?" I sigh. He's got me there. That doesn't make it okay, obviously, but we all have to work with the world as it is: a shithole.

"Well, unfortunately, no one has bothered to give me a new set of clothes," I admit.

"So it's somewhat of a moot point."

"Oh, just ask around," Peter says.

"I'm sure half the people here would be happy to give you all of their clothes." Ugh. Walked right into that one. It's been too long since I've really had to deal with Peter. I'm out of practice. There's no point in justifying myself to someone who's never actually invested in anything either of us say. This is just a game to him, and the only winning move is not to play.

"Do you happen to know where Anastasia or the others are?" I ask, changing the subject completely. The way Peter works is to add new layers of snark on top of every response, but he does it so automatically it's possible to trick him into a normal conversation for at least a little while. Simple questions with easy answers tend to work okay for that.

"Yeah, she's hanging out with the girls inside and learning new swear words," Peter says.

"Too cramped in there for me, though. You're gonna hate it."

"I suspect you're right. Thanks for letting me know," I respond, turning to head into the building.

"Hey!" Peter calls out to me.

"What?" I ask, stopping for a moment out of habit.

"If you're not wearing clothes, you should consider wearing a different body, at least," he suggests.

"That PR mockup is only going to get you more attention you don't want."

"... Do you think I would be here if it wasn't for PR reasons in the first place?" I ask.

"I was literally ordered to attend."

"Oh," he says.

"Wow. So you look like that 'cuz you figure that'll make them happy, huh? Did they also order you into the whole tits and feathers getup?"

"Not technically, but I can read between the lines," I frown.

"Okay, well here's a thought: don't. Use whatever body you want. They didn't say you can't, so there's no point in not making this easier on yourself."

"Most of the rest of us don't go through life with the primary goal of avoiding anything difficult," I snap.

"Most of you don't go through life avoiding anything easy, either," Peter says.

"There's really no need to, especially at a party." I scowl at him, his logic unfortunately worming its way into my head a little. I suppose, if the whole point is to show that Seraphim is at the celebration, that doesn't mean I need to be Seraphim, I just need to make it obvious that Seraphim is here. I hardly have to trudge through a crowd to do that. My powers are plenty distinctive by themselves.

"Goodbye, Peter," I tell him to fulfill a bare minimum of politeness before hopping up into the air and shifting into a bird. A few startled and excited gasps ring out around me, so I make a show of circling above a couple people's heads before heading towards the entrance to the bar. Inside is even louder and rowdier, not to mention darker, candles lighting the interior of the building in lieu of electricity. I quickly grow from swallow to owl to compensate, flapping up into the rafters to take in the party below.

Let's see… he said they would be here, so… ah! There they are. I spot them by noticing Ed's wheelchair, a small but polite empty space easily marking it from the rest of the crowd… probably because it signals him as someone with superpowers more than because it signals him as someone who actually needs that space like it should be doing. Christine, Maria, and Anastasia are sitting at a table with him, chatting amongst themselves quite tamely compared to the drunken revelry around them.

Ed seems to be the only one of the four drinking any alcohol, though the others look at least a little tempted since there is literally nothing else to drink. I'm kind of surprised the brass allowed anyone to open up kegs and wine bottles that have been aging in a Queen's domain for years, but I guess it would have been pretty obvious if Corrupter of All Creation had used her abilities. They aren't exactly made for subtle changes.

She likely had to avoid using it on most things, lest she do something like turn the very earth beneath her into poison gas. Alternatively, it's possible that by the time the brass caught wind of it, everyone was already so drunk that they were going to have to screen everyone for alien parasites anyway so there wasn't much point in breaking up the party. Either way, it's time to do my part in it.

I swoop down towards my friends, extending my domain to poke Anastasia's just in time for her to look up and see a baby tiger descending directly into her lap.

"Meow," I articulate clearly.

"Eeeee! You made it!" Anastasia cheers, wrapping her arms around my body and giving me a tight squeeze.

"Holy shitamole!" Christine swears.

"Fucking hell, Lia, can you never just walk up and say hi?"

"Hi," I say. A tiger's muzzle isn't really built for making human-like sounds, but a parrot's beak is even less built for it so they compensate purely through internal structures, which I have figured out how to integrate in my ever-evolving quest to figure out how to be able to talk in any arbitrarily gloopy body.

"Don't swear in front of Anastasia," Maria chides.

"It's okay, I already know all of the words I'm not supposed to say," Anastasia chimes in, scratching me behind the ears. Which, yes, feels awesome. It's almost overwhelming, but I've been getting more and more used to having a functioning sense of touch. Which is handy, but weirdly sad. I'm not very much at all like the Julietta I used to be, in so many ways.

"It's good to see you, Lia," Ed greets me, gesturing my way with his glass. He looks a bit more subdued than many of the others here. Hmm.

"Everything alright?" I ask.

"I'm torn," he admits.

"Part of me says it's too early to celebrate after losing so many good men and women. Didn't know the ones in my squad for long, but the other part of me is saying this victory is exactly what they died for. They'd probably say we earned the celebration." Oh, that's right. A few people died before I led the Angel away. At least a couple of them were from Ed's squad, and their loss filled him with power. He probably felt them die, triggering his power and instinctively knowing the source. Failure.

What a horrible god.

"Did anyone die after I left?" I ask.

"Not as many as would have if you hadn't done what you did," Ed says, looking at me seriously.

"I hear you gave the monsters hell. Got yourself transferred right onto a wing ripper squad."

"And then I got transferred right off of it. I don't think they know what to do with me," I admit.

"But that doesn't answer my question."

"One of the guys from your squad told me to tell you that your friend Jazz didn't make it," Ed says, and my legs buckle beneath me, collapsing onto Anastasia's lap and getting her to let out a small 'oof.' Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"How?" I ask.

"When?" She was fine, last I saw her. Not even a scratch. She was smart and strong, I thought…

"Right at the very end," Ed says.

"After you all started getting called back to organize the Queen push, but before you went on the attack. Random ambush. Came out of nowhere. Could have happened to anyone." I feel Anastasia tense up beneath me, knowing she's probably feeling a lot of the same things I am. What if I had stayed? I know, intellectually, that she would have been in more danger if I did. Anastasia, I'm sure, knows that she only left because she was ordered to, because she was needed for a more important task.

But still, we went through boot camp together. We fought together, ate together, laughed together, and now she's gone. As stupid as it is to say, I never expected it.

"Well," I say, "I guess that's a good reason to get a little drunk." Ed grimaces, nods in agreement, and takes another gulp from his glass.

"Don't even think about it, Seraphim," a familiar voice grumbles, and I glance over to see Sí Gaoithe walking our way.

"If I'm not allowed to get wasted for 'public safety reasons,' I'm damn well not gonna let you drink anything."

"Hey boss," I nod at him.

"Don't worry, I wasn't planning on it. But maybe if you got me a little bowl I could lick out of…" He snorts, and more importantly, Anastasia giggles.

"Can you even get drunk, with a healing power like yours?" he asks.

"Oh sure," I nod.

"I probably wouldn't even have to drink anything. I could just scan someone else's inebriated bloodstream and inject the alcohol directly into my system. …Though, that would assume that I've ingested enough trace alcohol in the past that I would physically have enough in my biomass storage, and I'm not really sure how much alcohol just passively exists in living bodies. My gut instinct says not much, but I guess it's a moot point either way. I don't want to know what I'm like when drunk."

"Oh god, I don't think anyone wants to know what you're like when drunk," Christine cringes.

"…I kinda do," Maria mumbles, her eyes orange.

"I suspect I'd be a total bitch drunk," I answer. I've never really been inebriated before, except for a few vague memories of what I was like after surgery, but the entire concept of it sounds awful. Alcohol is supposed to loosen your inhibitions or something, right? My inhibitions are the only things keeping me tolerable.

"I can definitely see it," Christine agrees.

"The no-drinking rule goes for you too, Breakdown," Sí Gaoithe says.

"Please don't call me that," Christine sighs.

"What about me?" Maria asks.

"Am I a public safety risk?"

"Not one that I've been ordered to keep an eye out for," Sí Gaoithe answers bluntly.

"So knock yourself out, Titania. Literally, if you want to."

"You know I'm underage, right?" Maria says. He rolls his eyes.

"I'm a soldier, not a cop," he says.

"Enjoy the party."

"You too," I nod at him.

"You know, if you can while sober." He groans in annoyance and walks off.

"So that was like, the famous wing ripper guy," Christine hums.

"I take it you worked together today?"

"Yeah, I was assigned to his squad so he could show me the ropes and I ended up getting his help killing an Angel that was a pretty bad matchup for him. I wish I got to see him in his element a bit more."

"I hear he did get a couple of confirmed Angel kills today," Ed says.

"This battle has to be up there in the record books for some of the most Angel kills in a single continuous combat."

"They were letting themselves get outnumbered and overwhelmed for religious reasons," I explain.

"They only used unpowered troops as backup, because I guess those don't count? The alien class structure seems pretty fucked up. If you don't have powers your life straight-up isn't valuable, best I can tell." Ed blinks. Maria stares at me. Christine sighs and puts her face in her hands. Anastasia shifts uncomfortably below me.

"…What?" Ed asks.

"Oh yeah," I say.

"I can talk to aliens. I've been learning a lot about them today. They're surprisingly personable, though their culture is a little bit insane."

"Oh," Ed says. Then, after a few moments of silence, he downs the entire rest of his glass.

"You've… told the people in charge about that, right?" Maria asks.

"That seems kind of important."

"Only kind of?" I ask.

"Yeah, I've mentioned it. I'm not entirely sure they believed me, though it seems like it would be a pretty easy thing to confirm. They know for certain I can gather information from aliens that no one else can, because a lot of the information I've gathered has been actionable. I hope they get their shit together and at least let me try to negotiate with another council. …Well, assuming aliens of other religions have councils, but my assumptions tend to be pretty good for the same reason my translations do."

"I'm going to go get another full glass of wine, and then I would love to hear you talk about alien governmental systems," Ed says, turning and wheeling off slowly through the crowd. Unlike when stationary, though, everyone seems too caught up in the party to actually let him through, forcing him to slowly try to get the attention of people in front of him over and over again.

"…Hey, Christine, could you…?" I ask.

"Yeah, yeah, I got him," Christine sighs, standing up. She takes a deep breath of air, and shouts.

"Hey morons! Either you make a path or I'll make a path! Out of the fucking way!" One guy starts shouting back at her so she snaps her fingers just for show and sorts his beer into its component parts.

"Bitch, I'm Moses! Don't be the Red Sea!" she threatens. I chuckle and leave her to handle it, nuzzling Anastasia as she resumes her scratches. Man, the claws on her fingers are sharp but they are excellent at hitting just the right spots if she's gentle enough. Time to purr. I subtly shift the bit of a tiger's body that helps them roar into the small cat equivalent that handles purring and enjoy Anastasia's delighted gasp as the sound flows out.

I can't help but enjoy it too; purring feels great, the constant rumble humming through my bones and relaxing my muscles. It really is a neat little thing that cats have going, nothing like standard vocal chords. One of my favorite things about purring is that it functions on inhaling as well as exhaling, leaving the experience as a near constant for as long as I choose to keep doing it.

"You two are adorable," Maria says.

"I wish I could turn into a cat."

"The fairies you turn into are so cool and pretty though!" Anastasia insists.

"Yeah, but I can't just lie on someone's lap and get head scritches all day in the body of a fairy," Maria says.

"Why not?" Anastasia asks. Maria glances at me, blushes, and looks away.

"It's a little weirder for humanoids," she says.

"Especially adults."

"Being an adult seems lame," Anastasia says.

"It's like you can't even hug somebody without getting all awkward about it." Maria responds only by blushing deeper, which I suppose rather proves Anastasia's point. Christine and Ed return soon to break the awkward silence, at least. I expect they are going to have questions.

"Okay," Ed says, after taking a gulp of his new drink.

"So you can talk to aliens. I think the obvious question is 'What do they want?'""Not… a lot? As far as I can tell?" I answer.

"They didn't seem interested in taking more land than they already have. They considered the extent of their Queen's domain to be the extent of their ownership."

"Well, why did they take the territory in the first place?" Ed asks.

"Why are they invading us?" Huh.

"I honestly never thought to ask," I admit, feeling kind of stupid.

"I guess it slipped my mind with all the fighting going on. I'll ask the next Angel I come across."

"Oh yeah, the next Angel you 'come across,' like when you're just strolling down the street one day," Christine says, rolling her eyes.

"Not the next Angel you brutally fight to the death and then eat."

"Like I said, I'm really hoping my next assignment involves peace negotiations," I say.

"But worst-case scenario, the aliens are still pretty talkative, even during a fight. They were surprisingly nice, for monsters."

"Mother Mary," Ed swears.

"This sounds insane. Part of me hopes you're insane, though I mean no offense."

"You and half the upper brass, it feels like," I grumble.

"I realize that after thirty years of death and propaganda, nobody is going to be excited about the prospect of negotiating with aliens. But it's gotta be better than annihilation, right?"

"I guess that depends on whether or not we keep winning," Ed sighs.

"No reason to let the buggers live if we have a choice in the matter."

"…Other than the fact that they are intelligent, thinking people?" I prompt.

"There are a lot of intelligent, thinking people that we'd be better off without," Ed says solemnly.

"More than there rightfully should be, but this is the darkest point of human history. Those space invaders have wiped out more countries and cultures than any world war before them could hope to, and that's not something to say lightly. They've got a lot to answer for."

"I won't deny that," I nod. It wouldn't get me anywhere to try.

"But I never got the impression that the aliens were actively malicious towards us. They were overjoyed to learn that I could talk to them. There was so much about us they didn't understand. I don't really think they understood what they were doing. I don't think they knew that we were people, same as how we didn't know they were."

"How the hell could they not know?" Ed challenges.

"We have cities! Tools! Guns! Civilization!"

"Sure, but they don't have any of those things," I answer.

"Except maybe civilization, but it's a vastly different kind than we ever had. It's not going to be what they use to identify personhood. They were some kind of… superpower-based theocracy? They worship the things that grant us our powers."

"Sounds damn crazy," he says.

"Pardon my French. I'm not going to call you a liar, Lia. If you think that there's a chance for peace, I won't tell you that's not the right thing to aim for. I'm just not sure people are going to be able to forgive them. They certainly won't forget." I grimace, but nod, tail flicking in irritation behind me. He's not wrong. Humans can be vindictive bastards about the most petty shit, and this isn't exactly an oopsie-whoopsie. This is generations of systemic omnicide.

No one is going to take 'well, we never actually knew you valued being alive' as an excuse. Still…

"I'm not asking anyone to forgive them," I say.

"That would be stupid. I just figure that not being at war is a hell of a lot better than being at war, and that the correct response to the annihilation of most of someone's species is not to reciprocate." Sorry not sorry, Anastasia's god. But for better or worse, her domain doesn't seem to react. Not that I expected it to, but I guess I'm a little paranoid now that I know gods are real.

"There's wisdom in that," Ed nods.

"But I fear wisdom is hard to come by in the throes of anger and grief." I get that. I hate it, but I get it. It's just how people are, and I can't say I'm immune. Nor can I say I'm any better than anyone else; I still murdered everyone I was ordered to.

"I'm gonna kill the Chicago Queen," Anastasia says softly.

"Even if they do surrender." The sudden admission startles me, but I guess it shouldn't have. Not just because she's been chosen by Reciprocation, but because that's just who she is. Fiercely loyal to her allies. Unflinchingly brutal to her enemies. She really did turn out to be such a good little soldier. I guess I'll just chalk that one up as another one of my failures.

"I hope you'll think differently about that someday, Ana," I tell her honestly, rubbing her cheek with my tail.

"But if you do head there to kill her, I'll be at your side the whole way." I might be raising her now, but I have no right to trample on the memories of her real family. I have no right to tell her she shouldn't be in pain. When it comes down to it, I will always put aside my morals for the sake of her happiness and safety. That's the whole reason I'm here, fighting this war. So that she and Emily can live better lives.

Without that I'd probably just be another villain hiding from the draft and being of no use to anyone.

"Still, I want you to remember that's just one group of aliens," I tell her.

"There are probably a bunch of aliens in the ocean that have never hurt a human being before at all. I doubt they would even mind if we got rid of all the ones that ended up on land. It might not be reasonable to negotiate with aliens that killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed our homes, but maybe we could negotiate our way to having sea travel again. I'm sure it would be a pretty huge logistical boon to have cargo ships again."

Anastasia, bless her, does seem to start thinking about that, and so does the rest of the table. Even Ed seems interested in the idea.

"Sell it like that, and the bigwigs might actually consider it," he says.

"That's not a bad idea."

"I'll do that," I nod. The party continues well into the night, ultimately culminating in a series of small raiding groups breaking into old abandoned buildings in search of more booze. I show my PR-approved face a little more before everything completely devolves, but once it does my friends and I take that as our cue to head back to base.

The next couple of days go by surprisingly smoothly, with me getting to help a little more during the cleanup (but unfortunately not getting a great look at the more interesting bits of the Queen's anatomy) but mostly just getting time off. It's weird. I don't know what to do with it, and it makes me restless. After a big battle like this, a lot of people get leave to go visit their families, so I make the token effort to request the same, and to my surprise, it gets approved.

I and my friends are cleared to take a long road trip back to Georgia, where we will be staying at Emily's place and on call to report to Fort Moore. Maria volunteers to drive us, which is particularly great because… you know.

"I can't actually drive," I admit.

"Wait, seriously!?" Maria gapes at me. She's driving a big, boxy car, the kind I think might sometimes be called a truck but it doesn't actually have a truck bed, it's just a big car. I have claimed shotgun by right of conquest, with Christine sitting in the middle seat at the back between Peter and Anastasia to make sure nobody drowns. Peter, for once, is on his best behavior, because I think he's realized Anastasia is no longer the only major threat to his life here.

Christine is not happy about the seating arrangement.

"Yeah, it's one of the biggest failures in my disguise," I admit.

"The real Lia could, in fact, drive, and liked doing so a lot."

"Oh, okay, we're talking about this now," Maria says, her eyes flashing between a bunch of different colors.

"I wasn't a hundred percent sure that you were telling me you're not actually Lia back at power training, but you did seem to pretty strongly imply it."

"Yep, I am doing exactly the thing the military was probably afraid that I was doing, minus the secretly being an Angel bit," I confirm.

"Okay so you're not an Angel? Like definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent not an Angel?"

"Well, I'm not sure if one hundred percent is accurate—""Not-Lia, I swear to god," Maria whines.

"—but yes, I was born a human woman named Julietta Monroe," I finish.

"I'm disguised as Lia in order to trick her rich asshole parents into buying a combat exemption for my sister Emily, who is Lia's girlfriend and secretly a supervillain with the power to know everyone's most likely death date, which is telling her that joining the military is a swift way to bring that date sooner."

"Okay," Maria says, her eyes ultimately settling on green.

"Well, I imagine joining the military does that to most people. This kind of just sounds like normal draft dodging."

"Sure, but first of all, I don't have any problems with normal draft dodging," I say.

"Second of all, she's got it worse than either of us when it comes to having a power that fucks her up in the head and I think the military would make that dramatically worse, and third of all she predicts there will be an apocalypse in a few years and a good chunk of what she does is based on trying to figure out how to prevent it. Which, apparently, joining the military does not do."

"Oh my god," Maria says, her hands white-knuckled around the steering wheel.

"Okay, that's a lot to take in at once."

"Okay, I'll stop then, because there is more," I admit.

"What more could there be!?"

"Oh, well since you asked, we apparently have the attention of a supervillain organization known as the Defenders of Nothing, a member of which ambushed us in a Waffle House a few months ago and tried to get us to join up. I actually saw them again a few days ago, during the battle. They served me tea. It was surprisingly nice."

"Wait, what!?" Christine yelps.

"You saw that asshole again!?" Peter demands.

"You had a tea party!?" Anastasia whines.

"An evil supervillain tea party!?"

"Look, I know it sounds crazy, but that's because it is," I tell them.

"In-Joke is basically the Mad Hatter. They were just there, waiting for me next to the site where I killed the first Angel, and I was exhausted and overwhelmed, and it was like… fuck it, you know? Sure. I'll sit down, take a load off, drink some delicious god-damned tea, and try to figure out what the hell is going on with this crazy precognitive. And I mean, it mostly worked out."

"No way," Christine says firmly, crossing her arms.

"Not a fucking way. I don't believe it. I'm calling it now: none of that was actually real. The first time we saw In-Joke they used their power to make you hallucinate them in the future." I tilt my head, considering that.

"…That's actually kind of plausible," I admit.

"The whole thing was a little absurd, I mean, setting up a way to boil an entire kettle in an abandoned, dilapidated house that I was about to knock a fucking Angel through is massive overkill even if they did want to make a dramatic entrance. So much work would have to go into that. It's not just about knowing when and where I'll be in advance. They would have had to lug an entire tea set into the middle of a Queen's territory. Never mind why they did that, how would they even do that?"

"Exactly," Christine sighs, letting out a bit of tension.

"I would have had to suspect you were actually going insane if you thought it was something else."

"It's a good trick," I admit.

"The first time we saw In-Joke, we were all together as a group, and there was outside evidence of their physical impact on the world. The hostages in the bathroom, the food they left behind half-eaten. It couldn't have been a hallucination unless it was a massive, super complicated hallucination that affected all of us in exactly the same way. This time, there was none of that. It was just me and In-Joke, alone, in a place I'll never go back to and never be able to find material evidence of.

Not unless I went well out of my way for it. But if all this is true, it's extremely dangerous. In-Joke could hypothetically make us see anything, from anywhere. And then there's still some aspect to their power, or maybe a power of one of their teammates, that led them to know so much about us. We're missing so many pieces to this puzzle."

"It kind of sounds like you guys should have told more people about this?" Maria hedges.

"Like, what if you're in the middle of a fight, and they make you see your enemies as allies, and vice versa?"

"We don't know for sure that's even possible," I respond.

"Besides, hallucination or not, I still spoke at length with In-Joke. I don't think I made any of that up; it's possible that it was an illusion, but ultimately I still had the conversation. From what I gathered, if In-Joke was intending to make something catastrophically horrible happen to me, they would have done it a long time ago. They have the means, and something resembling a motive, in that they seem to be obsessed with me in some weird way. So why the tea party?

They were downright pleasant, up until the end." No one seems to have any answers for that, and we fall into a thoughtful silence for a while until Maria changes the subject by asking me more about myself, about the real me. I tell her everything she wants to know, from what I looked like, why I couldn't look like that anymore if I wanted to, about my family and my powers and how we escaped alive from Chicago.

It's a long drive, but she has a lot of questions, and talking about it with someone I actually like and respect is kind of cathartic, in its own little way. Here in the car, I get to listen to her call me Julietta for the first time. It feels even better than I thought it would. After many hours that feel like a few, we make it to Emily's apartment, knocking on the door when I find the doorbell doesn't work. There's a bit of shuffling inside, and then the door opens, my sister's face peering out at us.

Then, suddenly, her eyes go wide.

"Oh, holy shit," she swears.

"Fuck. Uh. Come in." Well. That's definitely not something I want to hear from someone who can predict when we die.