Chương 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—due to injury, genetic deformity, or what have you—it 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 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—Emily, 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—and 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—the twine doesn't exactly work on my stubby little Raptor arms—but 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 —and I'm really fucking good at it—but 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.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

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—but maybe just murderous—the 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—!" 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 re design 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.