Chương 63: 62. What Could She Possibly Stand To Gain

It seems my former commanding officer has nothing else he wants to say. Countless thumbnail-sized ball bearings spill out of the pockets on his vest, orbiting around him at increasingly insane speeds as he gathers more of them. He truly does have an absurd power. The more things he moves with telekinesis at once, the more powerful his telekinesis becomes. It's probably only limited by his ability to mentally multitask, and he's clearly pretty damn good at it.

Every single one of those projectiles is going to hit like a machine gun round… and he's mostly only using them to power up the bigger stuff.

"Attacked by a fellow of Legion…?"

the Angel behind me laments.

"Stay out of the fight," I tell them.

"I will handle it myself."

"Appreciation," the Angel says, backing off. It wouldn't be good for what we're trying to accomplish if the Angel attacks now, and it's a bit mean asking an Angel of Legion, of all gods, to fight a fellow blessed.

Besides, I won't need the help. It's just three superheroes in front of me, the core team: Sí Gaoithe, Waylaid, and Eruption. Waylaid has a Failure-based power that makes targets fuck up whatever they're trying to do. Eruption has a Reciprocation-based power that lets him shoot burning beams out of damaged surfaces and/or people, as long as they got damaged while in his domain. It's honestly not a bad team for going against me.

Waylaid messes up melee fighters hard, since his powers are obviously better the denser he can keep his domain. Eruption's attacks can come from almost any direction thanks to Sí Gaoithe's ability to destroy terrain at will, and Sí Gaoithe himself can potentially just lock me down in his telekinetic grip and crush any attempt to shapeshift away while Eruption burns me alive.

They almost certainly could have killed the old me. Seraphim the shapeshifter would be just another set of wings for them to rip. But I already told them: that's not who I am. I am Julietta. I am Twisting Scars Reshape Fate. And my power is most certainly not shapeshifting.

My power isn't even something as measly as flesh control. My power is dominion over life.

The ability to create it, change it, or destroy it anywhere within me.

I determine the possibilities available to the living and the once-alive.

And so the fate of the organisms before me is mine to reshape.

A shotgun blast of telekinetically-accelerated shrapnel rips through me and around me, scattered on all sides to guarantee several direct hits and a smattering of fucked-up ground all around me. Eruption's domain stretches through the damaged earth, and so from all sides I am fired on by powerful laser-like blasts, searing the bone armor I grow out of my skin. I'm about to respond, but Waylaid's domain follows Eruptions and wraps around me, immediately forcing me to abandon my plans.

After all, I wasn't expecting them to make such a massive mistake.

Waylaid's patron is Failure.

My domain sings with resonance, and though Waylaid's domain is empowered, it more importantly empowers me.

Waylaid and Eruption already have resonance with each other—that's part of why their domains are strong enough to work even when Sí Gaoithe is keeping them well out of my reach—but giving me more power is never a good idea. I shape my domain into a long needle like that Angel of Blasphemy taught me and spear it forward, cutting into their synchronous formation just long enough to snip a rather important part of Eruption's spinal cord.

His limbs instantly go limp, nearly his entire body paralyzed in one tiny invasion. I let him keep his heart and lungs working, of course, I'm not going to slaughter the people I'm trying to negotiate peace with, but he does soil himself. It doesn't, unfortunately, knock him unconscious—that's a bit more of a delicate operation—but he stops using his power on me partly out of shock and partly because his head has slumped over and forced him to look elsewhere.

I retract the bone growths I was using to block his attacks. Other than them, I still haven't moved.

"Eruption!? Damn it!" my former boss swears, pulling his squadmate out of range.

"I'll fix him when you give up," I tell him simply.

"What the hell even was that!?" he asks, mostly to himself.

"Shoot me until your pockets are empty," I answer anyway.

"Then come down here and find out."

I'm not just doing this to flex on them, although it is a nice bonus. Waylaid's abilities are genuinely strong, but they only really work on physical actions. He can't make me fail to use my own domain, because if I'm using my domain, it's in my territory, not his.

Besides, there's not much reason to move. Eruption's abilities are the most obviously dangerous, given my partial fib about being weak to fire, but making a show of blocking them and then taking him out first should help perpetuate the lie, which will always be to my benefit. Sí Gaoithe isn't dangerous from a distance; no amount of armor-penetrating ballistic shots will be able to put a stop to my regeneration.

He is actually dangerous at close range, though: while he can't make my meat not meat, he could potentially rip chunks of me away and fling them out of my range before I can restore or repair them, which would be a genuinely efficient way to lower my biomass, if ultimately a temporary one. Even despite that, I'd rather fight at close range anyway, because then I'd get to use my most dangerous tricks, too.

Besides, I'd rather not reveal I can teleport if I don't have to. It's better to wait until he has no choice but to try it anyway. Another blast of solid projectiles rips me apart, and I heal it off just as easily as last time, taking a bit longer to repair my face just to make my unimpressed glare stick in his mind a bit more effectively. Nothing quite like weaponizing my particular set of social skills to get things done.

Eruption manages to shoot me anyway despite what I've done to him—a true professional, that man—but even getting blasted apart by his significantly more dangerous shots is little more than a nuisance. I probably shouldn't just stand around and take it, though, so I finally start walking, heading away from the smashed-up terrain to force Sí Gaoithe to keep using his ammo so Eruption's abilities stay online.

"We really don't have to do this," I try, mostly for the sake of it.

"Then feel free to surrender," Sí Gaoithe grunts.

"Your trial will go much more favorably that way."

"It's funny that you think they're going to give me a trial," I say.

"Or a trial in any way that matters, I suppose. The military oligarchy is corrupt enough without glowing women who shoot lasers forcibly shifting the narrative to whatever they want."

Maybe Agnus Dei threatened her boss into compliance. Maybe she has some superhero friends with mind-control powers and is part of a massive conspiracy. Who knows! It hardly even matters. What matters is that a powerful person wants me dead, so I can't submit myself to anything she controls.

"You really think Agnus Dei, of all people, would randomly slaughter a bunch of her own men?" Sí Gaoithe asks.

"What would she possibly stand to gain?"

"That's an excellent question," I shrug, pausing my walk as the conversation creates a lull in their futile attempts to hurt me.

"But I don't know the answer. I certainly wasn't expecting her to murder a bunch of people in front of me. It kinda came out of left field."

"Well, I'm still going to bring you in."

"How?" I ask.

"Literally how? You've shot me through the brain three times already, and I'm still talking to you."

"I just think your regeneration is going to run out before my ammunition," he says, flying over to the side of the street and ripping chunks out of a nearby building.

"And if you're just going to stand there, it'll be all the easier."

"Are you… goading me?" I ask, tilting my head.

"I just turned your squadmate into a paraplegic with my mind."

He glances at Eruption, the briefest hesitation flashing on his expression before he shrugs it off, responding with another spew of projectiles. The chunks of rubble are bigger this time, and do more substantial damage to my body, but the damage is just as temporary. What is his plan here? He's too smart to just attack me for no reason, but he's not really accomplishing anything other than buying… time.

Shit. Of course they'd be sending backup, what was I thinking? Time to stop playing around, I guess. I leap forward without warning, closing as much distance with my targets as I can before reaching my domain out at them. Sí Gaoithe reacts with evasive maneuvers, abandoning offense to get away, and my concern rises.

If I chase, I won't catch up. But again… I'm not trying to kill these people. I'm trying to negotiate. If they want to fight me, they can be the ones putting effort into it. I can just leave.

Except… I was planning on un-disabling Eruption after I won in order to not be an asshole. Damn it, I played myself a little.

Still, I call their bluff, ordering the aliens back to Queen territory and pulling back, rushing to escape rather than further pursue. As expected, Sí Gaoithe stops retreating, and our roles reverse. I dive through the window of a nearby house to break line of sight, and in response Sí Gaoithe flies straight through the roof, devouring it for ammo.

Perfectly fine by me. I send my domain at and past him, reforming myself at the tip right when the entire missing roof unleashes a waterfall of burning death, what's left of my body disintegrating as I try to unform it. Wow! Okay, note to self: don't go indoors against this combo. Brutal. But ultimately irrelevant, because even as Sí Gaoithe catches my new body and tries to compress it into something manageable, I'm already doing the trick again.

My hand forms around the back of Eruption's neck, the rest of my body following suit even as telekinetic force starts to tear bits of me apart.

"Hey, sorry," I say.

"Didn't want to just leave you like this."

I put Eruption back together, his entire body jerking as feeling returns, his heart racing with panic. I give him a pat on the back for his hard work and bravery, the psychic assault on my body temporarily halted as Sí Gaoithe stares at me. I'm genuinely not sure if he's grateful or just worried about the fact that I have his teammate dead to rights, but either is fine by me at this point. I give him a mocking salute and shift out of his range again, darting off as a small bird that I formed behind him.

Teleportation is out of the bag, but eh. I've done what I need to do.

He's faster than me, but he needs to know the right direction to fly. Once I'm behind a building, he's got no chance of spotting me. Most of the other birds have been scared off by the fight, but it doesn't take long to see others. At that point, I'm home free.

Although, the question still remains: what are they stalling for? It has to be something pretty significant, if they know one of their best wing ripper teams was helpless even when I was holding back. It's possible that Agnus Dei is healed already, but… I don't know. I have a bad feeling about this. Even when I make it back into the Queen of Legion's domain, things just… don't seem quite right.

"Warning! Danger at—" The pheromonal message cuts off abruptly, immediately justifying my paranoia as the world always seems to. That is not supposed to happen. That's not how the pheromone network functions.

It's not like verbal conversation where you can just interrupt someone. If you kill a Raptor while it's trying to say something, the hormonal process is fast enough that the corpse will probably still finish the thought.

Raptors even have on-death automated messages, scents their bodies are made to give off to announce their demise. But that didn't happen.

It was just… part of a smell. Then nothing. Like the rest of the scent ceased to exist before ever leaving the body.

"Omnipresence as Worship?" I ask.

"What's happening?"

"Perfection domains are present within the colony."

"Perfection domains are present within the colony."

"Perfection domains are present within the colony."

Oh, shit. Domains plural? Is this a coincidentally matching human strike team, or maybe another colony of aliens entirely? What the hell is going on?

"Direct me to them," I order.

"We will try."

"We will try."

"We will try."

"Try? Why is this a difficult task in which failure is likely?"

"The domains are behaving erratically."

"The domains are behaving erratically."

"The domains are behaving erratically."

They are, apparently, appearing and disappearing without apparent rhyme or reason. Not even their number stays consistent. When Omnipresence as Worship tries to form part of herself to investigate, it quickly dies. But the perpetrators, she thinks, are probably human.

Which… well, one Perfection-aligned human comes to mind when asking the question 'who would the army send after me if they were pissed?' That boogeywoman, Danielle. The creepy living weapon girl who seemed to think it was right and just that she be kept locked up any time she wasn't needed. So she's got a squad or something, and maybe a hyper-lethal teleporter? It would certainly explain how she snuck in behind me, but I guess there are a dozen ways to do that.

Still, I head toward the spot the Queen is currently directing me to. Apparently, there's a straggler, someone hanging back from the group and heading in a different direction. So I crawl through the empty streets, messages of warning and retreat ringing out through the network, and sure enough, there she is.

Danielle is here, with her just-slightly-uncanny face, barely too-big eyes, and porcelain-perfect skin. She looks… weirdly nervous for a special operative supposedly capable of taking on a Queen alone. She has both hands wrapped tightly around her pistol—notably not the standard-issue rifle the military would normally send a soldier out with. Just a single 9mm handgun. Weird.

Well, this would be the perfect opportunity to assassinate her, and that's…

probably the smart thing to do, but I'm not really an 'assassinate someone on sight' kind of person. So I carefully step out of cover, ready to react if she's hostile, and greet her.

"Danielle?"

She freezes, her eyes snapping to look at me. But she doesn't raise her gun, instead keeping it pointed at the ground. Probably not a bad sign, but… once she stares at me for a moment and processes who I am, her body sags, tension draining from it. Not in a good way, though. In a…

resigned way. Her face falls as if coming across me is something to grieve over.

"Seraphim," she greets me back with a sad nod.

"Of course. This is the way it should be."

"Uh, what?" I ask, but she doesn't answer me, instead expanding her domain to try and push into mine. To my mild surprise, she fails utterly, but she just nods sadly again before pulling it back and turning on her radio.

"Found her," she says.

"At least ten. Aim for twenty."

"Danielle? Hey, are you alright?" I ask.

"I… you don't look like you want to be here."

"It would have been nice to be free," she says.

"But alas."

And then, she points her gun at her own head and fires, killing herself instantly.

It's so unexpected that I don't even think to stop her before it's over. Her body falls dead and her domain vanishes. Just like that, she's gone. I can't help but just stand and stare for a moment, questions flying through my mostly vacant head. Why would she do that? Is killing herself what makes her dangerous somehow? Did she just activate a power, or did she just kill herself because she's mentally unstable? I can't tell, but I certainly don't see or feel anything happening. As far as I can tell she's just…

dead.

I walk a bit closer, keeping careful track of anything odd that might be happening to my body while I reach out my domain and cover her corpse with it. Nothing, it's just a mostly normal human body, albeit one that was reshaped a bit, similar to Anastasia. A human made of godly matter. No secret trap springs at me, no hidden domain is found within. Part of me is tempted to claim the biomass, but I leave the corpse where it is out of sheer paranoia.

I'm ninety-nine percent sure nothing bad would happen if I consumed it, though.

Okay. So that was terrifying. I tune into the network again, rushing towards the next-closest sign of panic. There's more of them now than before, so it's not hard to find, but then a broad-spectrum order rings out, directing everyone away from any location with an invading enemy, all Raptors and Behemoths recalled. Only Wasps are now permitted to engage the enemy, as if simply getting close was too much of a risk to take. Am I already compromised…?

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Requesting additional details."

"Response: enemies are gaining in strength as offenses are attempted, with no observed limit."

What…? So every Raptor that tries to fight whoever else is infiltrating just dies and makes them stronger? This is pretty serious. I request special permission to approach anyway (not that I really need it, but it's polite to ask) and get confirmation. My domain is very strong nowadays, so with the Queen and I in synchronicity, I should be able to shrug off whatever the hell this is better than an unpowered Raptor.

"That cluster is dangerous."

"That cluster is dangerous."

"That cluster is dangerous," the Queen warns.

"We'll have to deal with all of them eventually," I point out.

"I'll be careful. I just need to figure out what kind of blessing we're dealing with."

Rushing into the street, though, answers my question almost immediately. It has become very clear what kind of blessing we're dealing with. There are, after all, sixteen people in front of me, turning to face me as I become visible, and all of them are Danielle.

And as I approach, I learn something even more important: all of them have domains.

Danielle can make more Danielles, exponentially. This is going to be a nightmare.

But… there's clearly some kind of limit to it. Otherwise this entire place would be flooded already. She sees me, but she's not making any more of herself.

"Are any of you planning to shoot yourselves in the head?" I call out.

"Not yet," one of them answers.

"But later."

Jesus. I guess I don't know what I was expecting.

"Any chance we can talk this out?" I ask.

"No," says the same one who spoke before, and she's far too dangerous to be left alone for further negotiations. I'll kill the speaker first, see if anything happens. What limits her ability to replicate…? Wait. The disappearing Raptors! Is she turning other people into clones of herself!?

"Assistance is required."

"Assistance is required."

"Assistance is required," the Queen alerts, informing me that a sizable pack of Raptors has just been found and presumably converted near her main body. Which… is bad! How many groups of Danielles do we have already?

"Fifteen, each steadily gaining in number," an Angel reports.

Yeah, that's really bad. I rush forward, the Danielles staying close to each other and combining their power. Synchronising together, the density of their domain is almost a match for mine… but it's not enough, and I carve through them with a pair of crystalline blade arms. None of them bother to fight back very hard, mostly just accepting death when they find that their powers aren't affecting me. Creepy.

I have to keep moving, though. Individually, Danielle's domains are only moderately strong, but the more of them stack together, the more shared power they can exert. If we let them reach critical mass, they'll start converting Angels, or maybe even the Queen herself. Maybe even me.

I fly up into the air, casting my gaze around to get a better view of the area. I spot a group of Raptors retreating toward the Queen's main body, grouped tightly in formation as they sprint to safety. Suddenly, a Danielle leaps out of a nearby building, shattering the window and firing a shot from her pistol at the Raptor in front.

Omnipresence as Worship summons a tentacle to block the shot, but Danielle must encompass it with her domain, because it suddenly twists, reshaping into a second Danielle as quick as a blink.

The process is so fast I can barely see it, but it looks less like the way I reshape flesh and more like… like fixing a mistake in a painting. Carefully nudging an unruly glob of color into a more proper shape. The transformation forms not just an entirely new body for Danielle, but a copy of her outfit, her gear, even her gun. And so she, too, immediately turns and fires another shot at the lead Raptor, shattering its leg and letting the first Danielle intercept the whole pack.

And then, as fast as a falling stack of paper, every Raptor is converted. The closest shifts first, then the closest to it, and on and on and on until there is nothing left. And so, the new pack moves as one, converging toward the other groups. I have no choice but to descend on it, slaughtering the entire group, human blood drenching my blades.

Without the usual reports to the network, it's impossible to know for certain how many casualties Danielle has already inflicted, but Omnipresence as Worship fears the worst, the density and size of Perfection domains within her territory growing at terrifying speeds. The order is given for Raptors to break formation as they retreat, spreading out so groups can't be converted all at once, but I have a sinking feeling that it's already too late. All of this happened so fast!

Is it already too late to stop? What should I do?

…Well, I think there's only one thing to do. The Council of Legion and I will gather together, amassing our domains to be the strongest we can muster, and face the horde when it inevitably comes. I kill any groups of Danielle I see on the way there, but the sinking feeling only grows.

Omnipresence as Worship's main body is little more than a massive collection of the grape vine extensions she forms with her power, and when she retracts her domain to cover nothing but that part of herself, the density is almost choking. The Angels gather—most of whom I haven't met, as they don't talk much and they don't usually identify themselves when they talk—and we add what little we can to her power.

It doesn't go unnoticed that my domain is stronger than everyone but the Queen, including her current Princess, but I don't really have time to process the mixture of surprise and pride I feel at that revelation.

"You are beloved," an Angel tells me.

"That is all there is to it."

Well. We'll need it.

"We will."

And at that, the horde starts to emerge. Copy after copy of the same woman emerges from around corners, within buildings, and down streets. They converge together, dozens and then hundreds, and begin their march. The front row lifts their guns, firing a single, coordinated volley like it's the goddamn eighteen hundreds. But a colony normally defends from such things with the help of their Queen, and Danielle makes the Queen's powers a liability more than an asset.

Each Angel defends in their own way, but a couple of them get perforated by the bullets, blood leaking from their wounds.

Well, we can return fire, at least. I form an acid cannon out of one of my arms, firing a projectile vomit of Wasp-made death towards the incoming enemies. The Danielle I hit dies swiftly and painfully, but it's barely a drop in the bucket. Thankfully, I'm not the only one capable of attacking at range. Angels send out their own collection of attacks, and as they do, the swarm of Wasps we've gathered emerges to do their flyby overhead, carpeting the entire opposing force with deadly acid.

Or… at least, that's what was supposed to happen. Instead, the moment they get close, the Wasps turn into more enemy reinforcements despite their cruising height. The now-airborne squadron of Danielles cannot fly, though, and immediately plummet to the ground, killing some of their clones below them as they land.

It isn't anywhere near as effective as a carpet of acid, though, and while they're all at least gravely wounded with shattered legs if not shattered spines, a good portion of Danielles fail to die instantly on impact, meaning they can still add their domains to the collective.

Omnipresence as Worship can spread, but she can't move. We're stuck here if we want to defend her. But I don't think we're winning this particular face-off. As the Danielles get closer, the Angels and I manage to kill more and more of them, but it's not enough. It's not going to be enough.

"You should go, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate."

"You should flee, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate."

"You should save yourself, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate," the Queen says.

"There's a good chance my abilities render me resistant or immune to her powers," I say.

"Query: even if that is true, would it save us?"

an Angel asks, and… oh. No. It wouldn't. I guess that's a good point.

"You must fix Our mistake."

"You must fix Our mistake."

"You must fix Our mistake," Omnipresence as Worship insists.

"Go. Now."

"Perfection makes a mockery of Legion," an Angel says,

"but if we are to die, this is not so bad a way."

I… damn it. It doesn't feel right, doing this. I feel like I could have done something if I hadn't gone to try and negotiate with the humans, but… no. In that case, I would have just left with my friends. And the Queen is right. I have to catch up with them. I have to fix her mistake.

"Acceptance. Appreciation. Goodbye, Council of Legion," I say, shifting into a bird and flying away from the incoming army of Danielles.

"We live and die as one."

"We live and die as one."

"We live and die as one."

The Danielles try to reach out for me with their domains, catching me as I flee, but they can't break through my defenses when I'm this small and this far away. So they stop trying, turning their attention to the remaining aliens.

I pull up into the air and watch as below me, one by one, the council is subsumed and added to the horde. Danielles die in droves, but by the time they make it to the Queen herself, they still have enough. The massive collection of tendrils and bulbous growths implodes in on itself all at once, the sheer speed of the Queen's transfiguration into a vastly smaller being causing a thunderclap to ring out.

Blood leaks from the newly-made Danielle as the force of it pops her eardrums, but she yet stands alone in the crater that was once the voice of a god. And she, too, joins the horde, their heads turning to track me as I fly away.

One Danielle emerges from the others, raising her gun towards the sky. Every other Danielle lines up, grouped in perfect order like a marching band.

"Our mission is complete," she says, and every other copy moves their gun to aim at their own head.

"On three. One, two—" Bang.

They all fall as one, collapsing into the ground. All but the one who spoke and one other. As the others die around her, the lone Danielle in the middle of the group instead aims at the speaker, a desperate look on her face. Her shot hits the speaker in the shoulder, and each of them unload several shots at the other in response. The speaker lands the first killing blow, though she collapses soon after.

And so, there were no Danielles left. None that I can see, anyway, but the military encampment to the east stirs regardless, artillery fire raining down on the ruins of the now-dead city. I swallow and peel my gaze away from the sight, flying away as fast as my wings can carry me. I don't have time to worry about it right now. I have a van to find, catch, and protect with my life.

I'm not sure exactly how long it's been since the others left. Long enough for them to have a significant head start on me, but not long enough that I'm actually convinced they're a safe distance away from all this. Finding them shouldn't be that hard, hopefully. I can see pretty damn far away if I get high enough, and a single white van moving down otherwise-empty roads shouldn't be hard to find. …Definitely hard to catch up to, though.

Birds are fast. Certain specific birds are very fast, entirely capable of keeping up with cars going at highway speeds.

Overtaking cars going at highway speeds, though? That's a big ask, and Peter will know he needs to put the pedal to the metal if he wants any hope of getting out of here without the military swarming the whole group. The last thing we want is to get stuck in some kind of… superpowered… car chase. Oh, fuck, is that…?

It is. It's pretty far away even for my enhanced eyes, but there's an entire convoy of cars rushing after what appears from this angle to be a car-sized red orb. That's gotta be Anastasia's power! Shit, shit, shit. How am I going to catch up? A biological system can only move so fast. I'm already at the peak of the animal kingdom. I'd have to refine evolution's work quite a bit further in order to pick up any more speed, but it's not like I have a degree in aeronautics or whatever.

I don't know where to even start with making a better wing.

So… maybe I don't make a better wing. Maybe I find some other way to improve my speed. Wasps have an insane amount of sheer power in their wings, beating them unreasonably fast despite their enormous size, because their hydraulic musculature is heavy.

Powerful, but heavy. If there was just some way to use a hydraulic system without having to worry about the sheer amount of mass it requires to function. Alien skeletal structures have to be pretty dense to contain the pressures of hydraulic fluid, and while it's hardly impossible to create heavy things that fly fast (source: airplanes exist) I don't really have the luxury of just strapping jet engines to my arms that can vomit out matter at hundreds of miles an hour.

…Wait. Actually, come to think of it… hmm. That's not a bad idea. It's a bit wasteful, but it should absolutely work.

I start remaking most of my internal organs as I fly, abandoning most bodily functions in order to create a firing tube of alien bone that replaces my throat and mouth. Attaching a hydraulic system to a string of sinew, I pull back an internally built crossbow, forming an independent teardrop-shaped shell inside the firing tube to be the projectile.

I remove the brain from my original body before it can give me too much of a headache, relying on pure shapeshifting to keep my wings steady for the instant I need to line up my shot, open what remains of my 'mouth,' and fire.

My body more or less explodes into a shower of gore as the built-up tension snaps all at once, but my projectile—or I suppose I should say me— gets launched through the air in more or less the direction I was aiming at hundreds of miles an hour. I form a new body around it as I fly, stabilizing myself with small wings and riding the shot until I start to feel like I've slowed down enough to be worth doing it all over again.

Every single shot is wasteful; even if my body could survive the forces I'm putting it under, I'm launching myself away from it so fast I don't have time to reclaim the biomass anyway. Still, while any speed is still painfully slow when my family is in danger, it's enough to start gaining on the military vehicles as they rush south after them. And that, truly, is all I need for now.

A few more self-detonations, and I can get a better view on what's happening down there. Six Humvees thunder down a mostly empty highway after the van almost everyone I care about is currently cramped inside, a superhero likely inside every single one given how they're still actually driving. A dangerously large glob of blood swipes blindly at them, keeping the cars at bay and protecting the van from incoming damage.

One Humvee tries to overtake Peter and get in front of the van, but Peter's response is immediately to try and ram the other car, which the Humvee driver slams the brakes to avoid. A stray shot from one of the passengers manages to slip past Anastasia's defenses and hit the van's door… but the bullet doesn't puncture, the shot simply getting devoured by Peter's power. Most of the van is invincible, but Anastasia is still needed to prevent any shots to the wheels, which Peter can't protect.

Chunks of the road behind the van suddenly explode, lifting up into the air to block the way, but they're battered aside by an invisible barrier before they can do the Humvees any harm, the rough road smoothed out in front of them just as quickly as it was destroyed.

Another Humvee accelerates forward again, and before Peter can force it back, fire erupts from the road in front of the van, forcing Anastasia to split off some of her blood shield to try and quench it, the smell of burning rubber nonetheless passing into my nose as the vehicle crosses.

My own blood feels like it's boiling as some of Anastasia's own gets wasted defending from that attack. All this, just to capture a child and some teenagers who are only trying to help someone? I can't help but start to get angry. People just won't stop fucking with me, will they?

I have had. A terrible day. I think I'm past overdue to let out some stress.

One last shot to gain the speed, and I descend on top of the lead Humvee, several arms bursting out of my body to latch onto the roof, claws puncturing through the steel plating as I let my domain bloom outwards, devouring the territories of these so-called 'superheroes' and claiming them as my own. Arching a brand new spine, I ignore the bullets embedding themselves inside me and let out a furious roar, flesh growing, twisting, and writhing out of me in every direction.

Within the vehicles, I do the same, ravenous maws devouring cables, clogging pipes, gunking up moving parts, and filling the engines with solid bone. I crawl over the occupants inside as the Humvees choke to a halt, devouring their weapons, gear, and clothes as I cushion them against the inevitable crash. Vehicles twist off the road, slam into each other, and roll to a stop, on their wheels or otherwise.

Forcibly vomiting them out of their own cars, I finish consuming the rest of the vehicles, growing through them inside and out, tendrils snaking from between wheels, underneath hoods, and out of windows before I finish consuming every single one, swallowing them with a violent crunch.

"You're all even easier to eat," I warn the naked soldiers, towering over them as a wall of maws and eyes, "but I'm being nice.

If you ever manage to succeed at hurting my family, I will stop being nice.

Understood?"

A couple of them try in vain to get their powers to work on me, but I just shrink down, jump into the air, and fly off, catching up with the others at a much less urgent pace before teleporting into the van as a baby tiger, because Anastasia has absolutely earned it.

"Meow," I enunciate clearly.

"Julietta!" Ana shrieks with delight, scooping me up immediately. Beside her, Maria's hulking body thrashes with surprise, though she's thankfully held back from destroying anything by a wall of Ana's blood.

"…You made it," Christine says.

"Gotta say, that was the single most horrifying thing I've ever seen through a rear-view mirror."

"Wish could be more help," Blossom says, squished tightly into the corner of the van.

"High speed not good."

Hmm, yeah. Going this fast, her domain probably isn't in any given spot for more than a split second. Her options are astronomically tinier than usual. That's probably uncomfortable for her.

"It BE!" Blossom confirms loudly.

"Agh," Christine flinches.

"Julietta, what is your pet Angel on about?"

"Don't call her a pet," I insist.

"But she's just frustrated she couldn't be more help. Her powers get stronger the longer she stays in one place, and you're all on a highway."

"Well that would explain why the superpowered terror of humanity named after a messenger of god hasn't done a single useful thing so far," Peter comments.

"People not meant go this fast!" Blossom whines.

"Whole body feel bad bad bad…"

Is she carsick too? She wasn't having that problem before… but I guess we weren't in a car chase with a military convoy before either. I adjust my footing on Ana's lap a bit, pressing my front paws into her knees a couple times for no particular reason. It just kinda feels right. Something about the way Ana is carefully scratching my scalp makes me wanna do it.

"Well, I'm glad you guys are okay," I say.

"We've shaken off pursuit for now, but they'll be looking for us. We'll have to figure out some way to not get attacked the moment we stop for gas."

"Alternative plan," Peter says.

"If we do get followed again, you do whatever the hell it is you just did to single-handedly beat six fucking superheroes, with military escort, at the same time. And then we just don't worry about whether or not we're being followed."

"Someone out there is bound to have a power that naturally beats mine," I say.

"Agnus Dei is probably one of them, but I doubt she's the only one."

"Well, once we pick up Emily, that won't be a problem, right?" Anastasia asks.

"She can keep us away from anything that can beat you."

"Yup," Peter agrees.

"For once, I think we're kinda safe. At least for now. That convoy was already a big commitment; they probably don't have much else they can send at us on this short notice."

I hesitate.

"…You really think so?" I ask.

"I do," Peter nods.

Okay. Alright. That's… that's good.

"I think… I might need a quick rest, then," I say, curling up on Anastasia's lap and letting out a deep breath.

"I'm… a little exhausted, for some reason."

"Ju," Maria says, one of her heads blinking inquisitively at me. And… yeah. I guess that's the reason I'm so tired, isn't it? That and everything else that's happened today.

But for just a little while, we're probably safe. I close my eyes, and with Anastasia's hand stroking happily down my back, I quickly drift off to sleep.