Chương 70: 69. Weird Mammals

"Lia!" Blossom declares, pointing at the woman in question.

"Freaky clone of me!" Lia responds, pointing right back.

"You're the alien, right?"

"I Blossom!" Blossom confirms.

"I fuck!"

"Oh, well hell yeah you do. At least someone is using my body for what it's built for," Lia nods approvingly, causing Blossom to cackle.

"I kind of expected you to be a bit more weirded out by all of this," Emily admits.

"Well yeah, I probably would have been before I became some kind of zombie revived by an alien Queen," Lia admits.

"And like, I'm definitely freaking out a bit on the down low, but it would ruin my cool and composed image to let any of that show."

"No need for freak out!" Blossom assures Lia.

"I am good Blossom. I help Maria!"

"Yeahhhh…" Lia says, eyeing Demon Maria as the girl busies herself spearing the water with her legs whenever a wave gets too close.

"Y'know, I really don't know what I expected, but Julietta dating some horrifying movie monster feels like it should have been it." Our whole group has gathered near the 'shoreline' of the Queen we're standing on, ready to leave but taking our sweet time thanks to the knowledge of Lia's imminent demise hanging over our heads. Whether she's 'real' or not doesn't really matter, at this stage. It's going to be painful no matter what. Even Peter is abnormally subdued.

"She's not normally a terrifying movie monster, to be fair," Peter chimes in.

"She's normally a bunch of tiny naked women." Okay there he goes, never mind.

"Damn, Jules, have you really been this down bad of a lesbian this whole time?" Lia smirks.

"You were holding out on me!"

"Firstly, no, I haven't been a lesbian this whole time, I've just been forced to use your goddamn brain after losing my own," I scowl at her.

"Huh. Yet somehow, you haven't gotten any smarter," Lia says.

"I'd agree, and I think you'll find that is not the burn against me that you intended it to be."

"What do you… wait, shit," Lia groans.

"Fuck!"

"Mmm-hmm," I agree smugly.

"Secondly, we both know you'd never look at my real body with anything other than pity or disgust, so even if I did have any interest in you—which I absolutely don't—nothing would have happened." That causes another awkward break in the conversation, but it was more or less inevitable. Lia is trying to crack jokes until we're all comfortable enough with the idea of killing her to leave. It was never going to work.

"We've… still never actually seen what you used to look like," Pink chimes in first.

"Oh yeah, that's true," Christine agrees. Anastasia perks up a little from where she's sitting on the shore, slapping the water with her tail, and though she doesn't say anything I can tell she's interested, too.

"Well, if you want to, now's the best place for it," Lia says.

"The Queen can totally show you, but uh… if she hasn't already, then none of you probably actually want to?"

"I want to," Pink insists.

"I just don't want to accidentally create some kind of horrifying fake Julietta that we'll have to let die."

"Oh," Lia says.

"That isn't going to happen. You can just want to see like, an image of her. A hologram. Whatever."

"Is… is that okay?" Pink asks, turning to me hesitantly. Which… well. I can't say I want to look at my old body. I definitely resented not having access to it for a long time, and I still think that having no template for it is kind of weirdly bullshit given how crazy my power works in general, but after all this time? I can't say I miss it anymore. It was an important part of who I am, and it still is, but… hmm. I guess I've grown past it, a bit. I don't feel the need to define myself with it anymore.

It's an odd feeling, in part because of the realization itself being somewhat of a shock, but also because it means I'm no longer quite as proud of who I was. The idea of the people close to me staring at who I used to be, staring at the person I left behind, staring at the face in the mirror I hated looking at almost as much as everyone else around me? It's not really appealing anymore, now that I've let that person go. But… I don't want to run from that person too much, I think.

I don't want to pretend they just never existed.

"Sure," I agree.

"Go ahead." And just like that, without another word needing to be spoken, it appears. A shimmering illusion of me, hunched over with my cane like I was five times my actual age. Honestly, it's next to impossible to tell what age I actually am at a glance; scar tissue of the type I was covered with is far more than just discoloration and rough texture. It's lumpy, chaotically reformed, and in some places disturbingly bloated and smooth, like a giant boil.

There's no way to tell if I'm developing wrinkles when my skin is barely recognizable as such. There's no way to see if my hair is gray when I don't have any. Hell, the only reason people didn't assume I was a boy was because of the way I'd dress. No puberty means no breasts, no curves, no… a lot of things. I was truly hideous. But… I don't feel the shame I was afraid of feeling. You're not 'supposed' to feel shame over things like that, but everyone with disabilities knows that it's not that easy.

And someone like me? Someone who brings disgust into a room simply by being visible? It's pretty fucking hard not to internalize that a little. The only real solution to that kind of shame is to fight it with pride. Not the sort of arrogant pride that leads to self-entitlement, but the kind of pride that is born from appreciating one's own accomplishments, appreciating the very nature of one's self in fierce, burning opposition to the surrounding disapproval. And to my relief, I am still proud.

Even without ever wanting to be that person again, I can still be proud of her.

"I… don't know what to say," Pink says softly.

"Is that really what you looked like?"

"Yep," I confirm.

"Got sprayed with Wasp acid as a kid. Barely survived. And orphans don't really get cosmetic surgery. Hell, I'm lucky I wasn't saddled with the surgery bills for everything they had to do to keep me alive."

"You're lumpy," Anastasia says.

"Sure was, kid," I confirm.

"Don't say that to anyone else who looks like that though, okay?"

"Oh, okay."

"…Alright, I'm slightly less mad you got shapeshifting powers and I didn't," Christine admits.

"God damn."

"Maybe don't loudly swear 'god damn' when looking at anyone who looks like me either," I say, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Oh, I wouldn't," Christine assures me.

"Just with you."

"Gee, thanks."

"Humans already lumpy," Blossom says.

"Don't get what's so bad."

"A combination of evolution and cultural norms created something known as 'beauty standards' in our culture, where people are pressured to look a certain way and derided if they fail to," I explain.

"A big part of this is due to the fact that several industries literally make their income off of convincing people they need to look different in order to sell products that cause them to look different, so they kinda go out of their way to exploit and abuse people for money.

Some of it is also simply due to the fact that humans have an instinctive disgust response toward people who look 'unhealthy,' most likely as an evolutionary adaptation to optimize reproduction, but a huge chunk of that instinct is socially wired, so it's really mostly the fault of society rather than genetics."

"That not even a funny way your culture terrible," Blossom frowns.

"Yeah, most of the ways our culture is terrible aren't very funny," I tell her.

"Anyway… here we are. This is what I looked like. Ta-da."

"And it's accurate, right?" Blue asks.

"It's not just something the Queen is making up?"

"Based on how I think the Queen's power works, it's likely an image assembled in aggregate from the memories of everyone here who has seen what I used to look like in real life, so it's probably not perfectly accurate. It's definitely close enough that I can't point out any flaws, though. …Which makes sense because, well, if I could they would have been fixed already."

"This might be the craziest power we've come across yet," Christine says.

"Eh. Not strongest," Blossom shrugs.

"Our Queen maybe stronger. Can't make people, though."

"Oh shit, right. We're going to another crazy alien domain after this," Christine sighs.

"What does your Queen do, anyway?"

"The Divinity of Wonder has kind of a complicated power, but I think it's probably best summarized as the ability to make selectively tangible holograms?" I hedge.

"I didn't really ask her too much about the limitations, but it's very versatile and kind of absurdly strong."

"Yes," Blossom agrees.

"It less broad than that, but very good power for Queen."'''The Divinity of Wonder,' huh?" Yellow hums.

"I'll admit, aliens do have pretty cool names."

"That compliment for Julietta," Blossom smirks, poking my cheek.

"She translate them. Names not sound as cool in our language. Mostly because not sound at all."

"For the record, our other council members are Pathless Wanderings Gladden Futures and Chaos Erupts in Indifferent Blessings," I say.

"Pathless's power lets him take unimpeded routes toward whatever destination he desires. Which is mostly to say he can become intangible as long as he's traveling toward an objective, but also that he's kind of a… weird precog? Like, his powers can guide him to arbitrary destinations even if he doesn't know where those destinations are, such as the 'destination' being a person he's trying to find.

And if that person is moving, it will plot a course that intercepts their eventual location even if they don't know where they're going either." Which is how he found me on the ocean floor after I had my big freakout, but none of my human friends need to know about that.

"Chaos power very simple and very not simple," Blossom says.

"It does something."

"Uh, translation?" Christine asks, looking at me.

"Er… honestly, Blossom is pretty on the money," I say.

"Chaos' power does something. Potentially anything. It's random, and he has next to no control over it. It might be good for him, it might be bad for him. It might have very little effect, it might have a huge effect. The only real limitation is that the effects only happen within the bounds of his domain, so he can at least control where he's potentially fucking things up. Still, he… does not use his power very often."

"Every ten day he leave colony to use power for worship," Blossom says.

"One day he maybe not come back, but Possibility like him so probably not kill him? Who know."

"His power kind of single-handedly makes most other colonies not want to fight us though, at least from what I hear," I finish.

"Possibility doesn't have a ton of heated rivalries, and the gods that don't like us don't often have followers that want to fight us. Perfection worshippers don't declare wars they don't think they'll win, Failure followers don't declare wars all that much in general, and Blasphemy followers… well, they're assholes, but they're assholes to everybody, so there's usually an easier target for them to go after. Not always, though."

"Huh. I was not expecting the sudden crash-course in alien politics," Christine says.

"She's just stalling," Lia says.

"All y'all are stalling. Get out of here and kill me already." We all turn to stare at her. We… do need to get going, but none of us really wanted to tackle the topic directly.

"God, just go, you pussies," Lia presses.

"If you really wanna see me again, you can probably just come back. You get that, right? I already died once. No reason you can't revive me again later when I die now."

"Would you… still be the same you?" Emily asks.

"I don't know and I don't care!" Lia groans.

"Fucking hell! You're all so goddamn introspective about everything. I hate thinking, so if you wanna honor my memory just get your asses back in the water and go. It's not that hard!" There's another awkward pause.

"…Well, alright," Peter says, breaking the silence first.

"Good to see you again, asshole. Bye."

"Likewise, dickhead," Lia says back.

"See ya."

"Gimmie whatever aquatic shit you gave Emily, and let's go," Peter says, turning to me.

"It's just going to suck for everyone if we stick around any longer."

"…Yeah, okay," I concede, ignoring his shudder as I do just that, heading toward the water.

"Let's go, guys."

"Just like that, huh?" Emily whispers, mostly to herself.

"It was good to see you again, Em," Lia says, putting an arm around her shoulder.

"And hey. Good job surviving. You know I prolly would have done the same." Emily lets out a sad chuckle.

"I guess you would have, huh?" she says.

"God, we were the worst."

"Yeah," Lia agrees.

"It was awesome." She leaves a quick peck on Emily's cheek and then pushes her away toward the water. My sister waves goodbye and joins the rest of us as I shift back into my elongated angelic form, waiting in the shallows for everyone to board. The sane Marias and Blossom manage to coax the not-so-sane Marias onto my back, where I strap her legs down with tentacles and ensure no one will be left behind.

"We'll be heading to the deep water, soon," I warn everyone.

"It's a bit of an abyss down there. You might feel claustrophobic, or the complete opposite. But just stick close to me and everything will go fine. Your bodies can take it." Everyone agrees, those on my back get strapped in, and we depart. It's just Anastasia and me doing the swimming now, and she's a lot more subdued on this leg of the journey.

Emily turns and looks back, watching Lia wait at the shoreline and wave us goodbye, but we're too far away for human eyes to see her before we ever reach the edge of the Queen's domain. That's probably for the best. I doubt it would have been good for either of them to have Emily watch Lia disappear again. Once we are out of the Bliss Queen's domain, I reconnect myself to the network, Blossom shuddering with relief when she feels me join back in. … Relief, huh? You don't like being away from the council, do you?

"Confirmation. I miss them. It also remains disturbing that you can be so close by, yet so silent, even if such a skill was optimal for our purposes." Sorry I'm so bad at being happy, I guess.

"You are not forgiven. The whole of your colony swears thus: you will know joy." I… please don't make this that big of a deal. Please.

"Your dread only strengthens my conviction." Oh, goodie.

"Exasperation. What did you expect? You are loved. Could you tolerate the sight of your loved ones suffering so? Clearly not, or we would not be here in the first place."

"Agreement. Agony. Negation-toleration," Maria's main body chimes in, one of her hands smacking my back a couple of times for emphasis. Okay, I appreciate this, really, but I am not 'suffering,' I'm just… traumatized, probably. Taking a step back to try to look at myself the way I'd look at someone else, I'd guess my hangup is that I'm so used to happiness being extremely temporary that it feels safer to continue acting like things will always be terrible so that I never end up disappointed.

Actively seeking my own happiness has not, traditionally, led to pleasant results for me, so I prefer to focus my efforts on other people rather than myself. It is not a habit I can break overnight, but once again I'd like to emphasize it's also not one that I really need to focus on until after the crisis is over. I will admit I am not the most mentally healthy person in the world, but I'm functional, god damnit. That's more than a lot of people can say.

"I think you are being stupid, but I will allow the conversation to pass for now," Blossom concedes.

"Thank you for your support, A Prism Of Refracting Selves."

"Recognition. Pain. Comprehension. Appreciation," Maria answers.

"You are doing better," Blossom comments.

"Commendations. Affection. Hope."

"Pain. Hope! Pain." You will be better soon, Maria. We'll make sure of it.

"We will be better soon," Maria repeats back. It takes a long time, but eventually Blossom and I feel it: we've reached the furthest point we can go on the surface of the water. Our Queen is straight down.

"Okay," I announce.

"Is everyone ready? We're going to be breathing water from here on out."

"Hate that, but we're as ready as we can be, I think," Christine says.

"Easy peasy," Anastasia confirms smugly, because she is so very good at mermaiding. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Alright," I say.

"I'd tell you to hold your breath, but… don't, actually. Just get ready. We're diving." And so we dive. The others all struggle against their choking reflexes for a while, which I'm sure is very unpleasant for most of them, but soon enough we have water in everyone's lungs and we're settled in for the trip. It is, frankly, even more boring than the long swim above the water, but at least it's a shorter journey. We've traveled hundreds of miles to reach this point. Now?

All we need is another thousand feet straight down. The ocean is dark and cold, and it only gets darker and colder. Until finally… we make it there. The light and warmth returns, and then I feel them all. Our workers, our warriors, and my fellow council members. All here, all having waited for our return.

"Relief. Happiness. Welcoming. Excitement. Curiosity. Urgency. Joy. Joy. Joy." I open myself further, letting me feel the happiness radiating through the water at my mere arrival. It's… I want to say 'humbling,' but it's also kind of a huge ego boost. In a good way, I mean. Knowing that this many people care this much about me. That they'd do anything to help me. And like, yeah, I've gotta do the same for them, but I was going to do that anyway, and they know it, and it's barely even a big deal! It's just…

the certainty of it all. It's impossible to get that with humans. Not like this. Blossom pats my back, making self-satisfied noises of contentment.

"Holy shit," Peter swears, his voice noticeably deeper than usual given the water pushing through his voicebox in place of air.

"That is a lot of Raptors."

"Not really sure what you expected," I answer, continuing to descend.

"I think the Bliss queen just kept her colony away from us because she could sense we wouldn't like them."

"I… don't like this," Anastasia says nervously, swimming closer to me as the procession approaches. Our colony twirls and dances through the water towards us, swimming spirals around our Queen's many tendrils as they come to greet us and celebrate our return. Questions and congratulations fly through the air, answers returning just as quickly as Blossom fields most of the conversation, my brain capable of that level of multitasking but not well-practiced at it.

Still, I make sure to project my confirmation that our mission was both successful and completed without major harm to anyone.

"It's okay, Ana," Yellow assures her, and unlike everyone else, her voice sounds exactly the same as it did above water, because powers are bullshit.

"We were hanging around aliens for about a month, they really do just leave you alone if Julietta says they will. Some of them even tried to help us out, though we could never understand each other."

"It was kind of cute when that Raptor brought up scraps of clothes back when we were still searching for some," Blue agrees.

"There was blood on them!" Pink protests.

"…Cute in like, a cat way," Blue clarifies.

"Y'know. In spite of the horrific murder machine bits."

"Come on, Blue," Yellow pokes.

"We've been with Julietta long enough to know we also like the murder machine bits."

"Well. Maybe when she has them," Blue allows hesitantly.

"B-but that's different!"

"Ju!" Demon Maria chimes in.

"I suppose I'm glad it's not just Lia's good looks that made you fall for me," I half-joke.

"I'm gonna need to chat with my colony and handle Big Maria, okay? Can you keep watch over Ana and help her get comfortable? She, uh, has a pretty good reason to not be comfortable with Raptors."

"Yeah, of course," Yellow nods.

"Trust us, we get it. Christine? You wanna help?"

"Got nothing better to do," Christine shrugs, and then she wrinkles her nose.

"Ugh. Ew. Don't like this voice."

"Just bear with it, with luck we'll only be here a few days," I tell her.

"Lamentations! You return to us after so long, and you intend to immediately leave?" Wanderings asks, swimming through a couple Raptors to the front of the procession. I let go of all my sane human friends and rush to meet him, curling around him to return his greeting.

"I would not complain if you chose to come with me," I tell him,"but someone needs to keep our Queen company, stuck in the water like she is."

"I suspect it was more an inquiry as to your continued urgency to be elsewhere, but… we know the answer to that," Chaos says, emerging from the pack as well, his own swimming much more awkward given his massive claws.

"War waits for no one."

"It waits for the people who decide to start it in the first place," I argue.

"But I suppose in this case those people were the gods, and since I cannot bring THEM to justice, I'll simply have to clean up their mess."

"Amusement!" Blossom cackles, peeling herself off my back to tackle Chaos as he approaches.

"It is truly not a wonder at all that she garnered Blasphemy's approval, is it?"

"Concern. I still worry about that," The Divinity of Wonder chimes in, the tips of a few of her tendrils shifting nervously.

"But in the immediate situation, it would behoove me to spare my worries for the work ahead. This babbling one is your beloved, I take it?"

"Confirmation," I answer.

"This is A Prism of Refracting Selves, blessed of Legion. In human terms, she is much more than this to me, too.""'Human…?' Ah, I understand. A fitting scent for the natives," Wonder approves.

"Well, there is no need for vague words. Show us." Right, yeah. I take a deep breath and just… think about her. About what Maria means to me. About the word in our language we use to describe our relationship and what it means to our culture. I'm certainly worried about that. That I'm not really living up to the expectations the word "girlfriend" implies. Because the difference between a friend and a girlfriend is just intimacy, right?

In the attraction sense, yeah, but even in the platonic sense, there's an implication of greater closeness, and I'm pretty bad at both. I'm trying, but… is it really enough? My council informs me that they don't know much about human romance, but from their limited gleanings on the subject, they're fairly sure that 'going on a month-long cross-country quest to save Maria even if it means betraying all of humanity to do so' probably counts as pretty fucking romantic and I should chill out. And…

okay, I mean, that's fair, but I would have done the same thing for, say, Anastasia, and that's certainly not romantic. But it's love, my council says. Right? It's love. Maybe not the same kind of love, but you love them, and isn't that the most important thing? And to that, all I can say is… I don't know. But I hope so. I hope it's love. But that's the other thing about humans. Other people can't feel our emotions. We can't feel the emotions of others.

All we have is our own experiences, and we just have to hope and pray that the qualia bubbling up inside of us is the right kind.

"Well then it's a good thing you aren't human anymore, idiot," Blossom says.

"WE can feel what you feel, and you love them. You love them all."

"Confirmation," the rest of the council assures me. Which… right. Yeah. I… how can I argue with that? My emotions have officially been peer-reviewed. My ass just got empirically processed. I guess I love them. That's a relief to know. Blossom gives me a hug at that thought, and the others return the sentiment through the network… at which point Maria's body reaches down and also gives me a hug. Moments later, a small point of intense warmth appears near the hug. Infrared has come out, it seems.

"Distress. Pain. Volume overwhelming," she reports. Oh shit, that's right! Maria was struggling to function in her Queen's domain due to the intensity of the network. Can we have people quiet down…?

"Universal order: restrict non-council communications to emergency and necessary only."

"Agreement."

"Agreement."

"Agreement."

"Agreement," I chime in after a moment. I forget how fast this goes sometimes.

"Motion passed." All at once, the well-wishes and happy feelings from the bulk of the colony fade away. Infrared shudders with relief, and Maria's main body untenses in ways I feel a little awful for not noticing sooner.

"Relief. Minor pain. Sufficiency. Greetings to the council of my beloved," Infrared says, almost clinically. She feels so emotionally exhausted by… everything, probably.

"Greetings, A Prism of Refracting Selves," The Divinity of Wonder answers back, none of her usual welcoming tone lost in the face of Infrared's suffering.

"Inaccuracy. Negation," Infrared responds.

"We are A Prism of Refracting Selves. But I am only a single color."

"Then our greetings to you, Color of Warmth," Wonder says, her words just as warm as the name she bestows.

"You are not of my council, but in the absence of your own the name is yours for the taking."

"Acceptance. Appreciation. Statement: you are the one who will change me."

"Confirmation."

"Terror." Terror?

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"I do not wish to go through all of this again," she says.

"I do not wish to be broken."

"Hey, everything going okay?" Blue says, flitting over to us.

"Is there something we should be doing? Oh, hi Infrared."

"Heh…low…" she nods back.

"Scared."

"Oh," Blue says.

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense."

"Requesting context," Chaos says, which… right, fair. So this Maria effectively started existing after Maria's body and mind got messed up, and she's like… the most sane part of Maria's body, currently? But if I'm picking up on her fears correctly, she's effectively worried that because the only thing she knows is her current body, she'll end up losing herself the same way all the other Marias did once Wonder changes her back. Which… well, there are a few potential ways we could handle that problem.

I start elaborating on them.

"Stress. Pain. Slow down, please," Infrared shudders, some of her hands pressing up against some of her temples like those heads have a migraine.

"Apologies," I send back, returning to more direct communication rather than full thought-dumping. Heh, weird being on the other end of that.

"Sympathy. If you wish, you could always remain outside the body while it gets reconstructed, and decide whether or not you wish to reintegrate only after seeing the results."

"Firm negation," Infrared insists.

"I will not leave them. I am not me. I am part of us." Oh. That gives me a little pause.

"How are they… doing in there?" I ask.

"We… are… improving," Infrared says, doing a commendable job of enunciating clearly.

"Others… almost like… me. Just need… more time. And we… I… please…"

"Oh god," Blue whispers.

"Um. Gosh, I… so there are others like you? Is… is Green in there? Is she getting better?"

"Green…" Infrared hisses sadly.

"We… remember her. She is… in us."

"This… thing that we're doing. To fix all of this. Do you think it can bring her back?" Blue asks.

"Or any of the others? White, Purple… I think we had a Red for a little while."

"I… don't know," Infrared says.

"Will bringing them… back… kill me…?" As I translate the English conversation for my council, The Divinity of Wonder takes this chance to chime in.

"All of you will be changed by this," she says.

"Your brain will not be what it is now, but it will not be what it was before, either. This will be difficult for all of you. But as you currently are, your brain is damaged. It is put together amateurishly, incorrectly. And it has been split into four parts where it was originally one, the extra mass filled in with a chaotic mess of design principles for very different organisms.

It is my hope and intention that the repairs I have planned will help consolidate all of you and make it easier for you to think, both on your own and in concert with each other. I cannot promise success, but I have confidence the results will not be nearly so disruptive or destructive as the initial process that brought you to this point. I think it is unlikely that you will perish, but… you will undoubtedly be changed."

"The Queen says that she doesn't think the process will kill any of you," I translate for Blue.

"It might help Green find herself again, but it's impossible to know. But we can promise it will be better. More like you used to be."

"Don't… want that," Infrared whimpers.

"Don't take… network."

"I wasn't going to," the Queen assures her, which… wait, really?

"Network…?" Blue says hesitantly.

"Like the alien communication thing? You want to stay part of that?"

"Y E S," Infrared wails in both languages at once.

"I want… to feel… to speak…! It is… good good good good…"

"Uhh. Okay. Gosh, um, wait here one second, I think I need to bring the other me's in," Blue says.

"Er, the other us's? We need to have a Maria talk. Be right back." She… swims off? Flies off? She propels herself away to do just that, so I return my focus to Infrared herself and Maria's main body, the two of them staying very close to each other.

"Do you understand what you're asking them?" I ask bluntly.

"A little," Infrared hedges.

"I don't know them. I don't remember them. But I love them. Is that strange?"

"Considering that you're made out of people that knew them very well, I don't think it's that strange," I say.

"But you aren't just talking about Pink and Blue and Yellow, are you? You're talking about the others still forming inside your body."

"Affirmative," Infrared says.

"Sometimes we dream together. It is easier to be us in the dreams." Oh, shit. Is Legion lending a helping hand? Is that what's been causing them to make so much progress lately? …Well on one hand, it's a bit fucking late, but on the other hand, I guess it's the least that god can do.

"Legion… yes. We are of Legion," Infrared hums, her many legs tapping in sequence across my back.

"More and more and more." Hmm. Well, the other Marias return before I can really investigate that, chattering quietly amongst themselves with various concerned expressions. Pink takes point when they reach us, as she often does in their conversations. She's always been the most… direct of the group, I suppose, except possibly for Orange, but… Orange is still missing.

"Okay. So. Ripping the bandaid off here. Being connected to an entire alien hive mind is kind of like, way more than any of us were expecting here. We are not sure we agree to this."

"For serious?" Blossom butts in, wrinkling her nose in annoyance.

"What, you think brain just go back normal like nothing happen? Queen fix what broken. Queen not cripple you for no reason."

"Hey, hold on," I say, swimming between them a bit.

"It's hardly 'for no reason.' You know damn well that humans don't have any kind of equivalent to this form of communication. It necessitates a major departure from the person we once were to embrace this kind of… obligate community, I guess."

"What the hell are you all talking about over here?" Christine asks, now the entire group swimming closer to get involved in the conversation.

"Well apparently the plan here is still to turn us into an alien," Yellow huffs.

"Which, y'know, I thought was the opposite of the plan."

"Hmm," Christine says.

"Worked out okay for Julietta, didn't it?" Huh? Okay. Wasn't expecting support there, but thanks, Christine.

"No one is turning you into an alien!" I insist regardless.

"But yes, you aren't coming out of this fully human no matter how this goes down. There's a fundamental difference in chemical structure between godless and divine matter that we can't trivially breach, but we can get very close. I mean, look at Blossom, for example. She passes for a human perfectly until she starts talking."

"Or until I do this!" Blossom says, one of her hidden blades bursting out of her wrist right as she starts to thrust it towards me. I turn the skin she was about to pierce into a mouth, bite down on the blade, and shake her around a little before spitting her out. She magnanimously allows me to do so rather than just teleporting away due to how hard it makes her giggle.

"Wheeeeee!"

"We don't care about looking human," Pink groans.

"We care a little," Blue says quietly.

"Okay we care a little, but the important thing is that our brain works the way it's supposed to! And ideally is just, y'know, a brain and not four heavily fucked up neural cortexes. We just want to be in our body and still be sane, and I am not confident hooking us up to an entire hive mind is going to help keep us sane!"

"It is… good," Infrared insists, fluttering up towards them on tangled groups of wings.

"Hard. But good. I learned. You will learn."

"For what it's worth, I'll second that," I say.

"Hard but good. Extremely worth it. I… genuinely love having access to the network. And to be clear, it's not really a 'hive mind,' per se. It's more like… having a very close family with whom you can always intuit their feelings and have very efficient conversations with. …In exchange for not being able to keep secrets very well."

"You… love it?" Pink asks hesitantly.

"I do," I confirm.

"It's a fact. Empirically reviewed, even."

"Pfft," she snorts, turning back to look at the other Marias.

"Okay, what are we thinking?"

"…We knew we weren't coming out of this normal," Blue says.

"And it gets us closer to Julietta."

"Okay, is that a healthy line of thought, though? We're not married to her," Yellow says.

"We need to make this decision for us, not for her. No offense, Julietta."

"None taken," I say.

"You're right."

"Infrared is part of us," Pink says.

"We already know her vote."

"I… speak," Infrared presses anyway.

"Please." The others turn to her.

"Sorry, yeah," Pink says.

"I didn't mean to assume. Go ahead."

"Queen says… you not die," Infrared wheezes.

"Network not… destroy you. Be okay in… new brain. Hard but good. But without… network… I die. I die. Network… save me. Make me. We are… of… Legion." The other Marias look at each other, then back to Infrared.

"Well, shit," Yellow swears.

"If you really think that's true, and Julietta says it's safe… fine. I don't like it, but fine."

"I really don't like it," Pink says.

"But… okay. It doesn't have to be perfect. I just need our body to work again."

"It's scary, but it's kind of exciting too, isn't it?" Blue says.

"I kind of got to know a couple of the Raptors. I could recognize them, anyway. The Angels, too. Even though we couldn't talk to each other, we did our best. They tried to help us. It would be cool to be able to talk to them, right?"

"…They're all dead now, Blue," Pink reminds her.

"They got wiped out after we ran away."

"Can't… feel… Queen," Infrared hisses sorrowfully.

"No… pull."

"Confirmation request: you have no pull at all?" Blossom quickly slips in a question.

"To anywhere?"

"Affirmative," Infrared hums.

"Concern. Abnormality."

"I take it that if a Queen dies, the Angels normally get reassigned to a new one?" I ask.

"Is the fact that this didn't happen something we need to worry about?"

"Unknown," Blossom answers.

"It is odd. But Legion is still with her, so… there is probably no immediate cause for concern."

"All the aliens here want to help us, right?" Blue says.

"Don't you all at least want to thank them?" Yellow sighs.

"Fine. You win. I really hope we don't regret this," she groans.

"I think we all hope we don't regret this," Pink says.

"But yeah. Alright. Agreed. I guess we'll learn to speak giant monster bug."

"The aliens aren't really bug-like," I protest.

"Most of them have four limbs and skin. They're weird mammals."

"Well we already speak weird mammal, so hey, maybe this won't be so bad," Pink smirks.

"Great!" The Divinity of Wonder cheers happily through the network.

"I look forward to working with you all directly to design your full blessed form, as is right and proper."

"Eeee," Blossom grins, clapping excitedly… though underwater it doesn't really make a clapping sound, it just makes a bunch of tiny whirlpool currents. All of Infrared's and Demon Maria's heads also perk up, reacting with various levels of interest and engagement. This immediately causes Blue, Pink, and Yellow to stiffen up and look around nervously.

"What?" Pink asks.

"What's going on?"

"Um… well, it sounds like my Queen intends to fix your brain first, and only build your body afterwards so that you can design it yourselves," I explain.

"…Design it ourselves?" Yellow asks hesitantly.

"Yep," I agree with a smirk.

"I hope you've all been thinking about what kind of Angel you want to be."

"Sky is limit," Blossom confirms with a smirk.

"No silly Julietta limitations. No whining about nervous system. You be anything now. Tall as mountain, small as bug."

"Don't do the mountain thing, though," I say.

"Getting food will be a pain without an entire colony and powers that help you grow it. Also you won't be able to walk."

"I… think we're just going to stick to looking like humans," Pink hedges.

"Assurance: do not worry, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate," Infrared sends over the network.

"We will merge before we decide. I will make sure they are not too boring."

"…As long as you're all happy," I say, smirking at her.

"What?" Pink asks.

"What did she say?"

"She'll tell you herself soon enough," I answer.

"For now… it's time. Are you all ready?"

"Fuck no," Yellow swears.

"But I think we're well past done waiting."

"Fair enough," I say, starting to swim down toward my Queen's central core.

"Then let's go." I can only hope they end up loving it as much as I have. But… I'm a bit more confident about that than I was before.