Chương 46: 45. I Want To Know What I Want

I stare at the rat in displeasure. The rat ignores me. I've gotta say, it's a little surreal how much of this past month of training has involved me glaring at rodents. Not the anti-supervillain stuff, obviously. There have yet to be any superpowered rats, bar occasionally myself. Rafflesia's training has focused largely around teamwork, domain synchronization (for those of us that haven't already figured it out), and hostage situations.

According to her, most supervillains are several times weaker than the average Angel and are only truly dangerous because of their ability to blend into public places and force fights on bad terms. Some supervillains can be powerful, but most of the problematic ones are a struggle because they're clever. They are, after all, people going to extreme lengths to avoid combat; it's rare that they tend to be any good in a fight. Personally, I kind of hate it.

It makes perfect sense to put me on an anti-supervillain squad, my powers are well-suited for the job, but I've said before that I don't really think draft dodgers are doing anything wrong and bringing down the hammer on them doesn't sit well with me. There are truly dangerous supervillains, ones that actually live up to the way the term was used back when powers were just something you saw in movies and comics.

Some people go on killing sprees with offensive powers or build harems with mind control powers or all kinds of other shit like that, and they need to go down hard. But somehow, I doubt that's going to be what I end up having to fight against. Enough thinking about things I can't change. Let's move on to confirming what those things are. This goddamn rat—along with a few others—have been given to me for testing purposes at my request.

Rafflesia says that it's important we become 'more in tune' with our abilities, as extensive practice leads not only to figuring out new use cases for our powers but overall greater domain strength as well. I've already done a lot of practice with my shapeshifting, and I'm definitely interested in looking more into storing things safely inside my meatspace, but being around Rafflesia has caused a particular question to keep picking at my mind.

If my powers let me heal myself, and my powers are based around my domain, can I heal other people in my domain? I'm of two minds about it. On one hand, it seems pretty reasonable. Powers work within the area of their domains. Rafflesia's words about practicing powers to make them stronger line up with what In-Joke told me, though with the added context of that conversation I suspect the real thing that makes a domain more powerful is embodying the god it stems from more fully.

Practicing one's power just naturally leads to that, since the powers are already designed to be in line with the values of the god that granted it. That's when we start running into trouble, though: In-Joke said a lot of things about domains, and some of them really concern me. I've always had a strong feeling that my power is specifically the ability to shapeshift myself. That's what has caused me to not really attempt shapeshifting on anyone else.

And indeed, no matter how much I glare at this rat, I can't seem to alter its biology at all. It's not me. But a domain is something both lived in and owned. It is my sovereign space. If I stretch my mind just right, I think I might be able to convince myself that everything in my domain is me, by definition. I think I've almost done it once before, when I fought Peter in the tournament.

I felt for a moment, with the same degree of unnatural confidence that usually comes with knowing what my powers can and can't do, that I could change him… because I thought that arm was me. If there's a trick here, if there's some way to make it work, it's getting over that mental hurdle. It's convincing myself that this rat is me. But the rat isn't me. It's a rat. I can't just decide to believe something that's patently untrue. That's called being crazy. I'm me, and that rat is not me. That's just how it is.

To believe otherwise would be to completely redefine the concept of self that I've built up my entire life. Obviously, that concept of self is arbitrary and can be redefined, but… I'm just having a lot of trouble with it. It doesn't help that I simply don't like the idea of defining anything other than me as 'me.' Er… well, I mean, there you go, that's the exact mental process that makes this so hard. What I mean is that I don't like the idea of defining anything other than my own physical self as me.

Maybe, just maybe, I can accept that my domain is part of me. But the things inside of my domain? That's hard, because there are a lot of things that go in and out of my domain on a regular basis. If I decide everything in my domain is me, then that means all kinds of random shit becomes me when it enters my domain. The grass is me. The bugs in the walls are me. My clothes are me. Other people are me, at least so long as they remain within my domain. Is that possible? Yes, I suspect it is.

Would it be an absolutely terrifying worldview to hold? Also yes. It would require dismissing the individuality of everyone I work with. I'm honestly straight-up scared of attempting it. So that means deciding everything inside my domain is me is out of the question. Instead, I need to be able to pick and choose at whim what things are and are not me. But if anything, that's even more difficult.

Instead of the hard rule of domain equals Julietta, we have all the acceptance that anything in my domain can be Julietta but with an added degree of willful dominance, the arrogance to say 'yes, this is what I choose when I choose it, and I may make that choice at any time because that is my right.' It's me holding the keys to the kingdom of Julietta and deciding when I get to force other people through the door. And I'm not really sure that will work out well for them.

I mean, I use other people's brains all the damn time. But when I do… those brains are Julietta. They are not whoever they were before. So if I do end up capable of shapeshifting someone else's body… will I end up ego killing them? Will I destroy their self and replace it with my own? And will I be unable to restore them, since the only thing I can shapeshift is me? All these fears have made the task impossible so far. But they're also why I have a lab rat to experiment on instead of a human being.

If I succeed, and I ego-murder this rat… well, that's sad, but I've done my best not to get too attached to this little bastard. Yet if I succeed and the rat is fine… well, then I'm quite possibly the world's most powerful healer. And that's a degree of good I'm not sure I have the right to rob the rest of the world from. And yet, this damn rat won't change. Stupid little thing. I hold out my hand, a bit of food in the palm.

The rat crawls onto me, completely trusting, completely indifferent to the fact that I could easily crush the life out of it right this second, and munches away at the treats I've offered. He's a small little thing, soft and warm and healthy. I own him. But I don't know how to convince myself that he's me. I wonder if I can force the issue. The event with Peter that made me think this might all be possible involved a bit of an… altered state of mind, I suppose.

Specifically I was doing my thinking without a brain for a bit. The mind meat might be useful for a lot of things, but forcing myself out of my own head isn't one of them. I've always known that the brain holds the preconceptions. It's just that, y'know. I thought it held everything else, too. I don't really like not having a brain. It makes me a little loopy. I should probably get help for this, someone to watch me while I do this to myself and help pull me back together if needed. But… I don't really want to.

I don't like relying on others for my personal issues. It's probably just another reason for me to delay this anyway. I need to rip the bandage off and just do it already. My heart thumps in my chest. Why is this so terrifying? I've already come back from this multiple times. Damn it, this is pathetic. I should be able to do this. I should be able to do this! Become mine, you stupid rat!

"Lia?"

"Ah!" I yelp, jolting slightly. I look up and spot Maria leaning in the doorway, her eyes yellow. She seems surprised by my surprise, but then she smirks, causing an uncomfortable fluttering in my chest.

"Oh my god, I scared you!" she grins as I remove my ability to blush.

"This is a rare moment. This is going in the memory vault forever."

"... Did you need something, Maria?" I ask evenly and do not grumble.

"Yep, we're being summoned. I think the fun is finally over."

"Oh, shit," I blink, quickly shifting mental gears. It's finally time, huh? It's been a lot longer than I expected we'd have, given how cushy this assignment has been. We've actually gotten to relax a little. Which, to be clear, has not made me any less stressed… but it's a nice change of pace. I feel like I've hardly made any progress towards… well, anything over this past month, and with Maria's fated demise looming over us, that feels extra bad.

I talked big with Emily to make her feel better, but the closer we get to this the less confident I feel. Hanging out with everyone while we have free time has been nice, and Ana seems to have managed to unwind a little with so many people who love her just around and hanging out. Rafflesia seems to have taken a liking to her, and she's not anywhere near as tough of a teacher as the ones we've had before. It really has been nice. But now it's over. I suppose it's about time that we get the next offensive started.

I still wish we didn't have to go.

"Lead the way," I tell Maria anyway, putting the lab rat I refuse to name back in his cage. Lucky you, nameless rat. You won't have to risk my experiments for much longer. Maria and I leave my room together, walking down familiar hallways towards a room where we will learn our fate.

"I'm a little nervous," Maria admits.

"I'd be more concerned if you weren't nervous, honestly," I answer.

"Yeah, I mean… yeah," Maria agrees lamely, scratching the back of her head. For obvious reasons, we can't talk about Emily's prophecy out loud in a military base, so these sorts of conversations tend to be vaguely uncomfortable and awkward more than anything. The conversation fades into awkward silence, and we simply walk together for a while as I do my best not to think too hard about the constant updates on her biology that my domain won't stop feeding me.

I could just pull my domain back, I suppose, but that might just make it even more conspicuous. I could probably write a book on the way that having a domain and being able to sense other domains affects social dynamics between superhumans. It adds a whole extra layer on top of tone, word choice, body language, and the whole usual set of communication modifiers. I'd make good money off of something like that, I bet. Most psychologists in the country would want to hear it discussed from the horse's mouth. …

Of course, now I'm thinking about my old therapist reading something I've written and psychoanalyzing me about it and the whole idea is immediately soured. He's never stopped thinking that there's something wrong with me.

"So," Maria says, her eyes shifting pink, "have you given any more thought to… you know, us?"

"…What exactly about us?" I ask. I mean, I have a pretty good idea of what she wants to know, I'm just hoping I'm wrong. Because no, I haven't thought any more about it.

"Well, I said I wanted to date you, and you said 'maybe later,'" she clarifies, and yep, I was right.

"I mean, you said a lot of other stuff too, but unless I misread it all that was the basic idea?"

"You did not misread it," I assure her.

"I would like to point out, however, that none of the reasons I thought it wouldn't be a good idea at the time have actually changed. Consequently, I haven't really had any more time to think about it." Maria frowns.

"Really?" she asks.

"You haven't even thought about it a little bit?"

"This past month has been the most free time we've gotten since all of this started, and I've still been pretty busy," I tell her. She sighs.

"…Well, that pretty much decides it, I think."

"What!?" I ask immediately, unable to keep the shock and surprise from my voice.

"Why?"

"Because I can't stop thinking about you!" Maria groans.

"This is the biggest crush I've ever had on someone! You are frighteningly sexy, and I mean that in every sense of the phrase. Not to mention you're smart, composed, funny, responsible, and just all-around cool! The idea that I might have a chance with someone like you is driving me crazy."

"Um."

"But if you haven't thought about me at all? Well, that sounds like you don't feel the same way. And that's fine, I just… don't want to chase a laser pointer for the rest of my life, you know? I don't want to think I can catch you even when it's impossible." I, uh. Okay, this is not… damn it, what is happening? Why is my pulse so fast? Why can't I think straight? I hate this!

"I didn't say I never think about you," I blurt.

"I have a frustratingly difficult time not thinking about you. I just said I hadn't considered the matter of a relationship any more than before. That has nothing to do with how much I think about you."

"Oh?" Maria smiles a little, leaning in closer. It's causing my thoughts to buzz even more than before.

"Now you think I'm frustrating, do you?"

"Maria, I would not respect you as much as I do if I thought you would believe I meant it that way," I answer through gritted teeth.

"I just… I am a person who highly values her self-control. The problem is not that I lack attraction to you. The problem is that I struggle with how that attraction makes me feel."

"Well," Maria grins brightly.

"There's a pretty easy way to make that attraction feel good." She steps in front of me and leans down, her smiling face getting dangerously close to my own. I stop walking, frozen. My usual tactics in social situations are starting to fail me. I don't have experience with this sort of thing. Part of me doesn't want to. Part of me really, really does.

"I knew it," Maria smirks, her pink irises almost glowing.

"The others didn't believe me, they think you're way too cool. But you're really weak to the direct approach, aren't you?" I stand up a little straighter, setting my jaw. I do not like to be called weak.

"It's just not what I expected from you," I answer evenly.

"I know you can be blunt when the situation calls for it, but I never got the impression you had much more experience with flirting than I do."

"Oh yeah, I'm weak to it too," Maria confirms, inching closer.

"Honestly, everyone else is screaming in the back of my head. This is hard. But I could die on this next deployment. I don't want to do that without at least trying to kiss you." As experienced as I have gotten with not thinking about it, my ability to distract myself can only hold so much. This is a side of Maria I was not prepared for. I could not have prepared for it. She's attacking me from a flank I never knew existed. And with her lips that close…

"I think… that's… a logical motivation…" I manage.

"Mhm? Logical, huh? That's what you think this is?" she prods, her smile growing wider.

"I… it's just…" I can't stop looking at her goddamned lips. I wouldn't even need to take a step. I could just lean forward and touch them with mine.

"You want to do it here? In the middle of this random hallway?"

"I want to do it absolutely everywhere you'll let me." An unidentifiable shudder runs up my body, and the step backwards I take is more shapeshift than movement, an instinctive retreat from something too overwhelming to face head-on. Maria's smile drops a bit as I do, and somehow, despite all of this, that's the worst part.

"W-well, not here," I stammer. I fucking stammer. Pathetic. Horrible. Captivating.

"We have a meeting to get to." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Her smile falls further, and it's too much. I can't.

"…But maybe somewhere private," I continue.

"We could finish this conversation in a more appropriate setting." Some of that smile returns, and I am deeply afraid that the next time we talk there won't be anything I can do to stop myself from giving her everything she wants.

"I can work with that," she concedes, and the two of us continue down the hall. My heart is still pounding by the time we make it to the briefing room. I've shapeshifted a new one in its place several times but it just won't stop. This was so terribly timed. I need to pay attention to what they're going to tell us, but I've just had the foundations of my self-control shaken so hard that I've fallen off the roof.

So now, while I should still be thinking about new strategies to give my power more utility until the briefing starts, I'm stuck fighting off the memory of her lips, the intimate knowledge of her entire physical form. I catch myself subconsciously shifting into her, and force my power into other directions, twisting and flowing and optimizing and changing in hundreds of different ways, knowing that Maria is sitting right there, looking at me, knowing exactly what it means when my power starts squirming like this.

I know that she's learning to read my tics and tells, figuring out the body language of someone with no singular body at all. It's infuriating. It's embarrassing. It's calming. It's exciting. It is far, far, far too many things, and combined they are a maelstrom of experiences that even my well-trained aptitude for words fails to describe. The orderly closet of my mind has had every shelf upturned, and I do not even know where to begin packing everything away again.

For most of my life, it always struck me as somewhat boring and unoriginal that the vast majority of songs were written about love. Intellectually, I was aware that love was considered one of the most meaningful and universal of human experiences, and physical attraction is often considered inseparable from love because people in general are rather terrible at not conflating correlated things.

But I had assumed, in that ignorant way children often do, that this overwhelming representation love had in the catalog of human artistic expression was due entirely to cultural habit, apes aping apes in an incestuous spiral of unoriginality. It was arrogant of me. Dismissive. I knew that there were some emotions, some feelings, that only felt truly satisfied, even if temporarily, when expressed through song. I contained forms of hatred and pain that were only satiated in the privacy between earbuds.

It was profoundly stupid of me, in retrospect, to dismiss the majority of human art as not falling within the same realm of agony. I am not sure if love hurts. But lust? Lust is a motherfucker.

"Alright, thank you all for coming!" Rafflesia says as she enters the room, gracing us all with a truly uncharacteristic amount of kindness for a commanding officer. I immediately distrust it.

"You have graduated your training effective immediately and are already being moved to your first assignment. Truly, the top brass loves your platoon like a baby from their own loins." Gosh, I hadn't even noticed when everyone else entered the room. Come on, Julietta, focus. You're better than this.

"I'll cut to the chase," Rafflesia says, as if she ever does anything else.

"For the past couple of months, we've had a deserter slip the net every week or so. It has become consistent enough that we cannot assume it to be anything other than enemy action: a coordinated plot from an organized force on American soil." That's certainly one way to put it.

"Ma'am, do you mean that Angels are kidnapping people?" Degreaser asks.

"Like, outside of their own territory?"

"We don't know," Rafflesia answers, "but probably not. We have reason to believe an organized group of humans is the cause. A criminal organization specializing in underground supervillainy." The propaganda drips off her words like venom, and though I can tell she only half-believes it the instinct to be hypocritical and judge her over it is still strong. I shove the instinct down deep. I'm here, after all. I'm no better. Acknowledging right and wrong is useless if you don't do anything about it.

I guess I'm pretty used to not being able to. It feels like I'm still not, I'm not strong enough to oppose the entire military, but… god. I really don't want to chase after people just fleeing from a war.

"What we do know is the location our trackers consistently lose the trail," Rafflesia continues, "and it's just north of here. Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia. Runners go there, and they disappear."

"I'm not sure if any of us are Georgia natives, ma'am," Ed says.

"What's Centennial Olympic Park?"

"It's a big-ass public park," Rafflesia grunts.

"Open air. Has fountains and shit. Always busy in the daytime. It's a pretty little tourist attraction, basically, as much as tourism is still a thing. The point is that it's such a wide-open, heavily frequented space that there should be no possible way for someone to just vanish without anyone ever noticing. But as I'm sure you all know, the impossible is achievable on the regular nowadays.

There's at least one powered target, most likely more than one, that has been directing defectors from the southern United States to this park and pulling them away from our ability to monitor them. Mundane information gathering and most of the powers we've sent at it have come up duds. What we really need is a mole." Oh boy. I purse my lips.

"... That sounds extremely dangerous," I point out.

"If these people have evaded military detection so far, there's no way they haven't considered the risk of a plant."

"Well, it's a good thing you're durable, then," Rafflesia grunts.

"Seraphim, Afterimage, Nemean. You're going to try to get the attention of these people and get picked up. The others are your backup and your cover, as needed. In the orders I was given, it was mentioned that Vermillion's presence could make your stories 'especially believable,' but… I'm going to leave that up to your personal discretion." Translation: I'm not going to order you to bring the nine-year-old into the viper's den because it'll make finding some draft dodgers easier. Thank you, Rafflesia.

Much appreciated.

"Why us?" I ask.

"You're the right age group, for one, and most of you have psych evals that mark you as suitable for this kind of thing. They think you're a good liar, Seraphim."

"... I'll refrain from commenting on that, but even if that's the rationale I don't see why that means the rest of the platoon is needed."

"It's just how these things are done, Seraphim," Rafflesia insists.

"These are your orders, and you're expected to obey them."

"Of course. Apologies, ma'am." I figured that would be the only answer. With anyone other than Rafflesia, I wouldn't have even pressed the issue. It's still frustrating. It feels so… wasteful. Though I suppose, objectively, it's better for Maria's survival if she sticks with the group and we're all here to protect her from whatever it is Emily predicted.

The rest of the meeting covers the basic outline of the plan: we're heading to Atlanta in civvies, ostensibly on leave and looking to just hang out and have a good time. We'll head there in staggered groups, spreading a wide net to try and see which of the several baits are most likely to get a bite. We'll be communicating with each other using normal cell phones, though of course our messaging app is going to be encrypted to high heaven.

The whole plan is based around making us seem like normal tourists, and if anyone recognizes us we claim to be on leave. I have little faith that this will actually work, but since I kind of don't want it to work anyway that's fine by me. One of the most amusing parts of this, at least in my opinion, is that the military has to issue most of us casual, normal clothing. Not standardized wear, but unique, high-quality casual wear worn by people slightly younger than us and fitted to us specifically.

After all, most of us don't own anything, because it was all destroyed in the incursion! Furthermore, if we want the people who are supposed to provide backup to remain undercover at all they have to look like they're seventeen years old or less. That's probably the biggest reason why we were chosen; no one is going to look at someone in their mid-twenties and think they're anything other than a soldier, because they won't be. Basically everyone gets drafted!

Most of us are young enough to pass as kids doing one last round of living their lives before they have to head out and probably lose them, with the main exception being Ed who is of course well above service age and won't look out of place at all. The main point of failure is, ironically, Anastasia: she's obviously young enough to not be a soldier (at least in a sane world) but she's also visibly altered by her powers, between her long claws, recognizable hair, and unusually pale skin.

The latter two are easy to deal with; we can trim her hair every half hour or so, and sometimes people are just kind of pale normally, but the claws are a little harder. Gloves would work, but why would anyone her age be wearing gloves in weather like this? We could trim her claws as well as her hair, but that's harder to be inconspicuous about and probably fairly uncomfortable. Someone keeping a sharp enough watch will recognize her as Vermillion, and then whatever group she's in has their cover blown.

That's not necessarily a game-breaker. Most people aren't going to look at a child in civvies and assume she's on a supervillain hunt, especially if we're just letting her play around in the park. Which, to be clear, we will be doing; this is a golden opportunity to just let Anastasia have fun and call it 'being undercover' and I'm not going to let it go to waste. But what we probably can't do is have Anastasia be part of my group, since I'm going to be one of the people mainly trying to pretend to be defecting.

Not unless I want Anastasia to be the reason I'm defecting, which I don't. Not because it wouldn't be a great cover, but because I don't want her to have to be a mole in the first place. That's a dangerous job. I should be the one to do it. Though I guess I won't mind too much if Afterimage ends up managing it first, since I don't really care that much about them. Peter… eh. I could take him or leave him. Soon enough, the meeting concludes.

We depart tomorrow morning, leaving us with a little bit of time to ourselves to get ready and plan our approach. I exit the briefing room, my mind spinning with possible ways this could all go wrong, and Maria gets up to follow closely next to me, an expectant look on her face. What does she… oh. Right. I almost repressed all of that again. Here come the heart palpitations.

"Hey, Christine?" I call out.

"Yeah?" she asks.

"Could I get you to do a favor for me?" I ask.

"Sure." I motion her to follow us, to Maria's obvious disappointment, but as much as I'd like to make an excuse and get out of this entirely, that is not the mature response to this situation and no matter how juvenile my out-of-control feelings happen to be, I will not act like a child.

"Could you find us somewhere to talk where we won't be overheard?" I mutter quietly at her.

"I need to discuss… personal stuff with Maria." Christine blinks at me.

"I really hope that's not a euphemism," she says.

"It's not!" I insist a bit too forcefully. Damn it.

"Right. Well, yeah, there's a good chunk of places that aren't monitored. Follow me." If there's one thing I know Christine has been practicing, it's using her domain scanning to find monitoring equipment. She hates breaches of her privacy more than anyone I've ever met, so sure enough it isn't long before she's motioning us into an empty room.

"You don't need a bed or anything, right?" she deadpans.

"We do not," I hiss. Not yet, anyway, a traitorous part of my mind hums. I really wish I just didn't know what Maria looks like naked. I step past Christine, nodding a wordless thanks to her as I pass. I'm dreading this upcoming conversation like the plague, but it needs to be done.

"Best of luck, you two," Christine deadpans, shutting the door behind her as she leaves. The room she found for us looks like another briefing room, similar to the one we just left. I guess there are good reasons to soundproof and not record rooms like this. I sit down in the closest chair, trying to stop squirming as I gather my thoughts.

"... I've never told you much about my past," I eventually settle on.

"About… Julietta." Maria's eyebrows raise slightly. I guess this isn't where she thought this was going. Unfortunately, I have to make sure I'm the one taking initiative here, because if I let her take initiative again, well… I might never get a chance to say the things that need to be said.

"You've said a little," she reminds me.

"But not enough," I insist.

"Not for this. So… when I was a kid, back when I was really young, my birth family and I got caught in the Denver incursion. I don't remember most of it. I'm not sure how exactly it happened… but right before we fled to safety, a bunch of Wasps caught up with us. They did what Wasps do, and my parents… took the shots for me. They melted in front of me, fell on top of me, and… I guess they diluted the acid enough to make it barely survivable." Her eyes bulge in shocked silence. There's not much that can be said.

"Regenerator saved me," I continue.

"The fast-healing superhero. But the end result fucked me up badly. I was nothing but scar tissue, and a lot of that tissue healed wrong in ways that sealed up things that needed to be left open. So I was put through a lot of surgery, and by the end of it my whole body was fucked. Pretty much all of my skin was completely numb, and I was half-blind, and there was a lot of internal damage, too. Most relevantly, my ovaries didn't work. Completely sterile. And I never… actually hit puberty."

It's so hard to read her expression. Her eyes flicker through several different colors before she decides on continuing to stay silent.

"Suffice to say, I identified as asexual," I tell her.

"And I liked it that way. It wasn't a choice I ever got to make, but I always told myself that if I could choose, I would have wanted to choose this. I was… well, to look back a little uncharitably, I was arguably a bit of a misanthrope." Maria suddenly snorts with amusement, her eyes briefly flashing orange. I frown at her, but she swaps back to blue and waves me off, encouraging me to keep going.

"... Anyway, on my eighteenth birthday, I became a shapeshifter," I say, "and I lost access to my old body forever. Now, when I happen to have ovaries, they very much do work, and the rest of my body is pretty regularly… well-developed, brain included. So, for the first time ever, I have a physiology that is very used to being very attracted to certain other human beings, but… I do not have any experience dealing with that. At all. I've never dated anyone. I've never kissed anyone.

And I certainly haven't had years of childhood development and practice with handling my desire to." My whole body is squirming with discomfort at this point. I can't even tell which Maria I'm talking to because I'm struggling to look her in the eyes.

"I don't feel in control anymore," I admit.

"And I hate it." The words drop out of me in an inhuman hiss, my flesh shuddering and writhing in demonstration, entirely against my will. I want to fall apart, to dissolve into meaningless flesh, but I will not, because that is not the appropriate thing to do, that is not the mature thing to do, and I am in control. I have to be. I have to be!

"…Why do you hate it?" Maria asks. I finally glance up. Green now. Hmm.

"Why wouldn't I hate it?" I challenge her.

"Well, it's just… it's not the end of the world, you know?" Maria says.

"Nobody can control everything."

"But everyone has a responsibility to control themselves," I counter.

"Are you… afraid of hurting me or something?" Maria asks, her brows furrowed.

"What? No!" I insist immediately.

"No, I'd never do that."

"Then what's the problem, exactly…?" Maria asks, still not getting it.

"What are you afraid you'll do?"

"I don't know," I answer.

"If I knew, I could probably control it."

"Well, if you don't know, but you know you won't hurt me, why don't we just… find out?" Again, I manage to look up.

"What?" I ask.

"You realize it's not the end of the world if we date for a while and you decide you don't like it, right?" Maria asks.

"I mean, it would suck a little, but I'm not that much more experienced with romance than you are. I get needing to… figure everything out. Right?" I… rrgh.

"I'm trying to figure out a logical argument against that and my inability to do so is part of what makes this so frustrating," I admit.

"Yeah, that's pretty much what puberty is like most of the time," Maria nods.

"I'm not… I can really struggle with… physical sensations?" I admit, prying the words out of myself one by one.

"I'm not used to having a functioning sense of touch. It's a lot better now than it was when all this started, but I'm just worried… I don't even know. All of this is a vague bubble of different emotions I can't process and it's awful because… because it's supposed to be the thing I'm good at! I feel like a complete idiot whenever I'm around you!"

"Uhh. Huh," Maria says.

"Well, if you don't want to try it we certainly don't have to."

"I didn't say that!" I answer a bit too quickly.

"I just. I've been handling it up until this point by not thinking about it. And yes, I know that's a maladaptive coping mechanism, but I'm afraid… that I'm not going to be any good at this. And I hate not being good at things I should be good at. Romance isn't complicated. It's just difficult anyway. And that's stupid." There's silence for a bit. I still just feel stupid. I've spent this whole conversation about whether or not we should date talking about how unpleasant I feel whenever she's around me.

I bet that just feels great on her end.

"It's kind of surreal seeing you so completely out of your element," Maria admits.

"Well, sorry," I huff.

"I didn't mean to blow up on you like this. I guess that's sort of the problem."

"It's not bad, I think?" Maria hums.

"It's… humanizing. Which is something you're in dire need of on several levels."

"Agree to disagree," I grunt.

"It's being human that got me into this mess in the first place."

"My point is, while it's a little frustrating that your big flaw happens to be centered around going out with me, it's kind of cute seeing you struggle with a big flaw for once. So I'm a little torn."

"Of two minds about it, perhaps?" I blurt before thinking better of it. Thankfully, she laughs.

"A bit more than two, but yes," she confirms.

"But I guess, ultimately, it's not my place to push you. You know what I want. You have to be the one to figure out what you want."

"I want to know what I want," I admit.

"Then again," Maria says, "while I may be a little biased, I think the best way to find out is to try." I stare at her, ignoring my urge to push all the feelings the action fills me with to the side. She has a point. I've already been not dating her, and I don't feel like the answers are any closer. Besides, how will I learn to deal with this if I never try it? As pathetic as it is for me to be in this state, I can't improve by constantly avoiding it. I will master my own out-of-control feelings.

I won't lose to something every fucking thirteen-year-old on the planet is already starting to figure out. Besides, I need to make sure we stay close together, in case whatever kills her comes knocking.

"Maria," I say seriously.

"Will you go out with me?" She smiles.

"I look forward to our date tomorrow afternoon," she answers. Oh. That's… soon. But it would be good cover for espionage, I suppose. Give us a reason to be in the city. It works, I think. A date. Fine. Sure. I can do that.

"Sounds good," I nod. I refuse to lose.