Chương 49: 48. The Rules Have Changed

When an animal starts to fall, its first instinct is usually to try and catch itself. Retaining balance is important, after all, but when a split-second of flailing isn't enough to find a foothold, what happens? Cats know to right themselves, spreading out their limbs to reduce the speed of their fall. Flying animals have a new set of instincts take over, quickly ensuring they are no longer falling at all. But me? I, apparently, grow a set of eight-foot-long tentacles out of my scalp and grab onto the ceiling.

Not what I figured my first choice would be, but hey. It works. Pulling myself well out of the way of whatever trap just opened underneath my feet, I stick tightly to the ceiling, matching my skin to its color and texture, pressing my body close and looking down to check the room for whatever the hell that was. But… there's nothing. The floor is still there, fully intact. What the hell?

"You're still there, aren't you?" the voice from before grumbles, the sound once again coming from a new direction.

"Damn it."

"Rude greeting," I comment, swinging off the ceiling and kicking open the bathroom door. This guy was just in the hallway a moment ago, right? And he probably needs to still be close if he's using power shit.

"I don't really blame you, though."

"Because you're a government lapdog trying to bust the whole operation?" the voice asks from behind me. I glance backwards, but again, there's nothing there.

"It's complicated," I hedge.

"Don't be too hard on the kid, I threatened the hell out of him."

"You realize that doesn't reassure me about either of you, right?" Again, the voice comes from an unexpected direction. I grow several more eyes before I respond, keeping track of everything in a full three hundred and sixty degrees around me.

"Come on, if the kid was a plant would I really be asking you pretty please to be nice to him?" I ask.

"I'm sure you have ways to prove none of this was his fault." I make it to the end of the hallway and force open the door to the place we first came in. As expected, he's not here anymore, and he doesn't even bother to respond to me this time around. Damn it, if he's a teleporter he could probably be anywhere by now. But he can't just be a teleporter, right? His powers are letting him communicate over long distances, too. He can hear me and respond.

Either that or this entire hallway is rigged with a bunch of little microphones and speakers that I just haven't noticed, but I'm just going to assume it's a power thing. Christine could tell me for sure if she was here, but my power won't help me at all when it comes to detecting electronics like that. Although… it can detect living things, and that's exactly what I'm looking for right now.

I stretch my domain out into a long tube, keeping it attached to my head as I swing it in a wide arc, just trying to look for people, or more importantly, domains. Sure enough, I hit one, and I immediately shift my legs for maximum speed, muscles bulging as I push against the ground, accelerating with a powerful leap, running a few steps across the wall as I take a corner, and ultimately leveling out into a straight sprint down a hallway to my target.

The domain I touch has that familiar feel of Contradiction, a rejection of the possible exclusively for the impossible. I already know one powerful teleporter blessed by Contradiction, so if I don't get there fast… I smash through the door at the end of the hall, coming face-to-face with my target and immediately moving to take them down, tendrils of flesh filling the hall as I try to smother them with both my body and my domain. Yet instead, I pass through my prey like there was nothing there at all.

Skidding to a stop, I turn around to face them, and—wait.

"Afterimage?" I blink.

"Holy fucking shit you scared the hell out of me, Seraphim!" Oscar wheezes, clutching his chest.

"You sure got here fast," I say.

"Find anyone suspicious?"

"Nothing," he says, shaking his head.

"I thought you had the targets. What happened?"

"Teleporter," I summarize succinctly.

"That would do it," he sighs.

"Are we just fucked, then?"

"No. I want everyone to spread out through the aquarium," I order.

"If their teleporter was as powerful as Cross Country, they wouldn't have to set up anywhere near as many hoops as they already have. There must be some limitation or weakness to the power, probably in range. They are making all their prospective runaways come to them rather than the other way around."

"Okay, I'm letting the others know," he nods. Oh, is he aware of all of his possible bodies at once? Can he hold multiple conversations at the same time? That's pretty damn useful.

"Any need for being subtle?"

"None. Our targets are either here or they're gone," I say.

"Pull rank and comb the building."

"And if they take any of the dozens of hostages in the building?" he asks.

"Then we let them go, probably," I shrug, starting to run again.

"Wait, really? Just like that?" he asks, running next to me.

"What, are you chomping at the bit that much to go after draft dodgers?" I ask.

"The kid I followed here was some poor underage schmuck with a crappy power. Sending his ass to war is not more important than civilian safety. Civilian safety is the point of the war! Or, well, at least it should be."

"Huh," Afterimage says.

"Well, fair enough. Your face is fucking freaky, by the way. The hell are you doing with it?" Oh, right. Gah. I make my horrific mess of eyeballs a little more presentable, refocusing my gaze forward.

"Sorry," I say.

"Kept hearing voices from directions I wasn't looking. Target is teleporting his voice or something."

"Sounds creepy," Afterimage says.

"Stairs are this way, by the by." He leads us through a door to a concrete, windowless stairwell and we start rushing up the steps. The moment the door closes behind us, though, the lights all wink out, plunging us into perfect darkness. I shift my eyes for darkvision, and then light suddenly blinds me from below as I stumble, my legs failing to find purchase on a step I know had just been there. Yet every direction I try to grab answers only with air, and this time, I fall.

With a frigid splash, I find myself in the middle of one of the aquarium tanks, surrounded by terrified fish. I ignore them as I expand my domain in every direction, happy to have grabbed most of these templates yesterday as I search for the enemy. Directly above me, for only an instant, I feel it: the door-painting, the personification of the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. But by the time I look up, it's gone, the domain of Silhouette's chosen retreating upwards. To the roof.

I shift my legs into an appropriate tail and kick out of the tank, briefly turning myself inside-out to drink all of the lingering wetness off my body and leave myself dry. Catching onto the ceiling, I shift myself some gecko setae and scramble quickly towards the closest stairwell again. Of course, I don't want to just do the same thing and expect a different result. They got me with the lights, but why did they shut off the lights? It's a silhouette power. Maybe it doesn't work as well if it's bright out?

I make my skin as brightly bioluminescent as I can as I drop onto the ground and open the stairwell door, keeping a careful eye on my footing as I run.

"You are very persistent," a voice above me sighs.

"Most people would have at least been slowed down by getting dunked in a fishtank."

"I am not most people," I say.

"I can only shapeshift into a few hundred, at most." The voice snorts with amusement.

"I can't believe it. The kid was serious. You really are Seraphim, aren't you? Are they seriously sending you after us?" Again, the lights wink out, but thanks to my glowing body I can still see. No wonder it had gotten so dark so quickly the first time: the concrete of the walls and ceiling has grown over the light fixtures, physically blocking them from shedding any illumination. I expand my domain again, once again catching something Silhouette-aligned. Hmm. That's gotta be someone else, right?

Or am I not fighting a teleporter at all? It would explain why they're still here instead of just… y'know, leaving. Maybe I can just ask? It worked well with the aliens.

"Why are you still here?" I blurt.

"Seriously. You can teleport, right?"

"Your boy's not the only one I need to get out of here," he answers.

"Unfortunately, one of my clients is proving to be a problem. Gotta stall you a bit while I solve it."

"That sucks," I say, flicking my eyes around to try and catch the source of the sound.

"You're definitely making—" I form an eye to look directly towards the source of the sound, and it cuts off a split second before continuing. Hmm.

"—things a little annoying for me. Cut that—" I give myself omnidirectional vision again, and the voice stops completely the moment I do. Okay, got it. I can never see his damn power because it only works wherever I'm not looking. I purposefully give myself a small blindspot.

"Sorry," I say.

"I've got a job to do too. Though I don't particularly like it. What are the odds you'd be willing to take on more clients instead?"

"Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that," the voice says, and indeed the response comes from my blind spot.

"Your interest is noted, though." I finally make it to the top of these damn stairs and shove open the door to the roof, squinting in the bright glare of the sun overhead. On the opposite side of the roof from me is a profoundly normal-looking man, dressed like your average rich tourist with his khaki shorts and polo shirt. He has a bit of a long face and the sort of stubble one has when they think shaving for their date still counts if they did it yesterday.

He is tense with fear, ready to run at a moment's notice… not that running is likely to be his escape option here. I'm taking no chances, though. I'm not even going to blink.

"I've gotta say," I continue, "if you're not letting me come with you, I don't have a lot of incentive to let you go."

"No one needs to 'let' us go anywhere," the voice answers from behind me, and the man in front of me's mouth doesn't move. Not to mention the 'we.' I knew it. There's more of them. The domain I followed was actually the matter creation guy's, not the teleporter's. They wanted me here on the roof. But why the roof? If teleporter guy's powers work based on perception, there's a good chance he knows where I'm looking at all times, which gives him ample opportunity to never be anywhere near me.

Normally he wouldn't need a distraction like this, but his partner led me all the way up here. Which means he must be trying to draw me away from whatever person is supposedly making it difficult to teleport people around—a perception power, maybe—to buy time. I can't catch the teleporter, but I can catch their client. Which means that's what I need to do. This person in front of me doesn't matter. They're bait. If I rush him, he'll do something to break line of sight, close his eyes, and be gone. Though…

he won't be gone immediately, will he?

'Teleporter guy' has never actually attempted to teleport me. He's made me fall, removing the ground beneath my feet and causing me to end up somewhere impossible. I dropped through the basement stairs and ended up in the first floor fish tank—going up. He makes portals. Portals you can't see, or else they'll disappear. That explains how he talks to me, too: dude just makes a small portal and the sound carries through it both ways.

If a portal is going to appear to give his partner an escape route, where will it go? And what happens if I go through it? At this point I'm just kind of curious. Can I outsmart these guys? I think I can, but it's not like it matters if I don't. If I just left and told the brass what I've learned already they'll probably count it as a win just because it's more than they have so far. This isn't war, this is just reinforcing the military's authority to own people. I'm just participating because they already own me.

I could half-ass this. But… I don't like to half-ass things. I'd rather give it my all and let them go if I feel like it later than just give up now. So I sneakily extend my domain forward, slithering a thin, camouflaged tendril of flesh out of my leg and towards my target as I cross my arms under my chest, strike a very Lia Morgan-esque arrogant pose, and give the man my best smirk.

"You don't, huh?" I ask.

"You've got me right where you want me, is that it? Please. Don't underestimate me." My pose and tone of voice are, of course, calculated specifically to get them to underestimate me. To think of me as some cocky girl high off of a series of recent victories. They want to stall, right? So they'll indulge my whim for conversation as I twist myself carefully towards them. I am, apparently, a good fighter. How could I not be?

My power carries me most of the way there, by rendering me nearly immune to long-term damage and offering unparalleled flexibility at close range. But this? This kind of social manipulation? Figuring out what people want and how to get them exactly where I need them to be because of it? This is all me.

"Oh, we would never dream of it," the voice assures me, happily continuing to talk just as I predicted. His ally in front of me looks a little freaked out, clearly wanting to be anywhere but here, but he holds his ground. Good.

"I assure you, Seraphim, you are suitably intimidating. Three confirmed Angel kills in your first battle? That's nearly unheard of."

"They're interesting, I gotta say," I tell them.

"The aliens, I mean. If they just weren't so omnicidal I would love to get to know some of them. Their culture seems fascinating."

"…What?" the voice asks, clearly not expecting the conversation to go where it has.

"What?" I ask back.

"I said what I said."

"I guess I didn't expect you to be a sympathizer, of all things," the voice hums thoughtfully.

"Walk a mile in another person's tentacles and you learn a lot of things," I shrug.

"I can't help but notice that you don't sound too offended."

"Well, I'm not the one who has to fight the damn monsters," the supervillain responds.

"Figured someone with your kill count wouldn't… I don't know. Maybe you're just crazy."

"Maybe I am," I allow.

"But it's been working out for me so far. Speaking of…!" Without warning, I rush forwards towards my target. At the same time, the ribbon of flesh I've had sneaking around behind him strikes like a snake. Immediately, the man summons a wall in front of him made of the same material as the roof, swearing and cutting off line of sight between us. At that moment, several things happen at once. First, a portal opens up underneath my target's feet.

My ribbon-flesh has no way of seeing it, as that would defeat the point, but it feels the ground vanish moments before it wraps itself around the man's ankle. Second, I let my body dissolve into nothing, absorbing itself back into my meatspace as I move the entirety of my domain along the trail of flesh towards the other end.

I shrink myself down, becoming little more than a warm, wriggling anklet as my target falls to who knows where, the entire trip taking only a fraction of a second as gravity immediately and mercilessly accelerates us faster than most people could ever do on their own. We land without much trouble, but my target immediately yelps and starts kicking the air with the leg I'm attached to, trying to shake me off. How annoying.

I barely have enough of a brain to feel my surroundings right now, so I grow into a bit larger of a snake and slither up his thigh to more easily hold on.

"She's on me! She's fucking on me!" the loud heat source screams.

"What the hell!? Quit freakin' out!" the familiar behind-me voice snaps.

"She didn't even make it halfway to you!"

"I swear to god she's on my leg!" the heat source says, repeatedly smacking me with his fist. I oughta bite him.

"Is she really still up there!?"

"Of course she's… oh, fuck." I think I'm supposed to be doing something other than hugging this warm thing…? Oh! Right. Shock and awe. I spread a dozen tentacles out in every direction, tearing through my ride's shorts (whoops, sorry) and grabbing everything I can reach to wrap it all up.

I make sure to distribute enough brain tissue down my tentacles to be able to actually think (I seriously need to be careful with tiny bodies like that) and hold on tight to everyone and everything before forming several eyes to flood the room with vision. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. There is of course my wiggly, aggressive heat source—er, I mean, the guy with the matter-creation powers who keeps blocking my vision with solid objects.

Also in my tendrils is a man in his early thirties, only very slightly better shaven than his partner with scraggly, short brown hair jutting off in every direction on top of his head. A couple other people are in the room as well, including Brad, the poor kid, as well as a girl around his age or a little younger. She looks absolutely terrified, but I suppose no one here but me is calm.

"Holy shit!"

"Oh god, oh, god, oh god!"

"Hey Brad," I say, forming a small mouth.

"H-hi…" Brad greets me.

"And hello everyone else! Sorry for the sudden entrance, but I'm not really in the mood to keep playing ring around the rosie with you and the whole building," I announce, forming something resembling an entire human body out of the centerpoint of my tentacle mass, if only because it's polite to give people a face they can look at during conversations.

"I am Seraphim! Apparently you may have heard of me. Hopefully, my reputation precedes me enough that we can just end things here?" The response is mostly silence, with the exception of some intense shaking from one set of tentacles as the young girl I've grabbed starts to breathe faster and faster. At first I tense myself for an attack, but then I realize she isn't even looking at me. She's… starting to panic. Also, her domain feels kind of like Anastasia's.

A Reciprocation power for sure, but with less vengeance and more… I'm not really sure how to describe it. Mutual awareness? Either way, the similarity does pang at my heart a little.

"Hey, hey hey hey, it's alright," I assure her.

"Slow, deep breaths for me. I'm not here to hurt anyone."

"You're here to send children to war!" heat source shrieks. Dude, what do you want me to say?

'I'm not here to hurt anyone directly or immediately?' I'm trying to calm a girl down from a panic attack here!

"Too many," the girl whines.

"It's too many! How do you see from all of those!?" I carefully do not blink.

"Do you mean my eyes?" I ask.

"She sees everything seen by anyone looking at her," teleporter guy grunts.

"That's it. That's her whole power. Useless in a fight, worse than useless in a crowd. You'd be sending her to her death by giving her to the damn military."

"Well, that is how a military usually works, yes," I comment idly, noticing that the girl in question is barely listening to us. I release my hold on her a little and she just uses the freedom to clutch her head in pain. Hmm.

"Well, like I've been saying, I don't want to fight any of you. I don't want to fight aliens either. So if you agree to stop throwing portals around and actually talk to me, I'm sure we can all walk out of this happy." The two men running the operation glance at each other hesitantly before portal guy returns his attention to me.

"…Sure, we can talk," he allows.

"I'm not sure how you expect to convince anyone you aren't a mole, but I'll agree not to use my powers."

"Cool," I say, not really trusting him but letting go and removing most of my eyes anyway, allowing my tentacles to slither back into my body and get replaced with normal human arms. The girl clutching her head audibly sighs with relief, so it's worth it.

"As for why I'm not a mole… I mean, come on, you've seen a fraction of what my powers can do and you know I could be trying way harder than this. What would you have done if I just stole Brad's outfit and face?"

"You literally threatened to do that," Brad whines.

"Right, but I didn't, because I'm not actually trying to capture you," I answer honestly.

"I have a different agenda here. One of my squadmates is nine years old. Nine. You think I'm not mad at the military for what they're doing to her? If y'all are good people, and you prove I can trust you, I won't just let you leave—I'll help you, on the condition that you get her out of here, and preferably either me or one of my friends to take care of her, too." Teleporter guy looks at me like I'm crazy.

"Your argument in your favor is that you could be beating our asses harder, and you want us to convince you that we're legit?"

"Yes," I growl.

"What do you want me to say to you? I can't prove I'm not a spy, that's literally what the military sent me here to do. You know that, it's obvious. Now do I turn you in, or do I help you? That's the question." There's a brief pause before I get an answer, but it's certainly not the answer I expected.

"Someone else is watching us," the girl whispers, her head swiveling around like she's trying to align it by looking in a mirror. Then, she points.

"There." I follow her gaze, glancing up at what would normally be far too tiny of a ventilation shaft to hold a person, yet from the vents I can see the slightest glow. Ah, there she is.

"Green?" I call out.

"That you?"

"Oh, er, hello," Maria's voice rings out from behind the grate.

"Yes, it's me. I take it by the fact that you aren't acting worried about my eavesdropping that we're actually betraying the military right now, rather than just pretending to?" I roll my eyes.

"Yes, Green. I mean, maybe. It really all depends on these guys. Come on out here."

"Do… I have to?" Green asks.

"We never actually bought those doll clothes, you know. I'm afraid I'm rather shy." Right, yeah. Normal people don't walk around naked. …Not to mention there are three men in this room.

"Alright, no worries I guess. Anyway, what's it going to be? You guys seem like you're doing this for ideological reasons, yeah?"

"I mean… yes? Look, I don't know what you want me to say here," teleporter guy sighs.

"I can't prove to you I am what I say I am any more than you can."

"Okay, that's fair," I allow. Hmm… if I can't prove they're good, maybe I can check to see if they're bad.

"Uh… alright, let's go with this: does the name 'Defenders of Nothing' mean anything to you?"

"Wait, you've heard of us!?" Oh god damnit.

"Of course she's heard of us!" heat sou—I mean, matter creation guy says.

"Her mother bankrolls the whole thing!" Oh god damnit. Of course the Morgans fucking… god, you know what, roll with it. Maybe this isn't the worst possible news somehow.

"Wait, you're my mom's people?" I ask, going full Lia brain to better sell it.

"Seriously? Jesus, why didn't you just say so in the first place? I could just call her, you morons." I do, in fact, have her number on my fancy new cell phone. They put our family's contact info in for us, free of charge. It's honestly a little creepy.

"Maybe don't call anyone on the phone the military gave you to collude with criminals," Green interjects, and… okay, fair point actually. But I could just get the number from there! Surely I'm not the only person with a phone!

"I'm sorry, who is talking to us through the vents?" teleporter guy asks.

"And why?"

"Friend of mine. Er, girlfriend, actually," I answer. Wow, that's weird to say.

"Probably not someone I want you to kidnap. I'd trust her to take care of Ana if you did but she cares about duty and stuff."

"Yeah, please don't kidnap me," Green says.

"Also: what?"

"We're not your mom's 'people,' by the way," matter-creation guy interjects.

"Like I said, she just funds things. In return, some of the people we rescue choose to work for her."

"Well, I promise she thinks you're her people, and you might disagree but that doesn't mean you're right," I answer.

"Hey, she might have you whipped but she can't do shit to us. The Defenders of Nothing are out of her league." If she's funding you, she's not out of your league.

"Think what you want, but don't tell her that or you'll end up in tons of unnecessary trouble," I grumble. Jesus, Lia brain is making me bitter. Hate that, turning it off.

"Anyway, I still need to know whether or not you're agreeing to my proposal so we can—" A knock on the door to the room interrupts me. I stop talking halfway out of surprise and halfway out of caution. Who the hell…? I guess I don't actually know where we are, come to think of it. I just fell through a portal. We look like we're in a relatively large maintenance room, probably to manage the aquarium tanks. The walls are covered with pipes and valves and… stuff for dealing with water-based tasks.

I dunno, I have no idea how aquariums work.

"Hey, everything okay in here?" the voice on the outside asks. The very… familiar voice.

"I lost track of Seraphim."

"It's not your job to keep track of Seraphim," teleporter guy calls back after sending a nervous glance in my direction. Oh, I don't like where this is going. I step towards the vent and whisper up at Green.

"Did Afterimage contact you with a message from me?" I ask.

"No?" she answers.

"We just got to the aquarium. Your tracker said you were there but we didn't think we should just barge in if you were infiltrating." Shit. Shit! Oscar found them first and defected in advance. He has to have. He can't be friendly with these people unless he's faking a defection or actually defecting, but if he was fake-defecting, he wouldn't have lied to me about it. The pot was poisoned from the start.

Oscar certainly believes I'm legitimately trying to become a mole, and he would have told them that, so my self-admission won me nothing. They were never going to consider my defection might be legitimate because from their perspective, I'm just using the excuse I already planned to use with the rest of my team. Damn it! No, no, calm down. There's still a way to salvage this.

"Curry, is that you?" I call out.

"Oh, shit," Afterimage swears.

"Time for hostages, I guess."

"What!?" I snap. That is not the way to salvage this!

"No, you insane cunt, don't get hostages! Just listen to me for a—" A clattering sound in the room grabs my attention, and I glance over to see teleporter guy giving me a mocking salute. Wait, is that a flashbang? Oh, motherfu— The deafening burst of light and sound only stuns me for a second, the damage quickly healing back to normal, but it's still enough that the room is empty once I can see again. Fuck! You know what, who gives a shit?

These are part of In-Joke's crazy crew anyway, it would have been a terrible idea to trust them with Anastasia in the first place. I spit out my phone jar, unscrew it, and call the entire group. Seriously, screw defecting to these morons, now I'm pissed.

"No more stealth!" I snap once everyone picks up.

"We're busted, but they're in the aquarium! Potential hostage situation. Teleportation power, matter creation power. Unknown range on both. Two empowered with minimally combat-applicable abilities outside of exceptional reflexes. Teleporter is limited to locations no one is looking. Have Maria and a few others if needed surround and watch the exterior of the building. Also, Afterimage has fucking defected for real!"

I send my domain out in every direction as far as it'll go, looking not for domains (both of these dudes tend to keep them away from themselves, it seems) but for bodies recently suffering the symptoms of having been flashbanged. Bingo. Found them.

"You okay, Green?" I ask, sparing one more second to check on her before I rush off in pursuit.

"Er, yes, I'm fine!" she confirms, forcing the vent open and flying out to meet me.

"That blinded me for a bit, but not long. I guess I'm resistant to that sort of thing?"

"Makes sense, you don't have much biology to damage," I acknowledge, rushing out of the room and towards the nearest staircase. Ugh, staircases again. Awful. All I can really do is hope this teleporting asshole can't just pop everyone from here to a completely different building. Which… he should be able to do, right? He brought Brad and me here from several buildings over. I wonder how that works given how domains work. Powers can only function within domains, full stop. … Almost.

That can't be a completely hard limit, because of powers like Emily's and the fact-checking guy who started the whole 'I am an Angel's power' scare by declaring I was only four days old. They can only draw conclusions about things within their domain, sure, but those conclusions can't possibly be deduced exclusively by using information present within the domain.

My guess is that instead, they're querying the god directly, and Failure, for example, is personally calculating someone's most likely death date with all the information it has available. Which is probably a terrifyingly large amount, being a god and all, but it's not perfect. Then there's powers like the forbidden name and, more relevantly, Cross-Country. A domain doesn't have to be attached to the person controlling it, at least for people other than me.

But these people can place their domains almost arbitrarily. Speaking the forbidden name summons the name's domain onto your location, giving them power over you and your surroundings even though the person themselves could be anywhere. Cross-Country can just put a second copy of his domain (and himself) wherever he wants in a massive range, with limits I am not privy to, if any. These seem like powers explicitly designed to cheat the system…

but Cross-Country's power is gifted by Contradiction, and—I'd bet money on this, though I'm not totally sure—the forbidden name is Blasphemy. Cheating the system is part of their system. Does that sort of nonsense work with Silhouette? Maybe. But assuming it doesn't, he teleports people long distances by stretching his domain out super far, far enough that I can't even feel it like Emily. But if that girl is messing with his power, maybe he can't teleport her without more juice.

Maybe he needs to shorten his range in order to have a dense enough domain to overcome whatever she's making so difficult. Maybe I'm pulling all of this out of my ass because powers are bullshit. I don't know. But I'm not letting these assholes just flashbang me and walk away. They've spread out. Matter-creator is with Brad, probably to keep an eye on him. Teleporter is with the girl, probably because he doesn't have much choice. They're both one floor above me, in different rooms.

I can feel them with my domain, but I have to climb all the way up there, again, because I can't shapeshift through goddamn walls. Wait. … Wait. Why can't I? I stop running, my mind churning with thoughts. I'll never catch them, right? I'm running after a teleporter. That's inherently stupid. They can probably track where I am because the one guy's powers only work where people aren't looking, which means he can sense where people are looking.

I'd have to try and run after someone who can warp space while I'm blind to stand any real chance. That's absurd. I'd have to also teleport to keep up. But I can't do that. Because… I can't move flesh through solid objects?

"… Lia?" Right. Yeah. I can't move flesh through solid objects. Obviously. I could maybe try to ambush them a second time by snaking a line of flesh up through the ventilation system or something, but that'd be tough to do without alerting them a second time. It would also be slow, and given how these people keep trying to stall me, I don't think time is on my side. But I don't have a choice because I can't move flesh through solid objects. I can only move my domain through solid objects. My domain. My domain.

The entirety of which designates the space wherein my powers function.

"J… Seraphim? Hello?"

"One sec," I tell Green.

"Gimmie just a sec." I have always shifted in new flesh attached to old flesh. That's how 'shapeshifting' works, right? I shift my shape. My size. My body twists, it molds, it changes, but it is always the same body. The same continuous mass of flesh. But it isn't. I have an entire separate dimension of flesh, hidden within me. It comes and goes from the world as it pleases. Is it really impossible for me to… to just… summon it? Wherever I want?

I stare intently at the ground, trying to will flesh to appear, to come into existence ex nihilo entirely separate from what my mind has always insisted is 'my' body. As if it were my only one. As if it was all I could be. As if there was no other possibility. And I know in the depths of my being that is wrong. I try and try to force it, but nothing happens. Why? Why? My instincts are screaming at me that this is possible, so why can't I make it work? Why can't I just separate… right. Right, obviously!

I have to get used to it. Baby steps, Julietta. I hold out my arm, shifting the other into a giant blade which I raise to strike.

"W-woah, what!? Wait, what are you doing!?" I bring my weapon down on my arm, focusing on the inside, shifting the inside, twisting and controlling it the entire time it's being severed. And when the blood splashes and the limb drops to the floor, I continue strangling it with my mind and force the fingers to move, the muscles to dance, the blood to clot. My arm twitches, clenches, and dances on its own. Separate from me. It's missing rather a lot of its template. Let's regrow it.

The rest of the arm grows into being. The shoulder, the torso, the heart and lungs and hips and legs. And then, finally, the head, filling itself with a brand new b— aagh! I clutch my heads—or try to, but what really happens is that both of my bodies collapse to the ground and start having a seizure. My domain aches, trying to figure out how to be twice what it was and failing utterly. The pain rises and rises until eventually I have no choice but to consume one of the brains in my two bodies.

My singular living body stands up. My brainless, power-controlled facsimile struggles to do the same. Shapeshifting each and every limb manually for something as complex as a human body is… not feasible, not when I have an entire other body to control like normal. But. But. It doesn't need to be feasible. I don't need to be in two places at once. I just need my body to be over here… and then, suddenly, over there.

I start growing my brain back in the empty body, then start consuming the entirety of my original form, shapeshifting it smaller and smaller and smaller until every last cell has returned to meatspace. And now, still one brain, still one body, I have moved myself from one place to another. This was not my body. This was completely separate from my body. Discarded, removed, rejected. It wasn't me anymore, yet my power is not, and was never, 'shapeshifting myself.'

All this time, I've just been taking advantage of a side effect. But now I'm not quite sure what the intended effect is supposed to be.

"Oh god," Green whispers, covering her mouth in shock.

"Julietta? Are you okay?"

"Don't call me that here," I chide her.

"But yes. I'm okay. Just… figuring a few things out. I'm going to go after them, alright? I think I know how." I close my eyes and focus, choosing a spot in the room with the matter creator and Brad. I wonder where matter-guy's domain is. It's not on his body; I imagine he's using it to scout surrounding areas and know when to turn out the lights. Preparing all the different ways I can get out of this hallway and try to chase.

I can feel people attending the exhibits start to panic, their hearts beating more and more rapidly as Afterimage prepares to checkmate me. But I told him I'd give up if hostages were taken before I knew he was lying to my fucking face. The rules have changed now. I can feel it all. The sweat pouring from his forehead. The mites hiding in the fibers of the carpet. I can feel Brad's panic spike as my domain brushes his, I can feel the power trafficker taking deep breaths to keep his focus.

And all of this, for it is in my domain, is mine. Even the air. And so I grow out of it, twist into being beside the mites, between the carpet fibers, out onto the floor, into the room, around my targets. All the while, I let my body in the floor below dissolve, remove itself so I can retract my domain back into a condensed, defensive spread in my new location. And before anyone can even scream I am around their faces and throats, forcing them into silence.

I squeeze their carotid arteries, watch their brains carefully to return oxygen flow the moment they fall unconscious, and then leave behind the sticky mesh of a body I've trapped them in to simply form a new one elsewhere. Afterimage will be a problem. I can't just grab him and choke him out the same way. But it's fine. I have my ideas. All of a sudden, I have so many ideas.