Chương 5: I'd Fight An Angel For You

Personally, this seems like the absolute stupidest possible time to exit the house, but hey, what do I know? The alien known to hunt in packs wandered out of view two entire seconds ago, so we're probably fine and dandy.

I certainly don't have a better plan, so when Emily drags me out of the front door, I hang onto her hand just like I said I would and keep pace. Miraculously, we aren't attacked as we dash across the street and into the yard of a different house, and we aren't attacked any of the ten other times we carefully rush over open ground in the middle of enemy territory either.

Emily just stops and waits for some invisible cue I can't divine before every move, leaving me in terrified suspense of the point where this strategy will inevitably fail.

But it doesn't. Slowly, carefully, she guides us through the suburban streets, somehow safely leading us between the Raptor patrols that stalk all around us. We hardly ever see them—having line of sight to one wouldn't end well for us, after all—but we can hear them, scrabbling around between houses and gobbling up the minced piles of human flesh that they manage to sniff out. Do they know we're here?

I can't imagine the Queen doesn't know I'm here; the constant threat of being cut to pieces never stops weighing against me, squeezing furiously and whispering its hatred of my wholeness. It presses into Emily, too, my power covering her like a second skin and making me all too aware of every last minute movement of her body. It makes keeping pace with her easier than I ever thought it could be, a preternatural sixth sense constantly telling me when and how to move without ever needing to look at where we're going.

And yes, I'm much more focused on her than I am on where we're going. She told me to let her lead, and it's working out somehow so I'm content with it. But I'm not the sort of person who can just turn my brain off and follow. If I don't have anything to keep my attention on, I find something, whether I want to or not. And Emily is a puzzle worth my attention.

She's lying to me. Withholding secrets from me. But she saved my life and she's saving it again with every movement we make together. I can rule out the fear that she's going to betray me; I'm her only ally in one of the deadliest places on the planet, and I can turn into a giant monster. My utility is obvious, even if she doesn't actually care about me. But I think she does, and that makes me all the more curious about what she's hiding.

Still, she spent so long fooling me about what she really thought, I'm inclined to break down what I thought I knew about her and look at her again, like I'm meeting her for the first time.

She's focused. Very focused. Enough that her mouth hangs open the slightest bit, her lips twitching with the hints of the words she's thinking but not actually speaking. I doubt she even realizes she's doing it. There are a dozen little tells like that, and given the situation there's no reason to believe she's faking it.

Duh she's incredibly focused, we're fleeing for our lives here and any mistake she makes could kill us both.

So what the fuck is she focusing on?

Sounds, maybe? Her eyes aren't moving around enough for her to be picking up on much visual info; she glances around a lot, but never really looks for anything. It's more like she's just… terrified. Yet despite that terror, she's decisive. She doesn't hesitate at all when she finds whatever it is she's using to determine where the best place to move is, but she's still terrified when she does it. She knows she has no better option, but she doesn't know if what she's doing will actually work.

It's as if she's being told what to do by someone else. Someone she has to trust just as blindly as I have to trust her.

"In here," Emily whispers, rushing us up the front porch of a nearby home and trying the front door… which happens to be unlocked.

Yeah, I'm getting more confident about my current theory. It's the first home we've tried to enter this way. Very much not a coincidence. Yet when she shuts the door behind us, she lets out a relieved exhale. I suppose it could just be the fact that her ability to create these improbable coincidences doesn't stop her from being stressed, but I think she doesn't actually know what's about to happen.

She's gotta have powers, or at the very least be in contact with someone who does. Cell phones don't have coverage in incursion zones—I'm not sure why, because the aliens don't seem to be able to mess with our satellites at all—but since powers are almost certainly involved with the puzzle the lack of normal communication doesn't really rule anything out.

"Are we safe to talk?" I whisper.

"For a bit," Emily answers.

"Eat more food."

"What? I've had like, five or six energy bars already," I frown. Food sucks now, I really don't want to eat any more than I need to.

"Do you feel full?" Emily asks.

"Because unless you think it'll cause you to vomit, I really need you to eat more food."

I frown, but she pulls me into the nearby kitchen and we end up raiding the fridge. The power is out, but it hasn't been for long, so the food inside is still good. It's a nice little house, and so far it seems empty of corpses, thankfully. It's the sort of cute little domicile people buy with their sweetheart when they somehow survive until thirty and finally get to leave military service.

I've lived in a couple houses like this before, with white walls, tile floors, and wicker furniture that you're supposed to enjoy looking at more than sitting on. A home that is a prize to be flaunted even more than it is a place to actually live in. It's a very beautiful place, and I hate it.

With luck, the people living here were working out of town when this disaster hit. Without luck, they're a pile of meat cubes upstairs. I don't intend to look, and either way they'll never get this food back, so there's no reason not to take it for ourselves. Emily plucks a few things out and shoves them into my hands seemingly at random. I start with the apple. The texture is better than the energy bars, but it's just so sweet.

I feel like my tongue is going to explode.

It is, overall, very distracting… and I can't rule out the possibility that it's on purpose. I don't want to let her get away with that.

"There's obviously something going on," I press Emily, talking as I chew. It's gross, but I do start to feel a little better as I swallow more food, so Emily is probably right about me needing it.

"If you can't tell me what that something is, can you maybe tell me why you can't tell me what that something is?"

She thinks for a bit. I watch her carefully, and she seems to get more uncomfortable with each second that passes.

"... Maybe I just don't want to talk about it," she blurts suddenly.

"Would you quit scrutinizing me like that? It's… distracting."

"I would accept 'I don't want to talk about it' if we were at home gossiping," I say, "but we're in the middle of a warzone, behind enemy lines, and only managing to sneak around because of something that's obviously a superpower that you won't tell me about."

"I don't have superpowers," Emily insists, the response so automatic that it couldn't be less believable.

"If you don't, then someone else definitely does, and they're helping you," I assert.

"Everything we've done is way too improbable to be a coincidence."

"... I'm not saying it's a coincidence," Emily grumbles.

"Look, I really don't want to talk about this right now, it's not helpful."

"Why the fuck is it not helpful?" I press.

"Knowing what you or your benefactor or whatever's going on here can do could be the difference between life and death, Emily. Knowledge is power, two heads are better than one, etcetera. What are you so afraid of?"

"I don't have powers," Emily insists again, "but if I did, I promise you: there is a lot to be afraid of. Do you know the forbidden name?"

My eyebrows raise. How is that… is that relevant here!?

"... I don't," I admit.

"But I know what you're talking about."

About eight years back, there was a big fuss where governments across the globe suddenly cracked down hard on a bunch of random people and forced them to not only legally change their names, but also never speak their old names out loud again. Presumably, all the people forced to do this originally had the same name, or at least a name that sounded close, but all information about the event is heavily restricted.

You only ever hear about it by word of mouth, but it's not the kind of thing that you can just brush off as a myth; after all, the affected people—and their friends and family—haven't had their memories erased.

They know the forbidden name, and they will assure you: it is very, very real.

"I know the name," she tells me, "and the reason not to speak it. Someone—or something—gained the ability to be present wherever someone speaks their name. Not physically, but… in power. They can see, hear, and affect the world however they like, but they are untouchable. It doesn't matter who says the name or why. It can even be a recording. But when the name is spoken, they are there, and they can do whatever they want without consequences. And… they are not a good person."

Well… okay. Spooky, but it makes sense. I'm pretty sure there's an Angel somewhere that can do something similar with photographs, recordings, and the like. Anywhere there's a picture of them, it can make the picture become real and step into the world to kill people. This is exactly my point, though. Even if they're horrible, our situation is pretty dire, and the capacity to summon a wild card could be handy… if we can get away from them.

Or maybe this is her answer, in a roundabout way. Maybe she has an alliance with this person, and there's some price she has to pay for their help that she doesn't want me to be involved in. It's possible that the mouth movements I noticed earlier were actually her whispering the name under her breath this whole time, giving this unknown person vision and power in an area around us wherever we travel. But if that's true, what does the forbidden name get out of helping us?

They're not in it for altruism, if they're as bad as she says.

Maybe the act of speaking the name itself is enough to help them. If their presence lingers long enough every single time the name is spoken, and Emily has been whispering it this whole time, well, that's a lot of influence over a soon-to-be-hotly-contested front line. Yeah. That would make sense. It's all just wild conjecture, but it's worth asking if I'm right. Hmm… how best to do so indirectly?

"How long does the presence remain after the name is spoken?" I settle on.

Emily seems surprised for a second, but then she puts her hand over her mouth to suppress an involuntary chuckle.

"That's your first question?" she says, her twitching grin poorly hidden.

"God, the way you think sometimes. I have no idea how long it lasts, Julietta. The forbidden name isn't the nonexistent benefactor you're convinced I have, and it's not the power I don't have either. My point is just that there are powers—lots of powers—that you're better off just not knowing the details on. Sure, if things get so bad that we literally could not make our situation worse, I could invoke the forbidden name and maybe they'll deign to kill a few nearby aliens before torturing us to death themselves.

But ultimately, knowing their name isn't some secret lifeline I can tug on, it just means that every time I go to bed I might have a bad dream, say the name in my sleep, and die horribly.

It has happened to people before. Understanding the power is a liability, an anxiety that I'm constantly afraid of slipping up over. Speaking of: I brought us here to find something to tie our hands together with. I am absolutely terrified of losing my grip."

"Sure," I agree, squishing two slices of bread down into a ball with my fist and swallowing them both at once. Emily gives me an odd look, but I keep talking.

"You're not convincing me with the whole 'this is for your own good' routine, though."

"Come on, Lia. Would you just drop it? Please?"

I flinch. I can't help it. The smooth, dark skin of that girl's arm is what's holding Emily's hand right now, not mine. I see it in my peripheral vision, never at the focus because I never want it there. But the reminders are constant.

Every flash of movement from my limbs, every nostalgic glance from her girlfriend, every word out of my mouth, every terrified denial of what my power tells me about my brain, every fucking step I take on these awful, perfect, effortlessly steady legs reminds me that this isn't my body, this isn't me, and I might very well be stuck this way forever.

And yet.

"I'm not Lia," I tell her firmly.

"That's not my name."

"Huh? Oh! Oh, sorry Julietta, I misspoke," Emily reassures me.

"You were just really reminding me of her, I guess."

Oh, fuck you.

Fuck. You.

I bite back the words, but the desire to say them burns on my tongue. She knows I'm struggling with this, she knows how much I fucking hated the girl I look like right now, but I won't snap at her like that. I'll think it, but saying it would be weakness. Foolishness. Impulsiveness. All it would do is escalate the situation, and our situation is already pretty fucking escalated so there's absolutely zero justification to take it further.

I have to be the better woman here, and swallow my anger. It's fine. I'm used to it.

"Just try not to let it happen again," I tell her.

"I'm kind of low-key freaking out over it, y'know?"

You do know. You bitch. But to my surprise, Emily glances away from me with an expression that looks like genuine shame.

"... Yeah," she nods.

"Sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

Oh. Huh. Well… good, I guess. I'm still mad, but that does help me feel better. Still, I'm not above being at least a little vindictive in my counterattack, as long as it's productive.

"Apology accepted," I nod.

"But Emily, you know me. We've lived in the same house for three years. Even if you've been lying to me all that time, even if I don't really know you…

you know me. Right?"

She looks away, shame flashing over her face once again. Yeah, I think that reaction is real. Obviously, I have to second-guess my ability to determine that, but while I say that Emily has been lying to me, I think the actual situation is a lot less sinister. Emily has been hiding a lot of her true feelings from not just me, but from everyone.

She has been adopting a persona and simply not correcting anyone who assumes it's an accurate representation of who she is on the inside. Almost everybody does that, to some extent. I was just fooled into never looking deeper because Emily was always the nice housemate, the easy one, the one who never made trouble for anyone but herself and who even managed not to be particularly disruptive.

And I know exactly what that's fucking like, so I know calling her a liar will hurt regardless of how true it is. Turnabout is fair play, 'sister.' If you want to take a swing at my insecurities to win an argument, you'd best be prepared for me to catch and return the ball.

"... Yeah, I know you," she sighs, unable to meet my stare as she binds our wrists together with twine, tight enough to not allow even the slightest of gaps.

"Of course I know you. You've done nothing but try to help me since we've met, you stupid, selfless altruist. You have things worse than anyone and you still spend all your time keeping us together. I'm… I'm sorry I wasted so much of your time."

Altruist? She doesn't actually know me at all. But that's okay; I don't need her to know the things I hide.

"I wish I had seen what was really going on with you," I admit.

"Of course I never managed to help you. You didn't need the help I was offering. You were suffering from a completely different problem the whole time, and I never saw it."

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"Julietta, I don't—"

"You're still suffering," I cut her off.

"It's obvious. I cannot unsee that truth, no matter how much you might want me to. And you know me. So Emily… can you look me in the eyes and say any words, anything at all, that could get me to stop trying to help you? Can you do that?"

She stops for a moment, then finishes her knot a little more slowly. It's a strong, complicated knot. Fancier than anything I know how to do. She looks up at me, stares at me for a bit, and ultimately sighs.

"... No," she admits.

"I failed at that for three years, and I'm not gonna succeed now."

I nod firmly.

"Damn right you aren't."

She sighs again as she carefully tests the twine tying our wrists together, motioning at the big pile of food she gave me with her other hand.

"Eat, Julietta," she insists.

"And… give me a bit. To form an answer. Okay?"

I nod, glowering regretfully at the pile of food and fearing what the experience of eating them will be like. None of it is weird, none of it is stuff I haven't eaten before, but… y'know, at the same time, all of it is weird stuff I've never eaten before. Peanut butter isn't supposed to have a flavor, it's just supposed to stick my teeth together a little until it dissolves. That's as exciting as food normally gets! Everything's crazy now!

I could make myself a sandwich with it, but I tried the bread by itself and that was already a little overwhelming so I wanna start by just eating all the ingredients individually. I find myself a spoon in the kitchen drawers, unscrew the lid, and scoop up a huge bite because I figure even if I don't like it I'll still need to eat a bunch of it to make Emily happy. I shove it all into my mouth at once, rolling the big nutty blob around on my tongue.

Huh. I… kinda like it.

It's weird and intense, yeah, but I've been slowly adjusting to the constant overstimulation my new body is tossing at me so I do my best to look past that surface-level reaction and really experience the peanut butter. And… yeah. Yeah, I like it. The taste is pretty good, though I have absolutely no reference points with which to describe it. I had no sense of smell, no sense of taste, and my mouth was so fucked up I couldn't even feel texture outside of what kind of feedback I got from chewing.

But this texture is smooth and unobtrusive without being totally watery, a good mix of feedback while still being homogenous enough to not overwhelm me. Is this what the 'creamy' on the jar means? Or maybe the 'butter?'

I know peanut butter doesn't actually have any dairy in it, despite those labels.

Eh, not important right now. I shovel down a few more bites, chugging a bit of water whenever the sticky, tasty stuff clogs up my throat a little. I finish the first jar and ask Emily if she spotted another one, but she just gives me a really concerned look and tells me to eat the other stuff she grabbed for me.

Well… fine then. I eat a couple bananas. They're alright. Maybe with peanut butter… no, I should try the other stuff. The jam Emily grabbed is way too much for me, staggeringly sweet and uncomfortably lumpy. I'm definitely applauding myself for deciding to eat the peanut butter by itself instead of making a sandwich. I don't think I would have liked that at all.

"Hey," Emily says, and I glance her way to see her pulling something out of her pocket to give to me.

"Take this."

"... What is it?" I ask.

"It's Lia's wallet," she says.

I stare at her. She stares back. Without breaking eye contact, I take the wallet and open it, pulling out Lia's credit cards and identification. Then, I put it all back and stuff it in my back pocket.

"Why do you have Lia's wallet?" I ask her slowly. She couldn't have picked this up after Lia died, or the wallet would have been cut to ribbons. She had to have picked Lia's pocket beforehand.

"Because I intend to survive," she says.

"And that doesn't just mean surviving today, or surviving until we get out of here. It means surviving the whole war afterwards. And to do that, I need a combat exemption."

I frown. A combat exemption? How am I supposed to get her a… oh. I'm not.

Lia is. You can buy combat exemptions, after all, if you're rich enough. A big enough donation to the war effort counts as sufficient contribution, and Lia's family is capable of very big contributions.

The only explanation is that she's asking me to impersonate Lia for her. To use Lia's family's resources to get her off the front lines.

That's what she took the wallet for: the moment she realized her golden goose was in danger, she saw the opportunity for a backup and took it. She knows I would hate that, though. She knows I'm suspicious of her. And I asked for an explanation, so I get the impression this is only the start of that.

"It's… very difficult to figure out what I'm supposed to tell you," she says quietly.

"Things could go really badly for me if I fuck up and say too much. You'll be fine either way but I… I might not be. But if I don't tell you enough, you'll just keep snooping, won't you? You'll poke and prod and press and find out on your own and it'll be just as bad. So here's my offer: if we make it through this alive, and we manage to get somewhere safe, and you help me stay out of the hands of the military… I'll tell you anything. Everything. All of it.

But until that point, I need you to be able to look someone in the eyes and tell them 'Emily never claimed to have powers, and I never saw Emily use powers,' and you need to not be lying."

Okay. Okay, hmm. I think I see the angle here. She has powers, but she intends to dodge the draft… and the military will know that if we survived being in the incursion zone for this long, at least one of us has powers, more likely both of us. So somehow, they'll find a way to make sure.

"You want me to pretend to be a woman I hate," I say.

"You want me to lie for you, get myself caught up in the military bullshit you know I have no respect for, and basically devote my life to protecting you from the fate you're saddling me with."

"Yeah," she admits.

"But you'll survive that fate, and I won't."

"You know that, do you?"

"Of course not," she answers.

"I don't have any sort of superpower that could tell me. Will you help me anyway?"

I sigh, biting into a new kind of energy bar. It's softer, which I like a lot better. Crunchy foods just don't seem to sit well with me.

The question itself is a trap.

Will you help me anyway?

More like will you risk my death to call me a liar?

Even if I thought she was lying—which I don't—I think my answer would be the same.

"Of course I will," I tell her.

"I'm mad at you, Emily. But you're the only person I care about left in the world. I'd fight an Angel for you, if it comes to that."

She blushes deep, looking away from me. The reaction confuses me at first, but I guess I did say something a bit intense while in the body of a woman she's almost certainly had sex with. Which… is a thing I'm going to do my utmost to never think about again.

"Well… good," she mumbles.

"Before this is over, you might have to."

I can't help it. I know it's an entirely serious and abjectly terrifying statement, but I still laugh. It's the only thing I have to break the tension.

"Well hey, all the better," I joke.

"The military will happily misplace your draft documents if a wing ripper asks them to. We'll get you on the fast track to a life of luxury."

"Ha. Really? Just like that?" Emily asks.

"Sure. What's more important to the war effort than being able to kill Angels?" I shrug, biting into an entire block of cheese to Emily's obvious discomfort. Huh, this stuff is pretty good.

"Not that," she says.

"You're really just… okay with all this?"

The question stuns me for a moment. Nobody ever really asks me that. I try my best not to ask myself that, honestly. Am I okay with devoting my life to helping my liar sister achieve a level of peace and happiness that I'll never possess? No, not really. But what's the alternative? Bringing her down with me?

I don't think I'll be able to hide a superpower that activates automatically whenever I touch a living thing. The only thing I have to look forward to out of this war zone is being trained before they put me back into another. It's such a fucked-up thought that I start to feel something bubbling up inside me, some hint of indignance or anger that might make me want to shout the unfairness out at the top of my lungs. I crush it mercilessly.

Life isn't fair. Pointing that out never did anyone any good. If Emily can find a better future and I can't, well… so be it. All the more reason I should help her rather than focus on myself. Hell, normally I'm spending all my time helping people I don't even like, so helping Emily isn't that bad. Even if I'm not 'okay' with it, that's the way it is.

"What else am I going to do, Emily?" I ask her.

"I'm not the type to screw somebody over for no reason. If I can help, why shouldn't I?"

It's the right thing to do. No matter how I feel, it's the right thing to do.

"... I really should have come to you sooner, huh?" Emily says sadly.

"Sorry. It's just… it's hard to trust people, you know?"

Not really. Just learn how people work. It's easy to trust someone to be themselves.

"You've gotten us this far," I tell her.

"You'll get us out of here, too. Just tell me what I need to do."

"I mean, I'll try, Julietta. It's honestly kind of terrifying how you aren't scared."

"Well," I smile, "the worst that could happen is we both die. What's there to be afraid of?"

"The death, Julietta!" she exclaims, exasperated.

"That's terrifying! You're terrifying!"

I shrug.

"Then get us out of here alive. If you're confident we can, you're projecting our odds a lot better than I am. So what are we doing next, boss?"

She manages a slight smile.

"You're continuing to stuff your face for another…" she trails off for a moment, thinking.

"... Six or seven minutes. Then, if you're all-in on trusting me, we go west."

"Away from safety," I say flatly.

"Yes," she says.

"Any hint why?"

"No," she says.

"We just have to hope we'll know it when we see it."

"How reassuring," I say flatly, and bite into more food. I've definitely eaten more in one sitting than I think a normal human is supposed to physically be able to, and I feel no urge to stop. At first I assumed it was just Lia's body being able to eat a much healthier amount of food than my fucked-up mess of a meatsack, but after all this I'm betting everything on my appetite being power-based.

Which is… interesting. Biologically, I'm pretty sure I just have Lia's stomach. So why am I so damn hungry? Where is all this food going? I flex my fingers, thinking about the alien biology my mind is suddenly full of. Do I need to eat that much weight to grow that big? I didn't have to initially, but maybe I can chalk that up to having just gained my powers. I could have started with some free food stored away, or something. I don't know. I don't have any idea how superpowers work.

It's all still so overwhelming in my mind, so…

alien.

Like a throbbing, otherworldly presence at the back of my head, constantly obsessing over cell structure, muscular distribution, bone anatomy… my perpetual contact with Emily makes my powers hum with interest, soaking up every detail of every last movement she makes. The more I think about it, the more I try to emulate it, too, having to constantly catch myself shifting my face, lightening my skin, or redistributing my fat to better match Emily's.

Just sticking in Lia's body at all is an act of will for me, an irritation to that weird, curious part of me that just wants to change.

It doesn't help that I hate this body in general, either.

"Alright, it's about time," Emily announces, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"Um… here."

She hands me an unopened jar of peanut butter.

"For, um, our next stop," she mutters awkwardly.

"Since you seemed to like it so much."

Uh. Huh. Well, she's trying.

"Thanks," I say, taking it and putting it in my backpack.

"The cheese was pretty good, too. I can see why you rave about it so much."

"Haha! Yeah, I mean, uh, you sure ate an entire block of cold Havarti, so if you like that I'm sure you'll like a lot of cheeses!"

"Cool," I say.

"You'll have to show me the best ones."

Hmm… I wonder.

"Do you think cheese would taste better if I used your taste buds to eat it?" I ask.

"Um?" she blinks.

"Maybe? I don't… actually know how that works. Uh. Look, we need to get going."

"Right," I nod.

"Sorry, I'll try not to distract you."

"Your ability to focus on random stuff like this while we're surrounded by murderous monster aliens continues to concern me, but let's just table that while I figure out our route."

"Sure," I shrug.

"Yeah, okay.

'Sure,'" Emily says, shaking her head. I let that pass without comment, and soon enough we're by the back door, planning to rush out and jump the fence. I guess she's right, now that she points it out. I'm calm. Weirdly calm. It could just be shock, but if it's shock I've been in shock for over an hour now, and that doesn't sound healthy at all. I guess getting stabbed by aliens isn't healthy either.

…Oh god, I got stabbed by aliens today.

"Okay, now!" Emily announces, and I suppress a yelp and follow along, coordinating with her on the few difficult parts of our route as she leads us further and further away from the helicopters buzzing in the distance, promising humanity, safety, and missile-based anti-alien defenses. But fuck it, whatever. We're going this way instead, and we don't even know why.

A distant shriek rings out in front of us. I thought too soon, I guess; that sounded too human to be anything other than the reason why. Emily and I glance at each other, share a nod, and start sprinting straight towards the sound, stealth be damned. We know the score: any human alive right now either has powers, or is with someone who does. And anybody who happens to have powers might just have the right sort of power to get us out of here.

As we sprint closer, though, an insane sight lights up in the direction of our objective like a beacon. Wood, brick, metal, and stone all fly into the air and suddenly hang there, all sorts of materials spread out in a giant, levitating sphere. That's… probably where we're going. But what the hell is it?

The materials don't seem random. Each one floats equidistant from all of its neighbors, grouped in a pattern that seems like it should be obvious but just doesn't quite make sense to me yet. It's not just raw material, after all: the metal is metal objects, like pipes and wires. The wood is wooden building planks, carefully cut and positioned in obvious groups.

The bricks all have levitating chunks of mortar floating between them, and they're all grouped close to the ground except for a single column that shoots up into the sky like a disassembled… chimney.

Huh. That's a house.

That's an entire house, floating with its parts separated outwards like the first page of an IKEA manual telling you how to put it all together. It's quite literally an exploded view of the home, brought into reality. None of the individual pieces are damaged, but they are separated from each other nonetheless: as we get closer, we can see that each nail, each screw, each wire, and each pipe segment has been pulled apart from their counterparts, presented alone to the open air.

It hangs there in the sky like a still image, frozen and impossible.

And frighteningly—or perhaps fortunately—the occupants of the home aren't immune to this power at all.

A half-dozen Raptors are frozen in the air with the other objects, alive but unable to perform more than the slightest twitching movements. That's definitely our target, then. Someone here can immobilize huge swathes of enemies, but they might need help actually killing the damn things. If we can do that, that's a match made in heaven. But can we do that? How would we kill them if they're high up in the air? I hate to admit it, but my best option is probably to turn into a Wasp…

but the Wasp template my power picked up is from after I stabbed the damn thing. I'd be turning into an already-dying wasp, which is worthless.

Unless… hmm. I've done partial transformations before, by instinct or by accident. I'm still doing them sometimes, my body turning slightly more like Emily's before I push it back to being Lia's. Is there some way to… I don't know, turn into only the parts of the Wasp that work? Or maybe I can use the parts that work to figure out how to fix the parts that don't. Or maybe—

"Hey!" Emily shouts, startling me out of my thoughts as we turn a corner.

"Hey, are you human!?"

We're almost at the exploded-view house now, and up close it's an even wilder sight. More importantly, though, is the figure at the epicenter of it all. Standing in the basement of the now-exploded foundation is a girl that is very obviously human, but I'm not going to quibble with Emily's choice of introduction; it's not a bad way to get across the idea of 'holy shit a survivor! We are also survivors!' and that's the most important thing to say right now, I think.

The girl—or at least I'm pretty sure it's a girl, she's fairly androgynous—is remarkably tall, with long, frizzy brown hair that looks like it had been a horrific mess long before the apocalypse came by to make everyone look even worse. Her thick floor-length skirt and baggy long-sleeved shirt don't really look appropriate for the warm weather, and upon closer inspection they seem to be stained with blood. She's also clearly hyperventilating, and when she looks our way it is with a look of absolute terror.

So. Y'know. Not sure how I feel about first impressions here.

"Get away!" the girl shrieks.

"Get away, get away, get away!"

"We're here to he—" Emily starts, but I yank her back.

"Nope, we're getting away," I insist.

"That's a superpowered woman having a panic attack, we are doing exactly what she says."

That seems to confuse the hell out of Ms. Exploded View, like she never actually expected to be listened to. Mood, random crazy girl. Mood. Emily opens her mouth to protest, but after a short pause she closes it without saying anything. Which… okay, great! I was worried I would be getting in the way of whatever Emily does, but continuing to approach under the circumstances just seemed too impossibly stupid to let happen.

Of course, talking for too long would also be stupid. We saw this power show and it led us directly here. I doubt the aliens are far behind.

"I can s-still feel you!" the girl accuses.

"Get away! Please, get away! I'll hurt you, I'll—"

"You can't hurt us!" I call out.

"I've got powers! I'm very sturdy! But we need to clear out these Raptors and get out of here! Unless you can hold them in place long enough for us to escape?"

She's freaking out, and I'm risking a bit by throwing all that on her at once. She's going to be easily overwhelmed. But she's still talking and paying attention to us, so I'm gambling on her being able to focus as long as I direct her attention with easy questions like 'can you do this?'

"N-no, I can't! I can't!"

Well damn. I guess it was a longshot anyway.

"Then I'm going to kill them while you hold them still," I tell her.

"May we approach?"

"I…"

"Please," I insist, not giving her the time to spiral into a bad decision.

"May we approach?"

"O-okay."

"Alright. Don't be scared if I suddenly shapeshift into a monster, okay?"

"Um!?"

I still haven't thought of a good way to grow myself an acid cannon, so I need to get close and start with the raptors floating near the ground. As I approach, however, the omnipresent feeling of the Queen trying to slice me to bits suddenly shifts. There's a different feeling this close to the girl, one that still seems obsessed with taking things apart but in a… different way, somehow. A much more particular and orderly way.

It's a surreal feeling, like someone took a picture of a work of art and put a filter on it that completely changed the context of the piece. It distracts me so much that I forget to prepare myself for the inevitable rush of information that comes with touching a Raptor.

But I do touch one. Before even forming my weapon, something in me hungers for that contact, and I'm completely caught off-guard when the overwhelming information from my power sweeps me away.