As the twisted creature slammed home, its body twisting unnaturally, a lack of bone, muscle or sinew popping, revealing that its face was a façade, an empty building lacking a human mind, body or soul.
My armoured skin shifted, and my form wanted to speak to the thing. Incapable of that, I edged closer to my ally. Turning to give them a look-see and found myself somewhat astounded.
Their figure drew me in, turning to them as I hunched over; they were slimmer than me, their skin more supple, like a black flexing rubber formed of filament so thin as to be invisible. Their form also had extensions, clothing-like flaps gliding around them, fluttering off their sides like a robe, a pink-white concealing a few sheaths similar to my holsters. Their head looked like it had been encased in the cloth, though it tended out like a helm, their face plated with a pink crystalline slit down the center. Their feet only had two toes, though they retained a human shape, at least in profile.
Down the middle, it parted into what I could only describe as tubes, a rolling texture with a few larger ones leading from groin to chest, where their form expanded forward and out. The texturing was warm, visibly radiating heat, and around it was a kind of envelope like an eye, where the skin's defensive layer could be closed. In their chest, unveiled and at the center of a ring of ripples, lay a shining pink star, not a core, but a kind of halo housed in an integrated artifact.
It shone, positively humming with energy, though of a mundane sort. Their hand and knuckles were visibly fused with rings on either hand, each one overgrown so that they appeared like brass knuckles, a unified slit similar to their face plate to focus each ring.
They were… Monstrous. The kind of thing that could be haunting. It was also kind of hot. It was exotic, and in the same way, that made the green carapace of my insectile preference so attractive. Something innately affective about its inhumanity spoke to me.
I stared, keening at it, and they stared back, heads turning in confusion as the hostile monster hammered home, its total weight more than it should weigh.
I mimed after them, head tilting and swivelling around enough to catch the thing in my periphery.
Confused by my action, they tapped their head and made a finger flex near their air intake.
Very good. I mimed back. Very good, reciprocate more attention.
I could feel my finger vibrate slightly, the ring on my hand fused into my knuckle. I stared at it as it glinted orange. I pressed in closer to the figure, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off their ridges.
My mind was turned from my companion's radiant form when the enemy's form straightened as if guided by strings.
I let out a hiss while the voice in my head said, “Great, good, um… Don’t attack it yet. Shit, how do I get you to pick up on Pinky. Can you even understand me?”
No. Bad voice. Stop being loud.
My heart rate spiked again, and my blood heated as my chest rose and fell, taking deeper, faster breaths. I reached out and found a weapon, a rock.
It was a perfect weapon, simple.
I could feel my legs, muscles and tendons curling like a snake, ready to plunge forth and do terrible battle; artificially heightened bestiality lined up against the demonic foe. Two-on-one would be in our favour.
My body quivered in anticipation of it, coming alive as the instinct to flee was discarded for the far more thrilling answer. Violence wasn’t an answer; it was a question, and the answer was yes. The fact was that peace was never an option, and now that there was an attractive person to show off to, how could I refuse a challenge?
The thing stood upright before sighing. “Good, the two of you are back. That makes this far easier.”
I didn’t listen, and I didn’t particularly like it, either. It had an ominous aspect, my hindbrain told me; a fell omen in tone alone.
There was also the fact that it had left itself open to attack.
I struck forward, hurling myself forward. With my rock in hand, I aimed to smash the stone down through its form, seeking to split the creature and shatter its core. I had done it before, after all, twice.
I flew, slamming rock first into his head, the edge piercing down through the thin skin. The human façade shattered like an eggshell before driving it down, parting the insectile filling to reach the yolk of its core.
Its head shattered in; then it split as my hand drove down into it with enough force to punch through sheet metal. I carved through the thing, my wrist disappearing into it as I reached its collarbone, my forearm at its rib, my elbow at its sternum. I sunk in, the simple kinetics of it on my side as I closed in on the kill.
And its arm reached out and grabbed me by the neck before lifting me up, arm tearing as it stretched, pulling me out of it as its body gaped open, too wide and too deep when compared to its physical shell.
The force was transferred from my arm to my neck. The armour compressed, flaking off as it cracked like fine china; my subdermal bone screeched as it took the energy and compressed, threatening to splinter. The remainder of the force passed like a wave through me, straining the resistive fat and sending the remainder down as my body shuddered to a halt, neck pulling.
As it pulled me out, my arm came with me, the white of it coated in half-pulped nightmare ich; its body, the broken mask, began to flex back together before sealing itself like a zipper.
“Suppose I tried to bite off more than I could chew with you. I shall go one at a time, but do take that gift with you.” He said, letting me thrash slightly before he wound up and hurled me back and away, splitting me from my attractive ally.
I hurled back before I impacted a half-shattered wall, metal shrieking behind me as it met my armour. It sheared slightly as my force caught up to me before I slammed home metal forced part way through my armoured skin. The impact knocked my breath from me in a scree that made my body cry out in alarm in the same way it would with any other motion it was not supposed to.
My head rocked back, the wall deforming around my head. I watched on, and it gave itself a little shake before it walked toward the Pinky one.
The pink one was looking at me, flailing slightly; the voice of my mind shouted, “God damn it. Are you fucking feral? Pull you’re shit together, Jacalyn.”
I was half consumed by the sight of the Pink One as they realized they were being hunted again and half by the all-consuming feedback my body was reporting. I whined as I processed the figure's pulse with alien power as it simply moved. It was as if I was staring at a piece of film that was repeatedly exposed, the resulting shape an elongated shape as it crossed twenty feet.
The Pink one Lit up, light flaring bright in its chest, but it moved too quickly to avoid the whole thing as the thing opened, splitting down the middle and spraying ichor as the face slit and knuckles lit like a star.
They traded blows, the thing seeming to engulf the friendly before it blazed. The demon jerked and let out a vibration that could only be felt through the ground, through the plates, picking up something so low in pitch it wasn’t an audible sound.
The two pulled back, the pink one's front ridging visibly brightened. Their skin smoked as black ooze carbonized, a tooth-like form stuck in their outer weave. The flaps of cloth wept small trickles of pink pigment from fine cuts before they were cauterized.
Their fingers on one hand were pointing in the wrong direction, while the flinched thing spit up a body-sized black scab before it started to zip itself back up.
I stared on as I was wracked with instability. I could manipulate my whole form, each muscle, ligament, tendon, and fibre of fasciae. I was my body, and my body was a constant storm of signals. Each nerve ended firing up to two hundred times a second, hundreds of thousands of signals, each drowning me in a cycle of fire, return fire, fire, return fire, process, return.
There was no room for thinking, no room for anything but pure action, animal reaction, my body flailing as it tried to throw off the thing that had me in its grip.
My only saving grace was that I was more than just a body. I was my soul, and my soul had an additional new urge on the block.
This was a contest. I could not flee so long as my frisky friend was here. I wanted them, and so I simply couldn’t back off. The only option was forward.
My animus screamed, a wave of signals so loud the storm stopped. My entire being entered the eye of the storm, a brief recognition, before the signal returned, rallying my body. Glands secreted, tissue moved like one being, and I pulled myself from the tangled metal, armour ablating as it should.
Because here was the thing about ceramic armours. They shattered; they were sacrificial; it was how they worked. And my skin wasn’t quite the same, but it was close enough; it had only two differences. It was flexible… And it was alive.
Revealed subdermal skin itched as the air and light hit it before growing back out. My body’s healing not only mended my minor wounds but quickened my living armoured skin recovery, with fibre growing in like some kind of fleece. And that was before the cocktail of hormones slammed my body like a bolt of lightning.
My world became a hammer of my heart, my vision narrowing, my core dumping energy, and my body using so much air that even enhanced lungs couldn’t supply enough.
Flailing, I reached around and grabbed one of the warped metal bars, a light structural beam of some kind, and pulled it clear of the wall, hefting it like a boy would a cool stick, only it was held quickly to a segment of the wall.
The wall came, too.
Hurtling forward, barreling across the ground, body unfeeling and uncaring beneath the all-consuming weight of wrath and urge and bestial need. Fueled by pure fucking ego and struck aflame by emotion, I crossed the ground to the mending thing as it stared down my provocative protector and struck full force like a boat colliding in a suicide dive.
The wall exploded, the metal warped out of shape so far it became impossible to wield, while the rebounding force fractured fingers, segments of my arm, and the shoulder and ribs it connected two.
But that would have been expected if I had the right mind. Some of the kinetic energy would reflect back when you struck; it was just that more of it was transferred to the target.
The smash made half the thing explode. It was there for one moment, then gone, as skin was reduced to carbon under the strike before it continued into the swarm, smashing it into a mound of black, then black and red bug paste.
My arm, unable to so much as flex properly, released the metal rebar or cooling pipe or god only knew what the fuck it had been, clattering to the ground as warped metal.
The thing, for it, no longer had a head. Nonetheless, a face and mouth. Its alien truth was revealed as its insides lay open for all to see. It was too big in a way that was quantifiable. Red throbbing vein-like lines of snaking worms pulsed, delivering god-knew-what maddening alien magic to the host of insects. It was all chitin, centipedes and, ants and beetles, each unlike any other insect.
They shifted in their place like a wall of living carpet, the red tendrils pulsing with red light. The blood of red that was not red and black that was not black reeked of impossibility. Black, a colour of death, of necrotic tissue, and depth, and all things bad and vile, and red, the colour of blood, the colour of vital things. And the red reeked of corrupted life, of boundlessness, and of things that needed.
Hungry things.
Growing things.
Multiplying things.
And throbbing below, in the core of this thing, closer than ever and further away than should be possible was its core.
So much of it had been carved away that it could fill a building, but it quickly began to die. The stuff is coming apart at its seams, volatilizing into ooze, the colour floating in it like oil in water before it boils off into nothingness.
There was a noise from the precious pink thing, the voice of my mind echoing, “Holy shit.”
The world stood still for a moment, holding a pause for a blissful moment, before they moved, dragging my attention back and forth. My gaze snapped first to my pink friend as their body swelled, the larger tubes bulging in a wave from top to bottom, before spitting out biological coolant coyly and maneuvering to hit their weak point.
It also moved, and it moved quickly. It did not take that attack lightly. As the tables turned, so did it.
The remaining shell, with a bit of neck split down to just past the middle of its pelvis, spun on one leg, letting its human half fall on top to hide its nature, like some manner of crab or snail. And then, the teeming side skid it along the ground.
Seeing it move drew my attention back to it, and I stepped, only for my legs to fail me. Too much force through the legs, though unfelt, had torn them. They would heal, even heal quickly, but they were damaged beyond motion.
Catching me, the lovely pink form caught me.
Staring up at it, I keened. It was embarrassing, but hiding the weakness would result in a weaker pairing; a weakened group was a weak group.
The pink one gave me a light pat of affirmation before reaching into its coat, finding a soft spot, and jabbing me. It set a spur of fear, of betrayal over my weakness, and then of relief as everything began to mend.
In only a few moments, the disabling muscle tares had healed enough for me to move my legs, and I pulled myself back up.
The great saviour gave me a second head pat, an encouraging noise, and then took a non-shattered hand in a twirl and unceremoniously yanked me after them. I followed along, speeding up as we began to chase after the fleeing daemon. My body healed more than it broke until my leg was fixed, articulation restored in full.
They moved skillfully, one of many obvious signs that told me I should be following their lead in a fight and not the other way around. They were skilled in the chase, too, in the way they moved. They were quiet and careful, though slightly clueless in the aspect of our hunt. They didn’t have the same senses I seemed to, or they ignored them.
I didn’t ignore them; they were very stimulating.
I slunk just ahead of her, following the vibrations underfoot and the smell that lingered in the air, though the reek of the shattered mass behind us lingered.
It hadn’t taken long for us to begin our chase, and it wasn’t fast enough, wounded as it was, to escape us. We stalked after it; its hasty and meandering path confusingly wandered, the foe unsure of where it could go.
It was lost. The beast, the deamon, was not of this place or plane. It was from the deep, from a place where everything was unnatural and where it could bend the rules as it desired. It was on our turf now, and it was lost.
Mundanity was a deamon greatest weakness. Irregularity was its domain.
Wounded prey, ready to be torn apart, unaware of just how bad it was.
Coming up close enough that we would be in the line of sight, I stalked up to the corner, face barely poking out from the wall.
The bug scuttled. Its fake human carapace was beginning to regrow, oh, very slowly. It seemed to be catching its breath. I wanted nothing more than to pin it to the ground and tear it to pieces.
Instead, I turned back to the Pink one, waiting on her supreme skill and wisdom.
She stared back at me, confused.
We stared at each other, the voice in my head groaning, “And now she’s given the brain cell back. Now, let's see how she fumbles it.”
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I waited for a few more beats of my heart before reaching out and patting the helm's circular top as they had done to me.
Pat pat pat pat pat pat pat pat pat…
The pink one poked me, and I poked back before looking to the corner.
“Dear god, they’ve reverted to chimps. I’m stuck with the chimps.” My head voice said; her words still meant nothing to me.
The poker stopped poking me, leaning out before slinking out toward the form of the retreating creature.
I followed her, striding lankily down the clearing despite the length of our legs, gaining quietly as it shambled its way around a corner. We watched it go, speeding up slightly to get the jump on the evil.
I could feel the thrill snake down my spine in a shiver. My eyes drifted to my companion. I closed in next to them, moving with them, close enough that our skins clinked.
They poked me, and I took the hint and gave them enough space to do things like move. I was very good, very smart. More signals thrummed in me, telling me I was doing good and being very smart. Good. I was very good.
I followed along with a kind of thrill as we sped down the clear strip, turned down another, and came face first with two things.
One, the figure was no longer scuttling away but had stopped, turned itself around and gotten up, wriggling side-faced toward us. It loomed, like a maw, extended open in the two big ways of a snake.
The red shimmer of the snaking veins seemed to pulse, and that was where the second issue came. The radiance pulse radiated as the form made a noise, an unnatural, superordinary one. It was not carried upon the air but instead resonated upon the light as it spread past us, its crimson glow bringing a feeling, a need, to come alive.
Everything around us seemed to, for only a moment, brick and steel and concrete wriggling for a moment before returning to in-animacy; our skin and meat itched, but it was already alive. A fundamental part of us, and it too calmed. What didn’t calm me was the black ichor stuck to my arm.
The muck quivered with the wave, before it came alive, writhed and shriveled into a shape like a barnacle. Then, with all haste, it released a puff of gas and secreted a caustic goo.
It did not hurt, but I could feel it writhe with meaning, could feel the vibrations from my skin, the pop-sizzle of acid on metal and smashed it reflexively on a wall while hissing in alarm and warning.
The pink one and I backed up together as it began to dash toward us in a counter-ambush. Bad chemicals told me I was a dumb idiot, ruining my mood. The wandering had been intentional, the hunted intentionally letting itself be hunted so that the hunter would give chase.
The shape loomed as it moved, rearing high enough to push its body above the rooftops as if it was simply peeking over a fence on its tiptoes, the flesh seemingly uncaring of the artificial gravity.
Its speed was lacking, though barely, but its size made up for it. After all, it just needed to be close enough to fall on top of us.
And so, we ran, hurling ourselves down the street while it shambled after us, us barely pulling ahead, only for it to grow more limbs to move faster and keep up, which cyclically increased as we ran down the straightaway passed the warehouses.
All the while, my arm ached as the barnacle continued to eat away at the skin.
Taking my eye off the creature and the barnacle, I turned to spot a warehouse ahead of us.
I made to turn down a side street, but the Pink one grabbed my hand, more aware of her surroundings, and kept me going forward straight toward the wall.
I was not dumb. Even I knew running straight into a wall would hurt really bad, but while I tried to pull my hand from hers or get us to turn, she held firm.
We closed the wall in front and the wall behind until the pink one jumped, the force carrying her up to land on the roof with grace, the street deforming underfoot.
I was dragged up with them, dangling like a banner in the wind.
They landed and continued to run, and I managed to find my feet halfway across the roof while they turned and fired off a series of beams at the enemy before continuing, the twin of our footsteps denting the roof beneath us.
We ran across before dropping down, my compatriot firing back several shots, the glow of their star dimming with the sequential shots. We landed, they rolled, and I smashed down.
Smashed down and broke the weakened armor plate along my arm. The barnacle, sensing the weakness, plunged into my skin, burrowing through like a worm.
Slamming my hand against the ground in retribution, I was bulled up with a huff of annoyance, the pink one grappling and dragging me forward as I hissed at my own baleful arm.
“Huh,” the voice in my head, “Something has the gall to try and infect your body? Using neurons? Hyphae? Whatever… Primitive. Analyzed. Aaaand Counter agent made… And deployed.”
I didn’t understand its invasive noise, nor why it coincided with my achy arm that started to tingle, but it made me annoyed at the repetitive noise, a buzzing fly.
I whacked my arm. Perhaps that was where the voice was coming from.
Stupid arm.
As we retreated down the path, there was a great ruckus from behind as the thing hauled itself halfway through, halfway atop the building, slipping over the roof as we distanced ourselves from the creature.
It was a hair-raising thing… and for someone whose hair was their clothes, that was an awfully strange proposal.
Worse, as we kept going, it started to speed up, growing more and more blunt tendrils, pseudopods built for locomotion. Some even transformed into bug legs, long springy ones that let it kick off and begin to cover the distance in a sprint from the pit.
The pit of hell that was.
The only pit in sight was the one we were in, falling down and down and down as it gained.
Pink snapped off two shots as we continued forward, star dimming; I sucked in air, maxing out the lungs and heartbeats, falling from efficient running, pushing harder, and giving up longevity for survival.
Scrabbling, my eye glanced about for weapons, seeking a second stick, some broken implement to bash the thing, but the only source of weapons was in the pink one-coat and under the swollen body of the scuttling beast.
I was fangless, unable to aid the pink ones less than lethal attacks, and we were running out of time, distance, and runway.
Ahead of us, a mirage wall crossed the path ahead, its existence not reaching me through eye, or ear, but through the same extrasensory feedback of the demonic light.
The Pink one, unaware or uncaring, dragging us straight toward it.
Kicking my feet into the ground, I spun my head around, seeking a side route, but I did not have one. There were walls I could charge through, but if I could, so could the deamon.
The pink one seemed to be running at the wall, and if the pink one wanted to run face-first into the invisible plane, I would, too.
Unaware of our dastardly plan to run straight forward into an invisible wall with every fibre of our being, the hunter followed us, picking up its pace and closing within spitting distance of the tendrils as they slammed to the ground, kicking off small spits and bits of pavement.
We closed in on the wall, indelible and invisible. I dumped energy into my limbs, pending craters beneath my feet that damaged the earth down to the hard plate beneath.
I picked up speed, pulling up beside the Pink one.
I ran the calculation and realized that I would make it. I was moving fast enough to make it.
The Pink one wouldn’t.
Realizing this, a strange focus overcame me, my focus narrowing much like it had when in a rage.
How to protect the Pink one?
Should I protect the Pink one?
If it had to be me or the Pink one, which would it be?
First, what would come of me leaving the Pink one? What was the probability they escaped?
They had done so before, cauterizing the creature. An improvement was that it was more exposed. While it was healing, the wound was still very present; it could be wounded or even killed more easily.
But the light in the Pink one's chest was fading, their star falling. Could they do it again? Their shots were shorter, their light dimmer than they had been.
They were losing distance between the thing and the Pink one. I didn’t have a lot of time to decide… But then again, I didn’t need to think about it to choose.
As it came close enough to reach out a skittering appendage toward the greater threat, I took a step and shoved them out of reach and into a wall. They spun around to face me as they slammed into a wall and then they were gone, disappearing beside and behind it as it stopped moving, and we the dying fools kept going forward.
Its arm slapped out and missed the Pink one. It screeched in fury as it missed its target, and instead of hitting them, it hit me. Slapping into me, its skittering mass gripped onto me, pushing me further forward and to the side in a spin as we both flew through the wall and the colourful strip along the ground.
The wall was not physical. Beyond it, we hurled weightlessly, the power placed into running along with the jostling of the slap lifting us up and off the ground. We flew onward and upward, tumbling up into the relative dark.
Our lack of hold on one another, led to a natural distance forming, sending us apart, or momentum spinning is about.
We reached above the rooftops, and the skyline fell away below us.
As I twirled, unable to move despite my flailing, I spotted the Pink one beneath us, staring up at the great big blob and me, faded star in their chests giving a little twinkle.
Both of our forms were faced toward her, though I spun more quickly; the red twinkle near me cast its radiance toward the ground. Another source besides one of our three caught us as we drifted, a harsh light catching us from the side, gliding over us before focusing on us, following us with its circular beam.
As I turned, I saw it come from a distant craggy shape, lit from the side by the light of the city. I stared at the very strange limelight, other smaller lights turning to face us, red circular shapes brightening.
The red light from behind me was starting to turn from the ground to me as we started to reach the zenith, and we began to coast.
Why hadn’t the Pink one fired yet? Were they unable to do so?
As I turned, I spotted them. They looked back and forth, hesitating, a blade in one hand, the other lit. What were they doing? What were they doing? Kill it! Its siting there waiting for you to finish the hunt!
Their hand stopped glowing, the blade flying out toward me before slapping up against me and dragging me back. For a moment, I jerked as I felt it slam into me, thinking I had been stabbed, but instead of thinking into me, it swerved into me and stuck true before yanking me with it.
I careened around, dragged back toward the ground and through the wall as the swirling, wiggling shape of the prey wound through the air above, lit by the limelight.
Spun around, I was caught by my cozy compatriot; I was caught and cupped from behind in a strange, aggressive cuddle that had me curling up as I got held, watching the form of the red spin out of sight.
Then, the light that lit the sky changed its hue, and a thunderous scream split the sky. A wall of light slammed home on the target with a great crash. There was a great quake from a distance, a thump, thump, thump, followed by a zipping screech of hot air and a concussion as the light discharged its colossal power into the target in a continuous thump-skreesshh-thoom every fraction of a second. The shape was fired upon for a few moments before the fire stopped, and the light followed the shape as it flew up and away, and the fire continued.
I could feel my skin radiating the heat more than I could feel it, but the concussive force was there, even if it didn’t do what it should have done. It split parts off, but the light refocused, splitting its shots.
Panic overcame me; a great thing had found where we were, and it could come for us next.
I tried to turn, but I was taken by the cloth and stood up, guided by the smaller one. I was dragged by the hair, though not aggressively. There was little in the way of pain, but it was quite awkward to put up with.
They dragged me off and away, tucking us safely in a dark alleyway as the gun kept firing, the sky going bright as the limelight tracked the shape through the air.
Pinning me down with their smaller form, they pressed our chests together as if they were trying to hide me.
This was confusing, very confusing. We had been in a fight, and now we weren’t. So why were they acting so strange?
My signals were conflicted. There was no reason for acting in this way. Judging based on their actions, they were trying to impress some form of dominance. This made no sense, however, because they were very obviously weaker than me.
Or were they worried about a pecking order change while they were in their weakened state?
This would make sense, but such was a move that required a great deal of desperation.
This was placed to the side.
Another would be protection, but this also made no sense. They were very obviously in an aggressive state, even if they were trying to keep me hidden. They had dragged me away from the spot of the great lights hunt, the poacher coming in and picking off the predator.
Presumably, we were beneath its notice, but perhaps the pink one was strangely tuned in on something.
This made less sense than desperate dominance.
We weren’t fleeing, we weren’t feeding…
Was this a dominance of a different persuasion?
They were presenting… Their warmth pressing into me, though the plate prevented such, that wasn’t necessary for a play of dominance, however. It could also be play fighting, a simple way to blow off steam…
I pressed back to see if they would let us reposition. If it was a play fight, they would do that. They pressed into me, trying to cover as much as possible, their heat warming my core.
The options narrowed down; I decided that I wasn’t going to let them do it.
Humming a hiss on intent, I leveraged my greater strength and weight and reversed the pin, laying them on the floor.
Laying upon them, I started to feel them out.
I pressed, felt them out, and warmed our bodies for a few moments.
While they pushed back, they were either testing me out or simply repositioning along the rock.
As I got ready to see if they would be receptive, the voice in my head spoke up again, and I hissed in annoyance.
Why was it back? Was it trying to stop me? It couldn’t join in, so it couldn’t stop me. Why did it put its head in?
“Ok, this is obviously not working. If her skin is the issue, I can stop her from being reflective. Welcome back to the world, Jacalyn.”
And then I lit the alleyway.
My transformation reversed, bone-eating itself, my body reabsorbing the material, my armor turned liquid before the cells extruding it reversed, pulling in the crystal before it changed its configuration and skin returned to my earthen tan. Fat cells were constricted, organs were shifted, lungs were folded, chest shrunk, and exterior structures that couldn’t be as easily re-absorbed were discarded. My hair shrunk, returning to strands before it moved, liquid and alive.
I shone as my body expended energy, fueling a transmutation from walking war crime to human homunculus.
And with the change came a return to social understanding.
My mind ran back to my actions, my thoughts, my everything, saved perfectly in its own soul shard, letting me relive it. My actions overwrote, from animal concepts and images to words, but all the while, a terrible wrongness played along with the thrill of it.
I had lost myself.
I lost total control of my body to its typhoon of signals and hormones.
Every nerve ending, every process. I was made aware of how my muscles felt and how my lungs had moved, and I lost myself to the beating of my heart. Manual breathing was one thing, but a manual heartbeat? Manual muscle contractions? Manual nerve signals?
I had fallen into processes controlled by autonomic parts of the brain.
The control it had offered was a thrill, and yet the loss of myself, the regression, the death of personhood, even temporarily, was horrifying. Lilly's suggestion and the idea of self-anchoring made far more sense when you took into account that you could lose yourself to the transformation.
The eyes were the windows of the soul, but I knew I couldn’t look myself in the mirror the same way again. What kind of darkness lay behind my eyes?
There were even deeper things; I knew they lay there between the cracks. Things that it had known on instinct that I was incapable of putting a finger on. They hadn’t come up, hadn’t been saved to memory. Invisible shadows inside my mind that even the shadows shied from.
Things that were left behind because of culture, because of society.
I had thought I had been unsocial in my normal life, but I had been a genius compared to that.
It hadn’t understood words. It had barely been able to pick up on the very basics, and it had ignored its memory. It practically failed to recognize patterns.
Returned to myself, my actions reflected in my mind as I deciphered and overwrote it. I felt like a newborn pulling free from an afterbirth prison of ignorance of how I ran on an animal-deep level.
And while I had the terrifying revelation, I sat on top of a transformed Pinky, who was far more cognizant but still obviously changed, and not just physically. Her… His… Their eyes and mannerisms were wrong. More like an animal than a person.
It was, uncomfortable and embarrassed, but I pulled back for my own sanity and my ongoing ban on laying with Pinky my self into a ball and that helped. Curling up, I pulled myself off Pinky, the bag that was somehow miraculously still around me, holding my clothes and so much more, pulling me onto it.
We were there for a half dozen moments before Pinky poked me, hard skin giving a kind of strange feeling of comfort, like I was being poked by a great big wall. Their skin cool to the touch.
It helped keep me here and now and not trapped in the unending labyrinth of my own mind that I had just uncovered.
I pet her in turn, reaching out with my free arm up to her head. “You’re as good a girl as there ever was, Pinky. Keep on being you, you silly little goober,” I told her.
As embarrassing as it was to be naked in a ball next to Pinky, it was better than she was, at least here.
“Lilly? What… Why was I getting pinned down?” I asked the first and most immediate question. Lilly couldn’t help me by staying down and flinching, but she could tell me that.
“You remember when I was freaked out about your lack of radar?” She asked, “Well, the army has it, and you were reflecting it so much you would be as easy to find as a bonfire in an open plain at night with a megaphone shouting, ‘shoot here.’”
“How-” I started, only to realize she wasn’t fully done because, of course, she knew me well enough to know I would ask it.
“The talent that makes your normal skin so white is an artificial pigment that reflects light; it was also used to make a layer of armour. Presumably, it's to protect against radiation in space, but it works very well at making you a massive target. That being said… You should probably get out of here. They can’t level their anti-air defenses against you, but they sure as heck can send soldiers over to pick what little brain you have off a wall.”
That would certainly explain how they started shooting so fast. They knew where I was. They just didn’t know what I was. It also brought the light of God's wrath into a frame of reference. I didn’t understand Lilly's radar talk or light bouncing from my skin, but whatever the deal was, she was at least talking straightforwardly enough to give an idea of what I needed to do.
“Shit. Come on, Pinky, we need to-” I stopped, temporarily cut off from talking by the thumping of the gun firing, the discharge of the battery so bright that even a darkened alley lightened. “Need to get out of here.” I told her, “So go on and change back.”
She looked at me, straight at me, with her helmet-like head and hidden eyes.
“She has no energy,” Lilly filled in for me, “She’s in a tough spot. She ran out, dragging you out of the air before you got cooked. Good job on that, by the way, losing control.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said protectively.
“I know. Too much, all at once. It doesn’t help that it's harder to resist what's closer at hand. You’re always satisfying your ego, so impulsive decisions aren’t exactly a distant topic. Honestly, I’m more surprised you didn’t jump straight to where that was going.” She told me, which got me to wincing.
“Yeah… That would be an issue. Stupid urges.” I muttered.
I could see where it was coming from, where I was coming from, I guessed.
Maybe it wasn’t just the bug part of an inhuman bug; perhaps I just got my rocks off on big, inhuman people.
That could certainly be a risk going forward, but I would have to figure that out later.
Taking the good, the thrill, I placed it aside to better focus and pulled my clothes out. Eying down Pinky before turning their head from looking at me, which they did, but haltingly.
I decided not to think about that. Nor about how she hadn’t seemed to be resistant to the idea of…
Best not to think on it. Treat it like we were drunk. It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t put our foot forward before we decided to dance.
Pulling on my clothes quickly, I breathed a sigh of relief.
We needed to get out of Dodge and return to the bar so I could reunite with my gear, but the number one thing we needed was to get out of dodge and get out now while the getting out was good.
Honestly I was surprised that there wasn’t a guard or two nearby.
I didn’t fancy a fight with an army.
“Come on, Pinky, let's get the hell out of here,” I told her, only for her to shake her head and for me to frown. “What’s it now?” I asked her.
She scooped me up, holding me to her chest despite a bellow, and hoped up to a roof before booking it across roofs. Her jostling forced me to hold on tight, and the unfortunate warmth and shape of the exposed chest excited me in a way I didn’t like for entirely the wrong reasons.
Pressed into her the same way I was before, I squirmed as she ran across the roof.
I didn’t like this. I also wasn’t strong enough to push back against Pinky’s muscles like this, so I was bundled along the rooftops like luggage away and toward a short tower.
Bundling me up and away, Pinky sprinted, hoped, and somehow carried her momentum up the wall. She quickly grabbed the railing and pulled us into its shadow, concealing us with her dark coating and wrapping me in her flapping hair clothes.
There was still a wet pink spot that stuck there like syrup.
But there we remained, the AA guns thump, thump, thumping into the black figure, its form shredding and shredding as the red glow intensified, its shell of ichor pounded away until it was a glimmering gem of bright red, where the gun finally missed, slipping back into the dark of the city’s streets somewhere between the redlight district, where we were, and a dark furrow of town.
It could be that it was broken, its body and being gone. It could be gone forever, silenced in the unending barrage of power that would slag the Junker.
A great weapon of mortal make, to destroy all but the greatest warships.
But something told me we wouldn’t be that lucky.