We crashed down like a meteorite through the surface of the moon, punching into the hidden laboratories below. The lights blew out all at once as the air rushing violently past us. In an instant, the breached section of the facility was turned into a murky void. Slowly, moondust settled down from the impact and I unfurled my mass to something less mechanical. Something with many skeletal limbs.

Through the hole I'd created above, I could still see the blue dot. Earth, in my rearview, was such a funny sight. It was not one I had ever expected to see, that was for sure. Not in person, anyway.

Deep down, we all held a conception of what our upper limit was. Though many of us might have thought it would be amazing to go to space, we accepted a plain fact. We would never actually do it. Whether we couldn't or wouldn't, the difference was the same. It was beyond the limit of our experience. Hell, some people died without ever getting in a fight or falling in love. In fact, it seemed like a lot of people did.

In hindsight, I realized just how many limits I had placed on myself before. Thinking I would do everything in my ability to retire early, and then simply sail off into the sunset... There was no thought to what came next. Only the limit and how to reach it. It turns out, an ending, no matter how happy, is still an ending.

There was no real difference between one and the other...

Internally, I smiled. As I stalked forward through the corridors, flashing red emergency lights paved my way. I basked in the situation and the freedom of limitlessness.

It wasn't long until my first point of resistance showed itself. The conflict I had been seeking was naturally ready to oblige. As soon as I made it to the first airlock, I was able to simply push a button to enter. But beyond the airlock, the blast door that followed was screwed tightly closed. A hard stop.

After a few tentative punches and a glance up at the security camera in the corner, I made a decision. A second mass of flesh sloughed off my frame, joining me in the alabaster halls of the lunar research station. It quickly reconstructed into a human form and I asked politely as possible across the telepathic link of our minds, "Could you please open this door for me?"

It was hermetically sealed. Even my biological nanomachines weren't making much progress. At this point, I was worried I'd just bork the electronics before I figured them out. I didn't want to waste time, either.

The girl formed into a version of herself akin to the original, except now she was garbed in a tough exoskeleton. It took Cyber a few minutes to get her bearings and look cautiously around before she could respond. She tried once to speak in the vacuum of space before she realized the voice was in her head and responded in kind. "W-...where are we?" she asked.

"I suppose Hickory and Walter don't keep you guys close to the controls," I voiced it like a complaint. Part of me wondered if they were having trouble managing all the souls in the channel, with so many recent additions. It was a worrying thought, but I went on with the problem at hand. "The gist is this!" I told her. "We're on the moon for a quick snack break before we slingshot off to mars for a little while. Err," it occurred to me that the red planet might not be in a favorable orbit. I decided it was better to keep it simple nonetheless. "So please open the door with your Technicist skills."

I needed to see her brain in action. Then, I could simply repeat the process myself later. Though it was true that I had all of the information in all of the brains of everyone I had absorbed, it was not always so easy to decode. It worked better to see it used in context.

"I need tools," she stammered. "My-"

"Just picture them," I cut her off. Tools, I could do.

As she imagined what she required, I read out the schematics and printed them using cellular machinery. All said it took less than a minute in total. Her extensive knowledge of the device, down to the atomic level, was by far what made it happen. Information, I found, was the real currency of my Power. Design.

"This will do," she said, getting started right away.

"Excellent." I appreciated her attitude, hitting her with a subtle jolt of dopamine to reinforce. 

While she kneeled down and got into the dead access panel for the door, I looked around. I had my cells exploring everywhere they could get their hands on. And, through the rock, I could feel the faint vibration of alarms sounding. Our presence was already known.

"We're killing Seraph, right?" Cyber seemed to be looking to me to assuage her conscience.

"Yes. All bad people," I answered.

My response was seemingly moot. She shook her head to dispel my perception. "I'm just keeping tabs. When you got all those people killed in the valley, I didn't care. Remember why I came to you. But I need to be kept updated if I'm going to help. Frankly, you don't always, uh, make decisions I agree with."

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I shrugged off the insubordinate demands, as I found them interesting. She was so sheepish before that I had taken her for somewhat of a weak spirit. But she was right. She had risked everything to deal with an abomination, not because she was afraid, but precisely the opposite. She came to me because she was a survivor. The only reason I ever saw her worry was when the cost became her autonomy. Her most sacred bodily autonomy...

That, I could empathize with. The need for control.

"Done." She announced. And with that, I pulled her cringing back into my flesh. Easily reabsorbed. Nothing more needed to be said. I was keeping a running profile on all of my friends.

I made a mental note to try dampening her stress hormone next time around. Right now, I was merely cut-copy-pasting. I didn't have time for design tweaks.

Finally, the heavy vault door opened and fresh, breathable air wafted in. It smelled like chemical cleaners, metal, and human skin. But a memorable scent lingered on the top. Ah yes, I thought... spandex.

Three Seraph Heroes had made a remarkably quick response. What was clearly a computer lab of some sort, I saw, had already been promptly evacuated. All that remained was the able and willing security force, here to put me down.

The frontman was cool-blue in color, with a solid block of ice encasing his head. He predictably enacted the first blow with a blinding, white spray. Sending out glowing energy that caused ice to rapidly materialize on surface contact, I found myself totally encased, quicker than a flash. 

A creep-cicle, I mentally remarked. 

Unfortunately for them, this was exactly what I needed. Wonderful, wet, water. Every ounce that I could process was used to begin the slow act of rehydration. And with that, my mass suddenly began to swell triple-fold, like an engorged balloon.

But not fast enough that I avoided being a sitting duck in the meantime. I still had to break down the ice and that took eons on a chemical timescale.

The second Hero was in full-getup. His Power armor included two Tron-like disks which he brandished. And, as he threw them, their hot plasma sliced straight into me, passing ice and flesh alike.

Yet, it just kept getting better. Their heatwave cut my job practically in half.

And last but not least, their spookier friend raised his bare hands, signaling his Power's use. Dressed in a long and cloaked garb of ghostly greys, he sent out a wave of strange, vibrating air.

My tendril shot out through the solid ice, turgid and ready to kill. It was also a kind of test, so it moved to intersect. Then, right as the tendril came in contact with his strange air, I felt what I was looking for. His Power was revealed and the damage was minimized.

My appendage completely disintegrated, and I knew; these were not Seraph's throw-aways. Their Powers were quite impressive. Ranged disintegration was pro-level stuff.

And for the icing on the cake, I could not get my cells into their lungs. As soon as they got too close, they stopped dead at an invisible field. Upon closer inspection, the device was clear, resting on each of their hips. A shield generator ran there, giving them fresh air and protecting them in the not unlikely case that they were swept out to space.

I was just going to have to do this the hard way, I decided.

My body exploded into many different pieces, small enough to slip like jelly through the cracks in the ice. After that, each quickly reformed legs and went on the move. They had to close the gap, but weave and dodge along the way. 

Acceptable casualties quickly ensued, but this room was large and with many desks for me to hide behind as my many bodies ran low to the ground. In no time at all then, they reconverged on the three and I went in for the kill.

The first, icy Hero was easy to kill. One of my little fleshy pups merely vaulted out from behind the desks and, as its jaws clamped down on his arm, I felt the forcefield unable to stop it. The neurotoxins did the rest of the work for me.

But seeing his friend drop like a stone, the disintegrator stopped holding back. "Step away!" he ordered his suited friend. Then, his stance changed.

I wasn't able to get close enough before the wave went out. His friend sprinted in the opposite direction, just as it began to turn everything into pure ash. Seeing that it affected all matter, not just organics, this caused serious problems. Half my forces were caught in the blast, as well as the flesh I had hoped to convert from the freezing Hero.

Instead of fighting the problem, I went around to focus fulltime on his armored friend. Their suit was bulky, and it easily allowed me to encircle him with my hounds and move in. However, the Hero certainly had a trick left.

There were many ridges along his armor's surface, all marked by dim light. With the first two of my demon-dogs set on him, attempting to tear through his plating, I learned right away what they were for. Much like the outer rim of his attack-disks, they glowed brighter until a stream of plasma burned steady there, shearing through flesh like a hot knife through butter.

Enough of this, I growled. It was time to shift designs.

To my back, the disintegrating Hero had reached his limit and was sinking into the ground and out of sight. Rather than help his friend, he had gone into defensive mode. A cowardly move indeed...

Before me, the armored Hero was being kept distracted by snapping teeth and many spike-tipped limbs. He didn't know it, but there was another beast mutating behind him.

It melded itself to the floor in order to find a sufficient brace. Every single muscle in its body was repurposed to one explosive end. To propel in a bony piston forward, fiercer than a pistol shrimp's punch. And that it did.

Faster than a speeding bullet, the spear thrust forward and rent a deep hole into his suit. One gasp of pain later, and I saw the blood flow freely from the wound. His arms fell with little struggle, and I began right away to break him down.

There was a deep hole in the middle of the computer lab now. The last man had successfully escaped through it, finding another developed space just below. "Oh well," I said. "The rest have to be here somewhere..."

That particular fight had been a wash. But there had to be more biomass to be found. That was if Seraph didn't blow it up first.

It didn't take long for the siren to stop. Everyone in the base knew what the situation was. Seraph had only one standing order to give, next, because they knew damn well what I was capable of. They could not allow me to feed.

The female voice sounded, "ALL STAFF MUST EVACUATE. BASE SELF-DESTRUCT IN TEN MINUTES."

I was getting tired of this schtick. This time, I was gonna stop that fucking bomb. I'd eat the reactor if I had to. But they wouldn't deny me my meal.