Chimera cheered as she watched a massive lizard take on an alien menace using its fire breath.
And it was glorious!
“Yeah! Sweep it left to right!”
The lizard, funnily enough, did start to sweep its flames, pushing back the already dwindling lines of monster clones.
Aden floated next to her, “that was the iguana attacking the city before…”
Chimera shrugged, “now it’s helping us out with our mom.”
Aden shook his head slightly, “this whole day is weird.”
Nodding at the response, Chimera floated towards the others with Aden close behind.
“He’s mine, Meghan!”
“The Software he’s running now says otherwise, Sarah!”
Chimera chuckled softly as she realized that the two of them were arguing over the iguana monster below.
Chimera was about to join in when they heard a roar from below that sounded nothing like the beast below.
She turned to see a horde off clones burnt to ash, and the flames were now buffering against the mass that must be Margaret,
Sure enough, the screaming did originate there, but the sound was reverberating off of the walls rather intensely.
Something about that noise…
Chimera turned to see Sarah look at the exposed ceiling.
“Sarah, did you feel that too? What the hell was it?”
The hero scientist closed her eyes before answering, “it’s a call Chimera.”
Chimera shook her head, “there’s no one to call though, what the hell could she be thinking?”
After staring at the hole that exposed them all to the outside air, the city…
A thought brushed against Chimera as she thought back to the feeling she readily grew familiar with.
The feeling of the bonds she had with her, Sarah, and her clones.
The bond she shared with Lark, who even now she could feel was waiting at the cabin.
To the little Rice people she had unintentionally uplifted…
To her hero friends who all had been touched by her gift…
Wait…
Chimera had a horrible thought as the cry grew in volume, reaching a pitch that flew out into the city’s twilight hours.
“Sarah… ChemTech’s pharmaceutical company works on lots of medicine right?”
Sarah knew where she was going with it the moment Chimera spoke, their thoughts already trying to think of a solution to the impending horde they were likely to face.
Meghan and Aden both stared at them in confusion, with Meghan leading the questions.
“We are out of the loop here, what’s this about ChemTech?”
“Yeah, you both aren’t making a lot of sense.”
Sarah clenched her fists as she spoke, “Monica was working for my mother, and you heard what her end goal was.”
Chimera chimed in as well, “the assimilation of the human race, and ultimately its destruction.”
“Even she couldn’t reach every person though, not with ChemTech resources…wait..”
Meghan stared off into space as Aden spoke, “ChemTech has different products though, school supplies and research tools being another of them. My college had them as well.”
“Something that could reach everyone.”
“But could only be activated by her.”
Meghan finally spoke after a few moments, “The Sound is resonating within so many people and objects. If my cameras are reporting this correctly… She's activating something.”
“Need details Meghan!”
Chimera jerked back towards the screaming mass, the flames from the robo-iguana finally starting to damage it.
Until a sound wave blasted from the roiling mass.
Chimera covered her body as the wave rolled over her and the others, spreading off of the walls and breaking the hole in the ceiling more.
Chimera, despite her lack of ears could feel the City respond to the soundwave, shattering glass and the horns of cars reaching back to her.
After the wave, Chimera turned to Meghan in hopes that the robotic woman could explain.
Meghan seemed too stunned to answer.
“It's… gone.”
Sarah recovered next, “W-What, do you mean Meg?”
Aden shook his head, “oh, that doesn’t feel good at all. What the hell’s happening?”
Sarah grabbed Meghan’s arms as she tried to get a response out of the stunned robo-human.
“What’s going on Meghan?!”
Meghan finally seemed to snap out of it.
“The Barrier, the technology, all of the defenses, and even the power matrix. That sound burst destroyed the rest of the protections for the city. It… killed so many people too.”
Meghan hiccupped as she said the next words, the words Chimera was worried about the most.
“The City’s gone, that blast destroyed New Terra.”
Chimera shook her head, “no, no that can’t be! How could one blast do all of that?!”
Meghan opened her mouth, but before she could answer, a bone spear launched to try and pin her against the wall.
Instead, it landed directly into her chest.
“Agh…”
“Meghan!”
All three of them rushed to Meghan.
Chimera and Sarah pulled out the projectile and checked on Meghan, who was already healing from the damage.
She turned to see Aden covering for them as another bone lance tried to do the same to him.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Aden!”
The bone spear was followed by several others, pincushioning him and stopping his movements,
Chimera stood to block, only for Sarah to put up a shield that blocked tendrils from stabbing them to death.
A lift from underneath them unbalanced Sarah and flattened her against the wall.
“No!”
Chimera tried to run to her, but a wall of undulating mass cut her off from the others as she turned to face the assailant.
Standing there in the air, with a set of beautiful wings to help her float, was Margaret in her humanoid form.
“Oh dear, my apologies, little experiment. My children can be so rowdy, but it’s a mother’s duty to discipline them.”
She smiled softly, which only made Chimera’s insides boil with hatred.
“What did you do to the city?”
Margaret shook her head, “no word for your comrades? I was given to believe they were more important to you, then something pesky like the humans.”
“What did you do?!”
The alien turned to stare up at the hole in the ceiling, which now had no buildings around it to obscure its view.
“I cleansed the filth of humanity away from the world. No more of their insipid technology, no more of the robot monstrosities they used to even the playing field. No more tools to exploit.”
Chimera felt tears roll down her face as the… monster in front of her put a finger to her lips in a thoughtful way.
“There’s likely much of that filth left, but it won’t matter. None of them can match me, and that’s the important bit.”
Chimera tried to keep her eyes on the beast, but her tears blocked her vision.
“Oh, dear. Are you alright?”
She wiped away the tears, the raw pain in her gut ripping her insides to pieces.
“You killed those people!”
“A means to an end.”
“You destroyed an entire city!”
“A grander one shall be built in its place.”
“You broke the Superhero Law! Who would even follow you?!”
Margaret tilted her head in confusion.
“They won’t have a choice to resist, because I’ll be inside them, monitoring them, reeducating them. Guiding them to the proper path is the purpose of a leader.
“They wouldn’t be following you, it would just be you! No originality, no variation! That’s not a paradise, that’s not even hell! It would be all you!”
Margaret shook her head, “Oh silly, they can still keep their minds. Some would even thank me, as I will take away those pesky doubts the human’s often worry about. There won’t be any room for that in my Utopia.”
She shook her head, “I don’t even understand why you are arguing. Obviously you and Sarah will be fine, and Aden just needs a bit of touch up before he’s ready. The abomination over there will need to be dealt with, but that can wait. Why are you so upset?”
Chimera screamed, “I won’t let you change them, they wouldn’t be them if you did that. Puppets! They would just be puppets on your strings if that happened! I Won’t Let You Win!”
Chimera pulled on her gifts, the powers she accumulated converging into a singular chain of DNA.
No longer separated by broken segments or mismatched parts, Chimera built the chain that would bring her the resolution she sought.
The death of this monster.
Chimera could feel the power from this new chain, which brought together the other powers she had gathered over time.
Speed.
Strength.
Stamina.
Energy.
Power.
All of the various powers that had been made by the serum, all of the strengths that stemmed from humanity, converged into their most basic functions, their purest forms.
Dexterity.
Acuity.
Intelligence.
Wisdom.
Senses.
Empathy.
Especially that last one, Chimera needed to be sure that she didn’t even come close to ending up like the maniacal monster ahead of her.
Finally, after a few seconds of building this chain, Chimera used all of the energy she had to combine it with her.
It tried to resist, the energy flowing from this chain threatening to break apart at the seams.
But Chimera’s will was stronger, and the chain of DNA latched onto her body.
The change was apparent, but not immediate, at least not at first.
Chimera felt different, certainly, but the DNA Chain that started to divide within her was slow in its work.
Margaret shook her head, “well, that was certainly dramatic, but the point remains little experiment. You are not my equal, and you never can be. If you wish to die, I can grant that request as well, but I will be magnanimous and ask one last time.”
She floated to the floor, “will you submit to my rule?”
…
The chain connected, one piece at a time, slowly building itself up.
Chimera felt different each time it did.
The chain was changing her, fundamentally and surely.
The chain was her, and Chimera began to realize she was no longer a blob.
The energy required to put all of this together used too much of her former self, and the energy generator she had made was absorbed by this new chain.
The chain that was her.
Chimera grew piece by piece, one part to another.
The energy she felt grew with her, one chain to another.
Until it finally connected, brought together.
Small petite hands gripped tightly.
Short bouncy hair fell over her ears and eyes.
Chimera opened her new eyes, feeling her new face.
She was young, somewhere close to a ten year-old in form, but inside…
She was something more.
The monster in front of her was speaking to her, but the new Chimera couldn’t hear those words yet.
There were others to help first.
She phased through the undulating mass, burning through the material as if it didn’t exist.
Which it might as well, as she covered her body in a null field that reduced everything around it to nothing.
For Chimera would not allow the beast to even touch her DNA, for that was her.
A twitch from her mind brought her brother’s body, Sarah’s, and the still repairing model of Meghan.
She would not change them again, but she could replicate their body’s cells and use them to repair.
Yes, this was just a problem to solve, there was nothing wrong with them, they just needed to be turned back on again.
A part of her flinched at the old cells that she used to bond the powers to Sarah, Aden and Meghan.
Maybe she could make them a little more seamless, less messy. A pure connection to allow them better control.
It took no more than a second to make it happen.
They were sleeping now, but that would be fine, Chimera would make sure they were safe.
The thing was speaking to her again, trying to understand how she repaired them so easily.
Something about DNA killer poisons or radioactive isotope laced barbs.
Chimera didn’t care.
She repaired them, and anything that was unnecessary simply ceased to exist.
This thing pretending to be a person was so pitiful if it couldn’t understand something so simple.
It launched what Chimera assumed was an ‘attack’ but the hundreds of tendrils and bone spikes simply did not exist in her null field.
They passed through and disappeared.
Screams echoed as the beast in front of her pretended to sound human.
Silly monster, you can’t be human after all the things you did.
Where was your remorse? Where was your empathy?
They were filth to you, yes?
How insidious.
Chimera lifted her with her mind, ripped tiles to compress the being into a box. After sealing it shut, she lifted the box into the air, and launched it straight at the sun.
Yes, she could have simply unmade it using the null field, but a part of her wanted the being to suffer, if only a bit before the sun devoured her.
Chimera floated around as she gripped the clones of the dead around her, bringing them to life and returning to them a form of sentience.
She also erased that being’s presence, making sure that she was truly gone from this world.
Chimera knew however that it would be hard to make sure of that, as she would have to check every person, animal, and living creature on Asta to be sure.
Chimera smiled to herself.
It sounds like fun, a game of cat and mouse.
All the while she could start healing the people who could still be saved, and help the rebuilding process.
It was hard being a hero.
But that was what she was, Chimera the Hero.