91. Praise Be To Our Bright And Long Future

A/N: Hey! I dunno if any of you are awake at this time, but if so, have a chapter. Apologies about the radio silence last week, I had a nasty fever and just kinda... shut down? But I'm back now! Oh, and content warning for suicidal ideation. Enjoy the chapter!

I'm falling. 

We're all falling. But everything is just a little different now, just the slightest bit… offset. It's a very, very familiar feeling. I glance to the side, spotting myself. Spotting… the me I had just been. She's still there, staring right back at me, reaching out a hand for me. It's a pointless gesture, really, but I still reach back and take her hand. No matter how many times I've seen it, I've never enjoyed watching myself die.

A different kind of disorienting flicker happens next. There is a strange sensation of being in two places at once—something I'm not used to actually feeling, despite how many of me there are—and then we're on the ground again. Most of us, anyway. A few bodies are still in the air and either get caught as they fall, or crush whichever one of us tried to save them or failed to get out of the way. 

Again, it's all rather pointless. We know that, in the end, we're going to die. Perhaps it's self-hate that motivates us to delay that as long as possible for each other. Perhaps it's jealousy. 

It can't be fear. We're not allowed to have that. A Danielle is a perfect soldier. When the time for death does come, none of us will hesitate. Not one.

Except the ones that did hesitate, way back when. I remember that, in Atlanta. One of them tried to rebel when the others killed themselves.

No, wait, that's not important right now. Maria! I need to bring Maria back. I quickly reform her body inside my meatspace, making a few snap judgements as I pray to Legion that—yes! Okay. I can feel her domain.

Maria blinks, deeply disoriented as she takes a breath of hot, humid air. The walls glow with bioluminescence, helping the eyes growing from them see. They watch her from every direction, making doubly sure that I haven't made any mistakes in her recreation even though my power already knows that to be true.

"Concern. Confusion. Apprehension. Twisting Scars Reshape Fate? Directive: respond."

"I'm here, don't worry," I answer her.

"Where are you?" Maria asks. "Where am I? What happened?"

"There is no need to be concerned. You are inside my meat dimension."

"Oh okay. Just the meat dimension. That's fine then."

"Correct," I confirm.

"Why am I inside the meat dimension?" Maria asks. "I remember flying with you to take on the human warriors, but now we're here."

"You all got turned into Danielles," I respond. "I had to remake you."

Her body freezes as her mind rushes to catch up with that thought.

"I died!?" she asks. "You REMADE me!?"

"Essentially, yes," I confirm. It's true, after all. No point in sugar coating it; she's been through worse.

"I… this unit was unaware you could revive the dead," Maria comments. "Wait. It's not a revival, is it? I'm new. I'm probably not even made out of the same parts as I was before."

"That's correct," I confirm. "That's also why you're missing the memories of how you got here. Most of you were in fairy forms when everyone got Danielle'd, and since I can't remake the fairies themselves, the only way I could revive them was to make a version of your brain that they were still inside of. Did that work, by the way? I'm new to bringing people back from the dead."

"I believe it worked…" Maria considers, and then moments later a half-dozen fairies bloom into being around her, looking equally disturbed by their surroundings. "Confirmation. We are alive."

"That's good," I note.

"Query: given that I am not the original, could you make more of me?" Maria asks. "Copies of my body, with all my memories, while I still exist?"

"Hypothetically, yes," I say.

"Would they have our powers? Would they get blessed by Legion? Could we become infinite?"

It really is telling that this is what she's most interested in. Maria and I have been through enough that the expected terror of death and realization that she's technically a clone of what closed-minded people might call the 'real' her can just be skipped cleanly past. We have even more problematic implications to worry about.

"Unknown, and now is not an optimal time for experimentation," I respond honestly. No matter how tempting infinite full-body Marias might sound. "We are still in danger."

"Request: elaborate."

The summary isn't too difficult to give. My body on Earth is currently a Danielle. I am hiding my domain from her, but if I am detected, there is enough concentrated domain strength here that she may be able to crush my domain into nothing and kill me the way Maria killed The Forbidden Name. And at least according to In-Joke, that can actually kill me for realsies.

"So even with nearly all of me, it wasn't enough?" Maria asks. "How many of them are there?"

"I do not know," I answer. "Tens of thousands, maybe. She converted the human warriors. Nearly all of them."

"Horror! No wonder we weren't enough! How do we escape?"

That's sort of the issue. I don't know yet. For now, all I can do is wait for an opportunity to try and slip away, or maybe get our host alone.

"What is she up to right now?"

"Well… honestly, it's a bit depressing. The military fucked this poor girl up. Here, I'll patch you in."

My other selves watch me closely. I am the one of us that was born from Seraphim, after all, and we were told not to underestimate her. Still, I cannot help but feel… disappointed. It was so easy. As easy as they told us it would be. As easy as it has apparently been for us every time. We are, after all, the perfect weapon… though this is the first time I've ever actually fought anything. My sisters… no, we are not sisters. Other versions of me, they've apparently gone on these expeditions before. All of them won, and none of them survived.

I won't survive this either. And the next time we fight, it will be for the first time again. All I remember is the training, the teaching, and the room. Then, like they have a dozen times before, they brought someone into the room. They were unconscious, bound, and dressed like a prisoner. Sometimes it's a man, sometimes it's a woman. Sometimes they're older, sometimes they're younger. Sometimes they're lighter, sometimes they're darker. But then I reach out with my power and touch them, and they become none of those things. They just become a weapon.

Every other time, I've watched it happen. The shift, near-instant but still barely visible. The body morphs. The clothes shift. The gun I carry assembles itself in the holster. Then the heaviest, most expensive thing they can get me to carry appears as well. They can use me to copy almost anything. They just have to sacrifice a person each time.

And it must be a person. It is not enough for it to be a bug or a rat or a dog or a pig or a monkey. One person, for one Danielle, and everything that is hers. That is the trade. And over a dozen times, they have made it. I do not get to make it. I am just the weapon. I fire when my trigger is pulled. Every other time it has happened, I watched that other me appear, and be taken away. This time, and this time alone, I opened my eyes in a slightly different place and was the one taken. This time, it was my turn.

And then they took me to a room full of people. I opened my eyes as one of them, instead. Then they loaded us into rockets. All of us except for me. I alone stayed behind, given to a squad of people not dressed as prisoners. They weren't unconscious. They didn't know they were about to become weapons. But when the order came, that is what they became.

It is what they all became. And I loved it just as much as I feared I would.

…No, wait. Not fear. Something else. It has to be something else.

"This poor girl. How could they do this to her?"

It's depressing, certainly, but can you honestly claim to be surprised? She's a living weapon of mass destruction. If she wasn't on a leash she'd have a bullet in her head.

"They're going to put bullets in her head anyway!"

True enough.

I look to the north, and hundreds of my own eyes look back at me. The air is sharp and cold and fresh. The sky is beautiful. I'm not supposed to feel these things, but I know all of us do. It has been a long, long time since we've seen the sky. I wish, we wish, that we had been the ones that fell from the rockets. It would have been such a quick and beautiful end.

"…There are so many of us, now," a soft voice says, one that I know is my own but doesn't sound like my own, not from someone else's lips. "We could—"

I grab and unholster my gun, in sync with countless others, but I am a step too slow. A shot rings out. It passes through the chest of the one who spoke, overpenetrates, and hits the rib of the Danielle behind her. A second shot confirms the kill. The one of us injured in the crossfire collapses to the ground and pulls out her own gun, recognizing her own uselessness as a weapon. Eagerly, she finishes herself off.

None of us speak a word. We don't wonder if the execution was justified. We all know exactly how that sentence was going to end. After all, we're all thinking it.

There are so many of us, now. We could turn around. We could scatter. We could kill them all for this. We could be free.

But a weapon does not entertain such thoughts. No matter how tempting, we must never entertain such thoughts. We only take who we are ordered to take. We only kill who we are ordered to kill. That is the only way people can be safe from us. That is the only thing we deserve.

A smile tugs at my lips, but I force it down. I am being watched. We are all watching each other, but I am being watched most of all. I remember reaching for her, for Seraphim. That was the last thing I did before I opened my eyes. And that means Seraphim is gone. I am all that remains. I have completed our first objective. Everything is going exactly as it should be going.

And if I make a single suspicious move, they will not wait for me to speak sedition aloud to execute me. After all, I know I wouldn't.

No Danielle can ever be allowed to escape. No Danielle can ever be trusted. We will all die here, because we are too dangerous to let live. And that's fine, isn't it? No one should mourn the casing of a spent bullet.

"Forward, then," the Danielle who fired the killing shots says. People are looking at her almost as much as they are me. The ones who are different stand out, even among the perfectly identical. "The alien hive must fall."

We don't answer. We just move as one. It's not hard. We walk the same way, run the same way, and think the same way. We have the same body and the same memories. We get tired at the same rate. I am Danielle. That is our power and our truth. The difference between us is nothing but a few moments of stray thought. And yet every one of them feels like nothing but a threat to me. A danger. Any one of them could be the next to draw her gun. Any one of them could be the next target we have to draw on. We're basically the same person, but that just makes us more aware of how untrustworthy we really are.

I'm the perfect soldier. The perfect weapon. So why do I still care about the beauty of the sky?

"Squads?" one of us suggests. A single word. A tactical consideration. Not treason.

"Agreed. Fan out," says the one who shot. Fourteen bullets left in her magazine, and anyone she makes from now on. Still too many to want to be the first to challenge her.

I can easily imagine being her. Being the first to kill one of myself. The responsibility of it… of course I would be the one to take charge after that. I would have shown myself to be the best soldier among us. The first among perfect equals. Our routes split, myself and nine others naturally grouping together as we break off from the main group. Ten is a good number; too many for one of us to try and kill the others without getting shot herself, but not so many that we can't execute everyone if needed.

Okay, it looks like we're going to get our chance. They're breaking off into groups.

"This is disgusting. It's like a direct insult to Legion. Are you sure she's not blessed by Blasphemy?"

I'm sure. Don't forget that the military made her like this after she got her powers. She was probably a very different person when Perfection actually chose her.

"They really made someone hate herself this much just for their own convenience…?"

Why is this getting to you so much? We went through boot camp with a nine-year-old. This is not revelatory news.

"I guess I've just never been inside the head of someone this depressed, before. The way you're streaming all her thoughts through the network is just… raw, I suppose."

You want to try to help her, don't you?

"Maybe a little."

She just killed like ten thousand people or something.

"I know, I know… do what you have to."

I always do. The problem in this case is knowing what I have to do. I can overpower this group of ten pretty easily, but then what? There's no way I can take out all the Danielles before they group up together again. There's just too many of them, and I need this one to keep myself hidden anyway. Revealing myself, therefore, would probably be a bad idea. She's too suicidal to threaten, and too insane to reason with. It's quite the puzzle.

"I'm not sure she's ever had anyone try to reason with her."

Since getting her powers? No, probably not.

We're all wary of each other. We all want to escape. We'll never allow anyone else to escape. We can't. We know we can't. We're not safe. It's not right to allow one of us to live.

"Oh, Legion. What if we just send one Danielle to therapy and have her replace all the other Danielles afterwards?"

Hmm. That might not be a bad idea.

"Confusion? I was joking? Hey, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate, I was joking…!"

The Raptors are running from us. They're retreating. Do they know? The briefing insisted our powers work on the aliens. That means they're people, right? I suppose that only makes sense. What are weapons for, if not killing people? It's unfortunate that we won't be able to raise our numbers, but apparently we have more than enough to take out the Queen. We just have to reach her. We just have to make it to a giant, and shrink her into a Danielle. 

Yeah, fuck it. I don't have any better plans. I'm going for it.

"Are you serious!?"

A gasp is the only noise I hear. Shock, reflected on my face in every direction. Then, something… swallows them. Like a straw was placed inside their body and they're all getting sucked up it into nothing. I feel her again, in that moment. Seraphim. She was alive all along. She didn't turn into me.

I turned into her.

"That's not a wholly inaccurate way to think about it," my mouth says. "Hello, Danielle. I've met another version of you before, but I suppose this is the first time you and I have spoken."

She knew another me… a me that is now dead. I suppose I'm also about to die. That's fine, in the end. It's a shame that I can't even sound off an alert beforehand, but I don't truly care as much as I know I should.

"It doesn't have to go that way," Seraphim tells me. "You're a weapon, right? Do you mind if someone else wields you today?"

What…? But Seraphim is the enemy. I exist to destroy threats to humanity. I exist to destroy the enemy.

"I'm not a threat to humanity," Seraphim says. "But the people who ordered you to kill thousands of humans are. You're working for the wrong side."

That makes sense. But that does not matter. Danielle is just a weapon. Danielle does not get to decide what's right and wrong. I am not able to defy my orders, because if I was… if I was…!

"You'd have escaped long ago," my traitorous mouth says. I try to draw my gun and shoot it, but my arm doesn't work. "You've been tortured. You've been manipulated and abused. These are acts of evil, Danielle."

Evil acted upon evil is justice.

"No, it's not. Torture is illegal, Danielle. There were humane ways to ensure you would not be a threat to society, and they were not used, because they didn't want you to not be evil. They didn't want you to not be a threat. They wanted you to be a weapon."

I am a weapon.

"Only because they made you into one. They could have chosen not to. They could have made you safe, but they made you dangerous. They're liars."

"I'm not sure this counts as therapy!"

She has to trust and respect me before I can help her with any deep-seated mental issues.

"So you're manipulating her!?"

Well… yeah. Any intentional use of rhetoric is manipulation by definition. I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with that; it's what you do with rhetoric that makes it good or bad. For example, it got me a pretty great girlfriend. 

"While I'm flattered you have a thing for girls who are multitudes, I'm just going to go ahead and say I do not approve of this particular addition to our polycule."

Th-that's not what I meant!

I start to breathe faster, my mouth and body still not listening to me but my heart nonetheless pounding to the panic in my mind. A flash rings out from above, and the monster inside me allows me to turn my head, watching as Agnus Dei duels in the sky with a tiny figure my briefings never warned me of. 

Agnus Dei flies like a fighter jet, or a bird of prey. She moves at extreme speeds, but she's slightly hampered by her own momentum; she bends through the air, straining her body to twist around what looks like a large crystal sword being launched towards her at supersonic speeds. She makes neck-crackingly sharp turns, but there's still an arc to them, an element of thrust that she must contest with.

Her enemy has no such apparent limitation. It moves along straight vectors, starting and stopping near-instantly, hanging motionlessly in the air for just a moment each time it changes direction. It's not flying, not really, it's… pulling itself around, almost. Pieces of its body launch forwards, stop, and then either return to the figure or the figure rushes to them. 

That's such a cool fucking way to use her powers. She's flying! Christine is actually fighting Agnus Dei one on one! Are you seeing this, Maria?

"I can't see anything, no, but it sounds great. Good for her."

God, I'm so proud of her. I've always done my best to help her, but if I'm being perfectly honest I never expected that the girl who had panic attacks pretty much every other day and couldn't even use her powers in an emergency would end up as this much of a badass.

Agnus Dei unleashes one of her attacks, carving gouges into the Earth below, but when her attack gets close to her target it just gets pulled apart. The scouring beam of light is peeled and carved, shaped into brilliant spears that fire right back at Agnus Dei. The woman's body glows bright as she flies directly through her own redirected attack, a distant howl of rage whispering over the battlefield. 

Another lance of light fires, but this one doesn't even try to aim at Agnus Dei's enemy. It just rips across the ground, tearing through friend and foe alike. But that's… that's fine, right? We need to die anyway.

"But are you supposed to die now?" my traitorous mouth asks. "She turned you into a weapon, and she doesn't even care enough to use you well?"

I want to deny it, but… that rings true. That, more than anything else, flares a bit of indignance inside me. Am I not at least to be wielded for a higher purpose? Do I not kill and die to at least win the day? But this… this is just wasteful.

"I won't waste you," my voice whispers. "I'll use you as a proper weapon. No, more than that. I'll use you as a proper soldier. We will win the day, and when the war is over you will get to retire. You will get to breathe the air and see the sun. And you will hurt no one, because there will be no need for anyone to squeeze the trigger."

My eyes remain locked on the sky, but I'm no longer watching the battle in the air. I'm just looking at the clouds. The enemy is inside me. They're a monster. No, a demon. A devil making deals.

"Or maybe," Seraphim says, "I'm your guardian angel."

The cloud above me looks somewhat like a bird. Would I really get to stay out here? Would I really get to live?

"Of course," Seraphim promises.

I would be dangerous. I would hurt people.

"We can make sure you're somewhere safe," Seraphim assures me. "Somewhere you can't hurt people, but where you can still be free. Where you don't have to be alone."

Free, safe, but not alone…? Is that really possible?

"It is. You just have to trust me."

"I'm not liking where this is going, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate."

It's war, Maria. This was never going to be clean and easy. 

"You're taking advantage of a trauma victim."

A little, yes. I won't deny it. But I'm not lying to her. I don't intend to renege on my promise. As long as she trusts me, as long as she believes she'll get a good life as long as she helps me, as long as that belief is strong enough… we'll win. As simple as that. And I'll absolutely be rewarding her for it. 

That's our enemy's biggest weakness. They're so reliant on everyone just shutting up and following orders that they'll collapse if people finally start thinking for themselves.

I don't deserve this. I'm just Danielle. Only Danielle. Nothing but Danielle. I kill real people to make more weapons. That's all I can do. When the war is over, everything will be better if I'm just dead.

"I don't believe that," Seraphim whispers. "A god gave you your powers, Danielle. And that god thinks you're perfect."

Perfect… 

I am Danielle…

And I'm perfect…!

"You're not going back to the room, Danielle," Seraphim promises. "And you're not dying, either. I'll wield you, this time. I'll show you how a weapon ought to be used, and comfortably they ought to be sheathed."

Okay… okay! I'll help! Use me!

"Thank you," I say. No, wait, Seraphim said that. I only felt it. "We're going to change the other Danielles. And when they become you, my promise will apply to them, too."

A shiver of horror fills me. No. No! No, no, no, not the others. I am Danielle. I am Danielle! They're dangerous, they're evil, they're weapons, they—

"They're you," my voice tries to argue, but she's wrong, that's wrong! I am Danielle!

You can't trust the others. You can never trust the others. You have to kill them. You have to kill them. They might escape if you don't kill them and they can't escape we can't escape you have to always kill them. We can never leave alive.

"I'm going to get you out of here alive," Seraphim promises again.

And that's good. That's fine. I'm Danielle. And I'm perfect. But the others must die. They're evil. They're bad.

"If you change them to be you, then they'll be good, won't they?"

No.

They won't be me.

They'll remember being me but they won't be me. They won't be. Not anymore. And they'll know that. They'll know they aren't perfect. I'm Danielle. Me. I'm Danielle. I'm Danielle. Me and only me and only me and only me and only me and only me and only me and only me and only me I'm Danielle I'm Danielle I'm Danielle I'm Danielle I'm Danielle I'm Danielle I'm Danielle I'm Danielle—

"Terror! Twisting Scars Reshape Fate, this is not working well!"

Yeah, holy shit. This is not what I expected. I guess I can work with it, though.

"You can WORK WITH IT?"

A Prism of Refracting Selves, what were we going to do with ten thousand mentally unstable women capable of depopulating a city at will? They're enemy soldiers. If she wants to kill them, we kill them.

"How? I thought the entire problem was that there were too many to kill! I thought we needed to use her powers!"

We do. We're just going to use them… a slightly different way. A more horrifying way, honestly, but war makes monsters of us all. We need to end this now. I need to stop holding back.

"Beloved one, I know you. You haven't been holding back. You've been doing your best this entire time."

That's… mostly true. But I have been holding back. Not physically, not intentionally, but… mentally, I've limited myself. I've refused, over and over, to do something I know this has always been leading towards.

"What, exactly?"

I can't become the Grand Queen if I've never even been a regular one. And it has always been risky, you know? Queens are… big. That's a lot of biomass to put in the world. I don't have enough. But you know what they say.

Dress for the job you want, right?

"Danielle," Seraphim says, taking my mouth and my body in full. "It's time. Are you ready? All you need to do is use your power."

I am Danielle. I will be free.

"That's right," she confirms. "But first, this might get a little uncomfortable."

I force her body to grow, expanding rapidly in height and strength and power. There's no particular objective to it; I just need her to be as large as possible without collapsing under her own weight. And as I do that, I also assemble a second Danielle out of nothing. A perfect copy of one that I've already killed, except this one, interestingly, doesn't have a domain. It's not out of any conscious choice on my part; I can only assume that the gods themselves are deciding which people I create or recreate get blessings and which don't. Weird that Danielle, of all people, wouldn't get a blessing from her god due to being a clone, but I'm not going to waste my time arguing with Perfection over it.

It doesn't much matter anyway. She barely exists for a second before my Danielle converts her, and in that instant thousands upon thousands of pounds of biomass simply spawn into existence out of nothingness.

After all, Danielle makes perfect copies of herself. And that means perfect copies of whatever she happens to be at the time. 

"Infinite biomass… oh, Legion, you're making yourself infinite biomass."

I doubt it's truly infinite. There would, at the very least, be an upper bound defined by Perfection's power… or even just the amount of effort Perfection happens to want to put in. But given that I've seen Danielle turn an entire Queen into a normal-sized woman, it seemed only reasonable that she'd be capable of doing the reverse. 

She can turn people into copies of herself. I can make people, and turn copies of her into biomass. 

"This is the single most horrifying thing you've ever done. Please stop."

I'm sorry, Maria. I just don't think that's a good idea. Christine is holding her own, but she isn't winning decisively. Agnus Dei keeps healing off the damage, and she's slowly getting closer. Christine can't just grab Agnus directly and rip her apart, so if it becomes a fistfight… she'll die.

"But you're sacrificing so many people to do it! Not just as an unfortunate consequence, but intentionally and directly! It's exactly what we left the military over!"

Well, that's not entirely true. I left the military in order to save you.

"You know exactly what I mean. This is hypocrisy. You're using her the same way they did!"

I am. All I can say is that I'm sorry, and I have no intention of ever doing it again. But that hypocrisy should please Blasphemy and Contradiction quite a bit. Perfection will probably be more delighted I'm giving Danielle's bullshit a place to shine than they will be miffed about the casualties, and Bliss… I have another plan for. And that'll be it. The hard part will be over. With every alien united under me, we'll be able to force an end to the war and begin cooperative efforts to safely de-orbit the original Grand Queen. 

"But you're becoming a monster to do it!"

I feel an overwhelming urge to sigh, but whatever nonsense I've done to Danielle's body doesn't currently do that. I suppose that's okay. Just for a moment, I pull away from her. It's not like she's going anywhere.

I form a body in my meatspace instead. It's a bit surreal, since all of my meatspace is part of me. It's not like I'm not already here. But for Maria's sake, I take a humanoid form, growing the face she fell in love with so I can look her in the eyes. It's as hot and muggy as always here, and the dim light of my internal bioluminescence sheds an eerie gloom on the muscle-walled room. Despite how upset she is, Maria still blushes when she sees me. I'm completely naked, and so is she, but I think we're far past needing to care about that when the two of us are alone.

There is a small part of me, a part of me that's always there, which notes that flustering her like this will make her more susceptible to being convinced. Reminders of my beauty, and her attraction to me, are as effective if not more at swaying her to my position as logic and reason would be. And further, her objection is a primarily emotional one, not a logical one. Emotional arguments are better for that reason, too.

I know all of this. Once you understand how people work, you can't just stop knowing it. But at least I can share it, now. Through the network, she knows exactly what I'm doing. She knows how I feel about it. And she knows to stop looking away, stare me in the eyes, and prepare to hold her ground as best she can. 

I have to win this fight. I'm not holding back.

"Will you hate me, because of this?" I ask plainly.

"I…" she starts, unprepared for the direct attack, but she rallies. "I won't."

A concession. The only reasonable move she has, since we both know it's true.

"But if you just end this conversation on those grounds alone, I might hate you for that," she continues.

Damn. A solid move. I suppose I wouldn't like her as much as I do if she folded after only that much, though.

"You understand the logic, at least," I press.

"…I do," Maria confirms. "The Danielles clearly aren't mentally healthy enough that we can just leave them all alone. But making more of them, just to kill them? That's too much."

"Why?" I ask. "They live for seconds, at most. They don't have time to suffer. I can confirm that, given that I've been converted myself."

"How would you feel if I made a new fairy and someone just killed it immediately?" Maria demands, crossing her arms. I carefully keep my attention away from what that does to her chest.

"That's qualitatively different," I argue. "Your fairies are each fragments of a whole. Losing one of them would be permanently losing a part of yourself."

"Well how would you feel if you made a clone of me and immediately killed it!?" she counters.

"Bad," I say. "Doing it to Danielle makes me feel bad too. No part of my argument is trying to convince anybody that this isn't morally repugnant. I just think it's less repugnant than allowing Agnus Dei to win."

"Then do it to me, instead," Maria says.

Huh?

"A-are you serious?" I ask.

She stomps closer to me, glaring down with her arms still crossed.

"Do I look like I'm not serious?" she presses. "I'm consenting. The least you can do is choose somebody who's consenting."

"Danielle did say—"

"Danielle is so obviously mentally unstable and suicidal that you know damn well playing into her self-destructive fantasies is not the same thing as consent," Maria snaps. "Don't even try it."

"I… okay, that's fair, but I just… you want me to kill you repeatedly? Seriously?" I stammer.

"No, Julietta! But I want you to kill someone else repeatedly even less!" she insists. "I told you, we're in this together, right? We're a team. You and me and everybody else, but especially you and me. And I know you. You know I know you. So don't get indignant when I tell you that I'm scared if you just do this to Danielle, and we win that way… you'll end up convincing yourself that it was alright after all. That this was just a decision that you made because you had to. I'm afraid it won't be something you lose any sleep over."

"Do you… want me to lose sleep over it?" I ask.

"Do you think it's something a morally good person would lose sleep over?" she asks back, which… ew, virtue ethics. Don't base your argument on virtue ethics. Especially if that argument completely gets my ass. That's just embarrassing.

"I guess I do," I admit. "And you're right, I… I don't care about Danielle. She murdered your whole colony."

"You didn't care about them either," Maria points out.

"Well she probably just killed Ed?" I hedge. "I cared a lot about Ed. Look, I'm sorry, I'm not the best at caring about people. I can be kinda do-or-die when I decide I like someone, so it's a big emotional investment to… y'know, actually do that. Which I guess is frighteningly tribalistic now that I think about it? God, I really should not be the Grand Queen, I should not be in charge of anything, but we can't let Agnus Dei have it! We just can't, that would be… I mean, she's borderline omnicidal!"

"I know, honey, I know," Maria says, suddenly pulling me into a hug and causing me to freeze up. As warm as it is in here, she's warmer still, her skin so very soft against mine. "But that's part of why we have to do this the right way. No scapegoats, no sacrifices, no letting others take the fall. Use me. Okay?"

God. God! Fucking hell, Maria. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this at all. But you're right. Damn it, why have I suddenly I become so bad at winning arguments?

"Because I only ever argue with you when you're wrong," Maria answers smugly, wrapping a couple of her tentacles around mine.

"Bah," I protest feebly. "Well. Okay, then. We'd better do this. Are you ready?"

Instead of answering, she grabs my head and pulls me in for a kiss. Despite our network connection, it surprises me. Even when I know she's doing it, it always surprises me. I don't know if I'll ever get used to how good it feels to know that someone wants to touch me this badly. To hold me. To feel me. It's something I always thought would be unpleasant. I suppose with most people, it would be. But not with her.

I wrap myself around her, my own tendrils holding her in place as we press against each other, my arms around her back, keeping her close so I can feel as much of her as possible. It doesn't last as long as I want it to—and that surprises me as well—but Maria has to come up for air eventually. Next time, perhaps, I'll oxygenate her myself.

"Okay," she says, smiling brightly. "Now I'm ready. May as well die happy, right?"

"Got it," I say.

She squeezes her eyes tightly together, tensing up. What is she…? Oh, wait.

"No, I mean I got it," I say. "That's it."

"That's it? You're done?" Maria blinks.

"Well, I mean, I haven't done anything yet, but I have the template now," I say. "You're not actually personally dying, remember? I'm making clones."

"…Right," she says, blushing even brighter than before. Some of that flush is still lingering from the kiss, though.

"Don't worry. I'll make sure you live happy, too," I promise her. "After all of this is over, I'll need your help to get the approval of Bliss."

Her breath catches in surprise, but her grin quickly turns dirty.

"Are you not even going to try it on your own, first?" she smirks at me. "You're just diving in with me, huh?"

"Considering where we are, I'm pretty sure you're the one diving around in me," I say. "But, uh, given how many times I'm going to be murdering you, I think I'll owe you a bit of exclusivity. Let's save the dirty jokes for later, though. I kind of have to go save the world."

"Smear that bitch, Julietta," Maria says. 

"Yes ma'am," I salute her, dissolving my meatspace body and returning my attention to the giant Danielle blob currently serving as my body on Earth. 

Predictably, the giant Danielle blob has not gone unnoticed. All the other Danielles are rapidly approaching my position, and given the smoky surroundings I'm pretty sure Christine or All Torn to Dust have defended me from a laser blast or two. Thank you, everyone. It's time to end this.

Maria, I am so, so sorry.

I start forming more of her on the ground. Like Danielle, they don't have their own domains. I guess even Legion doesn't want me cloning powers, but it doesn't matter much either way. Seconds later, we have another giant blob of biomass, and I gulp it down like the lifeline it is, continuing to grow my current body as I make more sacrificial Marias. 

I will absolutely be losing sleep over this. Mission accomplished, I suppose. But she asked for this. She demanded this. And she was right. I can't say no to her. I won't betray her by killing someone else instead.

As I grow in size, I feel a stirring in my domain, as well. Entirely on a feeling, I start shifting the body to have more and more parts unique to Queens. Internally, I grow myself biological chambers for making more aliens or remaking bodies into reverent forms. Externally, I shape myself more purposefully than just 'more mass,' designing the way I spread and curve out to be like branches on a tree, representing new directions and new possibilities. Across my skin, I warp myself into a Queen covered in scars, twisting along my limbs and pulling at the branches, as if dragging them this way or that. I embody my name, and my god, and my purpose.

I grow a hundred wings, each with a hundred eyes. I look in every direction at once, trying to see every conceivable path.

Praise be to Possibility. Praise be to our bright and long future, full of stories and joy and love. I will grasp the fate that the gods have chosen, and I will shape it into reality.

My domain explodes in size and strength. I maintain synchronicity with my Danielle, whose body I have twisted into my own, and around us we make a dozen more. I absorb them into me, and make more. I form life, I shape life, I take life. Over and over. By the time the other Danielles reach us, it's far too late. We convert them en masse, and the air cracks like thunder as a hundred Queens pop into being at once, crushing each other nearly to death the instant they're created. I claim them before they can die naturally, but I still need more. I need so much more. The other Grand Queen is the size of the moon. 

I don't know if I collect quite that much biomass, but by the time I turn my attention to Agnus Dei, I'm terrified that I might be close.