Are You Even Human

One of the advantages of a military training schedule is the fact that you aren't left with very much time to think about dreams. I mean, arguably this is also a disadvantage if you care about weird things like individuality, but in this particular case I'm talking about the very specific sort of dream that happens in the middle of the night and makes you wake up in a cold sweat so I'm calling it an advantage for now.

Maria gives me a big smile when we meet up for breakfast, which is also distracting, if nothing else. Our little group has expanded, thanks to Anastasia becoming a huge fan of both Maria and Ed, and since everybody here seems to be on the same page (Team Make Anastasia Happy) I appreciate the extra help. Our general knowledge class passes as usual, and lunch is a repeat of breakfast, so before I know it we're all out in the yard, ready to train our domains. We line up and wait for Commander to arrive, as always, but when she finally does she has someone unexpected with her as well: Cross Country, the teleporter guy who originally brought me to Georgia. Are we all going somewhere?

"Alright future soldiers, against all expectations of your capabilities, all of you are finally more or less capable of practicing your powers without hurting yourself or others. You will be continuing to do so, on your own time, and you will be tested on your continual progress. But! Today, we add to the curriculum further! Today, we start pushing you past what you think you can do now to test the limits of your individual capabilities. For most of you, this will require a lot of self-direction: your abilities are unique, and so you must be involved in the process of learning how best to use them. You will be expected to write up requisition requests for anything you suspect you might need to improve your capabilities in whatever direction you think will be most effective—which is also something you will need to justify to your superiors. If we don't like something you're doing, or if we really like something you're not doing, you will have your training forcibly refocused. You may also consider this a test of your judgment; if any of us find that you are wasting your capabilities, we will not be happy. For a few of you, however, we have already set up somewhere we'd like you to start. Baker, Folbridge, Lamburg, Morgan, White! Get your asses up here! For everyone else, we'll pass you the forms."

I sigh, heading up to the front without a single drop of surprise that I'm in the special fancy group. Why would they trust me to train my own powers when they can't even trust who I am? It's all I can do to not be actively scowling when it's finally my turn to get my assignment from Commander.

"Well if it isn't today's luckiest little lady!" she greets me, every last ounce of her fake cheer making me dread this all the more. "Tell me Morgan, have you ever been to a zoo?"

Wait. What?

"A… a zoo, ma'am?" I blink.

"Yeah, a zoo! God, please tell me that people your age have at least heard of zoos?"

"I just… I didn't realize they still existed," I admit. A zoo? A zoo? Like the place they used to keep a bunch of wild animals for people to pay money to ogle at?

"Ah, I'm sure you of all people know how eccentric, rich bastards are," Commander taunts, correct for all the wrong reasons. "Yeah, there's still a private one up in Ohio, and until the aliens take Lake Erie it'll probably still be around. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you tend to have a bad time when you first encounter a new animal, but afterwards you're pretty fine, right? Seems like it'd be efficient to just get them all out of the way, in that case."

Oh. Oh, wow. That… does seem like it would be really helpful, actually. Nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. But at the same time… they're going to want me to cram as much into my head as quickly as I can, aren't they?

Cross Country holds his hand out to me without even a single word of greeting, and he activates his power the moment I touch him and let him through my domain. The disconcerting sensation of being doubled, multiplied, forcibly present in two places at once nearly makes me fall, but then it's over. Cross Country lets go of my hand, vanishes, and leaves me in a windowless room.

"Lia Morgan?" a soldier in full combat gear addresses me, causing me to flinch slightly before I stand up straight and nod.

"Yes sir, that's me," I lie.

"We've been informed this is a… training operation?" he asks like it's a question he doesn't know the answer to. Which is… weird.

"Um… that is my understanding," I nod. "We're at… a zoo in Ohio, right?"

"That's correct, ma'am."

I frown at that, expanding my domain to look the three soldiers in the room over. I twitch slightly as my body tries to become them, but I hold it back and just nab a taste of what was important: none of them have domains of their own. I'm the only person in this room with powers.

Interesting.

"...I'm the one training," I tell them. "I don't even have a rank yet, let alone an officer rank. You don't need to call me ma'am. Who are you three?"

They all glance at each other, then back to me.

"Uh, I'm Private McConnell, that's Private Jimenez and Private Larson," the first guy says.

"Hey," says Private Jimenez.

"You're… all privates?" I ask.

"Well, Private First Class, technically," he corrects. "Look, we were just told to wait here and escort whoever came into this room, and you came in with CC so I assumed you were some powered bigwig. If you know what we're doing here, I'd appreciate being informed."

Hmm. Well, I thought I was just here to pick up more forms, but I guess I'm also here to be tested. On what, I can only guess, but I'm pretty good at guessing so let's go through the list of possibilities, shall we? First and most obvious: they want to see if I run. Three unpowered Privates who don't even know who I am versus a shapeshifter capable of taking any form and shrugging off being impaled? Yeah, I could probably skedaddle under these circumstances, but even if I believed for a second that they weren't waiting for exactly that moment, I wouldn't do it. Emily relies too much on my status as Lia to avoid the very fate I'd be running from, and Anastasia, Christine, and the others need my help anyway. So if they are testing for that, well… I'll pass. Better for me to earn their trust now and use it to get what I want under superior circumstances in the future.

Next possibility: it's a practical test of everything I've already been taught. Since my primary duty as a powered member of the army is ostensibly going to be protecting unpowered soldiers with my domain… well, I could be reasonably expected to already be working on that. So I let my domain expand back over the three of them, doing my best to take calm breaths and remain in control of myself as I let every last detail of their bodies passively filter into my subconscious. If that's the test, I'll be ready for it, too.

The third test this could be is one of conduct, protocol, and decision-making. There are three low-ranking enlisted here, and none of them seem up to taking charge of the situation. But what does that mean the correct move is, here? Arguably, I don't have a rank yet, and therefore they technically do not outrank me, but common sense seems to indicate that they'd still be above me in any hypothetical hierarchy. They passed basic training, and I haven't even started it. I certainly shouldn't be acting like I outrank them and trying to tell them what to do. But at the same time… if I don't take at least a little bit of control over this situation, we're probably not going to get anywhere.

"I'm powered, just not a bigwig," I answer, standing up straight and keeping my chin angled just slightly upwards. "I'm a shapeshifter, and the forms I can shapeshift into are based on the forms I've already encountered. My instructions were to head around the facility and add the animals here to my capabilities. If you were sent here to be involved in a training operation, I'd imagine you're escorting me."

"Wait, so we just get to wander around with you and look at the zoo?" Jimenez asks.

"That's my best guess, unless you've received orders I don't know about," I answer neutrally. They knew to wait for me by name, so they're obviously here to handle me in some capacity.

"Awesome," Jimenez says, brightening up.

"You're really a shapeshifter?" Private McConnell asks, and in response I quickly shift to match his face and height before returning to Lia's. He stiffens up, but gives me a short nod. What other evidence do I need to show?

…Still, though. I don't like that they didn't know that. I don't like how little they've been told in general; it's a bad sign, in my book. Sure, there are a lot of reasons a soldier might not be informed about the full nature of an operation. Confidentiality, operational security, or maybe just the officer in charge not fucking feeling like explaining it. But maybe it's because the nature of the operation isn't something the soldiers would like. Maybe it's because the real reason I'm here doesn't have anything to do with the sort of tests you'd give a normal soldier. Maybe it's because if you tell three disposable privates that they're going to be used as a litmus test for how quickly I go The Thing when I'm no longer surrounded by threats, they might decide that getting court-martialed is an acceptable outcome to saying 'no.'

Whereas if you just put them in the situation without explanation and it all goes to shit, they just have to deal with it.

It's extremely frustrating, but I suppose that being sent off alone somewhere counting as a sign of trust was too much to ask for. I can't refute their fears with anything other than my actions, and at the end of the day, my job here is the same no matter what they believe I am. I intend to do the job as they presented it to me. What else is there?

"Well, in terms of what's likely to be the most useful… do you guys wanna start with elephants or tigers?" I ask.

"Oh, oh! Tigers!" Jimenez says excitedly, so I chuckle and motion them out of the room. I suspect it was some kind of conference or meeting room, because we exit into a hallway that seems to lead into the main entrance-slash-exit-slash-gift-shop of the zoo, full of informational displays, animal sculptures, and novelty products. A huge glass doorway along the far wall seems to lead to the zoo proper.

It's also completely empty, except for a single woman. She's dressed in what I assume is the uniform for the zoo, which looks halfway between a safari tour guide and a park ranger. She appears to be about fifty to sixty years old, and though I brace myself as she walks into my domain, I don't have too much trouble analyzing her biology. She's just human; no domain and no notable biological variations from my current collection of templates, other than age. She's surprisingly fit, but that's more surprising to me personally than it is to my power. I hang out in military complexes all day, so most of the templates in my brain are fit.

"You four are the ones I'm escorting, then?" she asks, holding out a hand for me to shake since I happen to be in front. "Rebecca Turner. I oversee management of most of the animals here."

"Good to meet you," I nod, shaking her hand. "I'm Lia Morgan, and these are Privates McConnell, Jimenez, and Larson."

"Good to meet you all as well," she responds, though her flat tone and unimpressed expression indicate that she doesn't quite feel that way. "I've been instructed to allow you into any enclosures you deem necessary."

Yeah, she pretty obviously doesn't want to do that. I give her a reassuring smile.

"That shouldn't be required," I promise her. "I can do most of what I need to do from behind the glass."

"Most of our enclosures are not walled in by glass," she frowns. "They're too big for that. It's important to give the animals space."

…Ah. Well, I guess that's good?

"I might need to get close, then," I admit. "Within… fifteen to twenty feet, or so? I don't need to give your tigers a hug. …And, um, if any of the animals attempt to give me a hug, I can survive a mauling or two. None of the animals will need to be hurt, even in the unlikely event that they attack. Right?"

I glance back at the three heavily armed men behind me and give them an intense smile until they nod in confirmation.

"Uh, r-right," McConnell stammers. "Safeties stay on, right guys?"

"Y-yep," Jimenez agrees, and Larson nods silently. Good. I close my mouth and turn back to Rebecca to… wait. Why do I have fangs? Aw, crap, I totally gave the wrong impression there. Well, whatever, Rebecca looks a lot less hostile now and that was my main goal. My mouth twitches as I blunt my teeth again and the zookeeper gives me a nod.

"That's appreciated," she nods at me. "This is the largest conservation project in the entire world, with over a quarter of the species here being critically endangered, not held in any other facility on the planet, or both. The entire Hawaii exhibit is full of animals that are no longer possible for humans to interact with in the wild. While you have the authority to do whatever you please here, superhero, I would appreciate it if you were willing to defer to me within the confines of my facility."

"I'm just a superhero-in-training," I tell her with a much-less-feral smile. "Consider yourself in charge here, and please, just call me Lia. In fact, while I'm certainly no veterinarian, the nature of my powers allows me to get a pretty intimate biological understanding of anything nearby. If there are any animals you're worried about, I'd be happy to take the time to see if I can help you confirm a diagnosis."

It's not technically part of my job right now, but it'd be the easiest argument in the world to claim that practicing using my powers for medical assistance is a good use of my time. And again, the words make another chunk of Rebecca's hostility soften.

"I appreciate that," she nods. "I suppose we have most of the afternoon, so is there anywhere you'd like to go first?"

I jerk my thumb backwards at the soldiers.

"Jimenez really wants to see the tigers," I tell her.

That almost gets a smile out of her, so I mentally mark this conversation down as an unconditional victory. Fucking finally. I'm so tired of seeing the social skills that I normally consider to be one of my greatest assets constantly going awry because everyone around me assumes I'm from another dimension or whatever.

The privates and I follow Rebecca as she leads us through the zoo. She wasn't kidding about the enclosures; they're more like… uh, enopeners, I guess, with how much empty space is inside of each of them. All of these animals sure get a lot more room than Christine and I do in our little furnished jail cell, though I guess that's a pretty sad standard to hold considering these animals will have to live here for their entire lives.

I'm tempted to stop and soak in information from everything we pass, but I figure it's not much less efficient to start with something big and impressive before moving down from there, no matter how much I really want to collect all that neat biological info right now. Honestly, I'm unexpectedly giddy about this whole thing. Still, I remain patient until we reach the tiger exhibit, raising my eyebrows as I see how completely different from every other enclosure it is. Layers of upper walkways, nets, and wide cage walls completely encase the exhibit as if they expect the tigers to fly out of the top like birds.

"So… twenty feet, you said?" Rebecca asks.

"Yes, though I might be able to stretch further in a pinch," I nod. "I assume you don't want me getting close enough to touch any of them."

"I'm not letting you into the enclosure at all," she snorts. "I'll just wave some meat near where you're standing and get them to jump nearby, yeah?"

"Ooh!" Jimenez says excitedly, and I suppress a smile. God, what a dork.

"That should work just fine," I nod. "Thanks, Rebecca."

The Siberian tigers seem sleepy and entirely uninterested in us as Rebecca heads off to get some food for them and climb into the upper walkways, attaching the meat to a long metal pole and dangling it down into the enclosure. It takes them a long time to start to care, which is honestly kind of cute. They're just huge, lazy cats, after all. It seems only fitting that it'd be a pain in the ass to get them to do anything you want them to do. But eventually, one decides it's hungry or bored enough to go after the wiggling chunk of food, so it wanders over, tenses its body for a second, and then leaps ten feet straight up into the air, snatching the meat with its mouth and front paws before landing on the ground in front of us.

Woah. It's really big. It's one thing to hear that they're ten feet long, but something about a cat nearly doubling me in size hits different this close up. Of course, I only have a split-second to acknowledge that incredibly human instinct before the information from my power overtakes it, nearly eliciting a squeal of delight from my lips as I happily devour the incredible glut of information pouring into me.

With a clamp of willpower I prevent myself from just transforming into a tiger outright and ripping my entire outfit apart, but I can't help but let a ripple of fur form and unform in a wave over my skin, a single arm shifting fully into the tiger's massive paw so I can feel the potency coiling inside of it. The hydraulic muscles of the Behemoth might have more raw power, but these designs just quintupled the maximum strength I can output via mammalian musculature, at minimum.

Of course, this is about muscular density, percentage, and distribution just as much as it's about the muscles being more efficient. As I play with the tiger-arm design, the underlying commonality is always that the limb is bigger than the human counterparts available to me, bulging with impossible-to-hide strength. Still, this is great information. I can always average, adjust, and experiment down the line to determine a more optimal distribution, but it would be easier if I…

I look up to ask Rebecca something, flinching with surprise when an excited yowl is the only noise that comes out of my mouth. Oh, whoops, haha! I'd better grow a human voicebox and face again.

"C-can you get more of them over here?" I ask successfully this time, putting all my fur away for a second time as well. "It would be useful to have more examples. Especially if some of them exercise more or less, or are different ages!"

"Uh… I'll see what I can do," she answers and I twitch my tail in excitement. …Wait, dangit, when did that get there!? Spine, get back in my ass, or so help me… ooh! Another one is coming over!

I manage to get a couple more excellent examples of tigers, including a cub, and already I'm starting to figure out where things can be optimized, where certain tigers have more or less developed muscles and therefore what developed muscles look like compared to atrophied ones… oh, this is exciting. This is so exciting!

"Are… you alright, Ms. Morgan?" someone asks, and I ignore it for a solid ten seconds before realizing that it would probably be best for me to respond.

"Huh?" I ask, jerking back to attention. Am I alright? Do I… okay, my clothes still fit, so I haven't done anything too bad. I flex one paw, feeling my claws extend and retract before shifting that limb back into a hand, growing Anastasia's claws on that hand, and then pulling those back inside as well to return to an externally human appearance.

Internally, though, I'm making some exciting adjustments. Not that anyone else needs to know about that.

"I'm good!" I assure everyone once my skin is back to looking all Lia-like. "That was a lot of useful information, is all! Uh… we can move on now, if everyone is okay with that!"

Nobody objects, and so the start of my incredible journey through the zoo begins in earnest. Every single stop is mind-splatteringly cool, my collection of interesting and useful mammals and birds growing by the hour. …The birds less so than the mammals, though, since most of them can't actually fly due to having their wings clipped. Since I'm just taking the templates, all the bird info I get is similarly disabled. Kind of disappointing and fucked up, though I guess I can probably fix it one way or another. Accelerating the wing growth, maybe, or just trying to mirror the structure based on the other wing?

Some birds of prey would definitely be cool; normal bird bodies are a bit too small for me to be comfortable trying them, and having to shift into an entire ass Wasp to fly isn't exactly acceptable in polite company. But ah well, there's plenty more cool stuff… like the elephants, holy shit! They're even bigger than the Behemoth was! Sure, the Behemoths in the Chicago incursion tended to be smaller and faster than the average Behemoth, relying more on their oversized blades than the usual size and girth of that class of alien, but still! This is the biggest living thing I've ever scanned, and absolutely everything about it is fascinating, especially the trunk. The whole thing is an astonishingly complicated collection of muscle fibers, the tip of the nose housing absolutely minuscule bunches of radially patterned muscles that allow for a mind-boggling amount of fine control, not just for an animal that large but by any standard.

This is just… a fantastic appendage! I mean, I like hands, hands are great, but something with this much strength, dexterity, and flexibility is hard to say no to. The capacity for suction is just something that a hand has no equivalent to! Sure, the trunk can't compete with fingers either, but it would hardly be impossible to create some kind of combination appendage…

"Uh, hey, Ms. Morgan?" McConnell says hesitantly. "You're doing that thing where you start twitching and laughing again…?"

"Huh? Oh. No. I'm good. I'm good!" I reassure him unsuccessfully. Which is annoying; I am very good at reassuring most people. I indignantly put my bones back into my arms so I can give him a thumbs-up. Oh whoops, claws again.

"I'm super good," I assure him again. "Sorry if my powers are creepy, but I promise that as long as I'm still standing, I'm okay."

"Are you… likely to stop standing?" he asks as I shrink my ears back down and make my skin soft again.

"Yeah, I might have a seizure or something. Which is bad, but only for me. Just give me space and I'll be alright, probably. Unless I remove my own heart or something dumb like that."

Though even then, I feel like I would probably survive somehow. I don't exactly want to find out for sure, but with my luck I probably will sooner or later.

"...Not to complain," Private Larson says, speaking up for the first time since I laid eyes on him, "but if we're supposed to stand back and do nothing regardless of what happens to you, why are we here?"

To fulfill a quota, perhaps? To be less useless on paper? That's probably the best-case scenario, because the alternative is to be used as a potential sacrifice, but hopefully the military would at least have hidden contingencies in place if they suspect I'm actually a threat. But of course, I don't say any of that.

"How should I know?" I ask. "I don't even have a rank yet, they haven't told me shit."

He nods glumly, not seeming at all surprised by the answer. Which like, of course he isn't. There's nothing a low-ranking grunt will empathize with more than 'the people in charge don't give us the time of day.' It's pretty much a get-out-of-questions-free card.

Over the next four to five hours, we drudge through most of the facility, adding everything from penguins to pangolins to my repertoire. I feel absolutely bloated with information, my body a nonstop jittery mess of new ideas and temptations to try them. And frankly, I fail to resist most of those temptations and struggle to feel bad about it. The way my flesh can just flow from one thing to the next with little more than a thought… I can't deny that it's exciting. Exhilarating, even. This is freedom like nothing I've ever experienced before.

More than that, though, it's a puzzle. It's intellectually engaging. I can really sink my teeth into this stuff, literally but also metaphorically. Every new solution leads to a new set of exciting questions. It's constant, ongoing progress towards a goal I don't even fully understand, and it doesn't matter because the method of getting there is so fun.

So who cares that my body won't stop shifting? Who cares that I'm making everyone around me increasingly concerned for my mental stability? I know I'm sane, and I'll probably never actually need to care very much about any of the people I'm with right now, and even if I do that's a problem I can just figure out later. It's fine. I'm fine.

I'm better than fine, actually. In fact, I am having a great time and it is honestly one of the weirdest experiences of my entire life. Which is… y'know, probably a thought I should talk to a therapist about. Not that I expect mine to help.

At least it'll probably be over soon. We are, after all, about to enter the aquarium complex, which apparently expanded pretty rapidly around three decades ago when whatever rich conservationist funds this place apparently determined how fucked the oceans were going to be before the government did and scooped up as many aquatic animals as they possibly could over the year or two before it was too dangerous to do so. A big part of the zoo's claim to fame is therefore this very aquarium, as while we don't have any way to know whether the species inside are endangered or extinct in the wild, they may as well be as far as humanity is concerned.

But that's somewhat less important to me than the fact that… well, it's an aquarium. And based on what I've seen in pictures and old movies, aquariums do not have individual tanks for each and every species like they do for land animals at the zoo. Aquariums have enormous, packed reefs full of hundreds of animals in the same place at once.

…But I don't really know what to do about that, so I just do my best to mentally prepare myself as I walk inside. This is, after all, a mental hurdle I'll have to overcome eventually. A soldier who can get knocked out of a fight if a flock of birds gets too close is obviously a liability, and I refuse to ever be a liability.

I will overcome this.

…For all my mental self-hype, though, when we walk into the aquarium we are, in fact, met by a series of small, enclosed tanks with only one or two kinds of animals inside. I can see big, fancy aquariums down a hall in front of us, but there's still a lot to do in the meantime. The jellyfish have a few interesting venoms but make me a little uncomfortable since they have no central brains, the sea snails have a few interesting bits but are mostly too simple for me to implement much of use, and the various crabs and other crustaceans are definite upgrades to all the information I've gathered on exoskeletons so far but nowhere near strong enough to justify removing the advantages of endoskeletal systems.

Then we get to the octopus tank. Or tanks, I suppose. There are six of them, and each one is kept alone in an entirely separate tank. I guess they don't play nice together, or with anyone else for that matter. I like them already.

"Why do you have so many tanks for these guys?" I ask.

"Because they'll either fight each other or mate with each other," Rebecca answers, "and both will cause them to die. Octopus bodies will rapidly age and deteriorate after mating, and their natural lifespans are already pretty short. In order to continue preserving them, we have to carefully regulate how they interact with each other, generally by preventing them from doing so at all."

"Sounds lonely," Private Jimenez frowns.

"I don't think they get lonely," Rebecca says. "I think the only reason they might want company is because they get bored. The damn things are smart. Really smart. They can think, solve puzzles, recognize people, and have opinions. But they're all brutal, vicious bastards. No empathy at all, just a big enough brain to act nice because they know they'll get more rewards that way."

"Is that a bad thing?" I ask, captivated by the constant writhing of the tentacles of the one closest to me, never fully idle even as it rests on the glass wall. "If they act nice, then they're nice. It's actions that matter."

"The illusion is broken when you can tell it's just manipulative," Rebecca insists with a frown. "A tiger doesn't care about hurting people in the general sense, but when you're kind to one and spend time with them enough, they will love you. It stops mattering to them that we could so easily be prey."

"But tigers are still dangerous," I point out. "Even if they care about you, they can still severely injure people because they aren't good at regulating their strength. You had to do all sorts of extra stuff just to feed them without getting hurt, right?"

"I'd rather forgive a tiger for making a mistake than try to care about an octopus that's just pretending. They're more alien than human."

"More alien than human, huh?" I repeat quietly to myself. That's such an absurd thing to say, in my opinion. What does it matter how the octopus feels if it's still less likely to hurt someone? "Seems unlikely, for a native to Earth. But I'll take anything, as long as it's useful."

I step closer, letting my domain overlap with the closest tank and start absorbing data from the cephalopod. Almost immediately, I fall to my knees, the glut of new information paralyzing me for a moment before I force myself back into a standing position, waving people away as I shakily hold my attention between maintaining awareness of my physical self and the incredible amount of new potential I have for that physical self. Suction cups, tentacles, siphons, chromatophores, venom, a distributed central nervous system, and a light-sensitive, variable-texture epidermal layer!

I can't help but try some of it out, luxuriating in the feeling of a near-perfect camouflage system on my skin that I can change and reconfigure however I desire without even using my power to do it! I want it all, of course, but today is about self-control so I force it away with the promise to myself that I'll practice later.

And yes, thank you, I am self-aware enough to know that's kind of a concerning coping mechanism. I mean for fuck's sake, that's how people treat candy. I can't have any now, but it'll be a little treat to reward myself with if I'm good! Using my power shouldn't be the sort of rush I can get addicted to, right? That can't be normal. …Not that I've ever been normal, I suppose.

I've never had the luxury of being normal. It wasn't an option for me; my body was simply too weak. Now though, my body is everything that makes me worthwhile, and it's my mind that's holding me back. After so long scraping through life with the inverse, it's beyond infuriating. Everything I thought I could put value in suddenly isn't enough, and everything I thought didn't matter is now the most valuable part of who I am. I won't let things remain this way.

The mind is everything. Superpowers don't change that; I am the one in control of my body, I am the one deciding how to use my body, and I am the one ensuring the unimaginable selection of options available to me are being utilized to their fullest potential. It's not that my body is worth more than my mind, it's just that my body has changed from a weight holding me back to a complex tool I have only begun to learn. So… it's alright to enjoy that, isn't it? To revel in mastering it? The ability to enjoy important tasks is a virtue, really.

It just means I'll naturally excel at them. It's easier to put in the work when you find it enjoyable.

So I approach the biggest tank of the aquarium, the uncountable torrent of aquatic organisms intimidating me long before I ever get my domain close. If I can just get past this hurdle, this final step of larger, more complex organisms that I haven't made templates of swarming within my domain, I'll be able to handle anything. So I step forward, and I let my power touch the first fish.

Okay. Yeah. Nothing too crazy. Being a vertebrate, there are already a lot more similarities between this animal and everything else I've scanned today than there were between me and the octopus. It's nothing I can't handle. I take another step.

More fish swim in and out of my domain now, three or four at a time, always changing. It's distracting, but not unbearable. I take another step, and another. More and more information pounds at my head at once as I get closer and closer to the glass. That's a sea turtle, an eel, a lobster, a stingray, a shark… I can do this.

"That doesn't look good."

"She said not to touch her, right?"

I can do this. There are just so many fish, though, nearly all new and unique. More fish, more sharks, more everything, more more more moremoremore…!

"I don't… I don't think she can breathe."

"What do we do, then!?"

I… I can't do this. It's too much. I have to shrink my domain but I don't remember how. I am biology and supremacy and the path ever-forward into the unknown. I am Julietta and Lia and Anastasia and anyone else whose body I have stolen. I am an unstoppable bastion of competency and a screaming, flailing child who can never amount to anything more than barely managing to pay off the burden of her existence.

"Put her in the tank!"

Do not put her in the tank. That will put me even closer to everything, and that will make the problem so much worse. I told you not to move me. Don't fucking move people when they tell you not to! Still, somewhere distant I feel that stomach-flipping experience of unasked relocation, the sensation of being carried, and then weightlessness, gravity, and frigid cold.

And then, for a little while, I stop being anyone or anything at all.

…

JOY. NothING can BE anythING.

…

When I come to, I don't know how it was ever possible for me to do so in the first place. I have nothing like a human brain anymore, my nervous system distributed across my many tentacles and at least three different animals and one alien's worth of brain matter. Something like this shouldn't even be capable of thinking my thoughts, yet here I am, thinking anyway. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.

I'm floating in the tank, my siphons pumping water over my gills as my countless tentacles—growing not from my central body (because I barely even have one) but from each other, like twigs growing from branches growing from yet stronger branches—stretch around the tank, caressing any animals that come close. I have apparently achieved both of my conflicting desires at once: returning my domain to exclusively touch-range, but also slurping up as much biological data at once as I can muster. Fuck, I hope I haven't hurt any of the animals. …No, I don't think I have. How could I? I don't have a stomach right now, let alone a mouth, and no part of my body is toxic.

That's… reassuring. Even when I'm so mentally gone I cease to be myself at all, I make sure not to hurt anything. …Or anyone. I form an eye on part of my body floating above the water and turn to look at Rebecca, who hangs calmly in the water next to me on a flotation device, her bare feet the only deviation from the now-soaked uniform she's been in all day. She kicks lightly in the water to maintain position, not flinching from the one tentacle I have firmly wrapped around her hand. …She does flinch a little when she spots the human eyeball that wasn't there a second ago, but I can't really blame her for that.

She waited here patiently for me. With me, in this freezing tank of water, all for my sake. I just gained a lot of respect for her, all at once. When I start retracting my tentacles and reforming something at least vaguely human-adjacent, it's actively difficult to not take her form, no matter how suboptimal it may be.

Ugh, how do lungs work again? Right. Right, there they go.

"...Thank you," I cough slightly, deciding to use octopus skin to make it look like I'm wearing a swimsuit as I slowly reform Lia's body. It's not perfect, but I do a pretty good job making it look more like fabric than flesh, if I do say so myself.

"For throwing you in here?" she grunts. "Because I didn't do that."

I chuckle.

"Double thank-you, in that case," I tell her. "That made everything much worse. Are all the animals safe?"

"As far as I know, they're a bit scared but otherwise fine," she answers. "Of course, we'll have to keep an eye on them."

"Of course," I agree, webbing growing between my fingers and toes with barely a thought from me as I right myself in the tank. "Uh, where do we go to get out?"

"Over here," she answers, and I follow her, climbing up the ladder after her and drinking the remaining water stuck to me through my skin to dry off.

"Do you mind if we end things here for the day?" Rebecca asks, offering me a towel for my hair.

"Not at all!" I assure her, simply returning my hair to my body to make the water fall off before re-growing it dry. "Please, get yourself changed and something hot to drink, I'm really sorry for all this."

"It's… fine," she lies, drying herself off instead. "You'll be back tomorrow, won't you?"

"Most likely," I admit. "Again, let me know if there's anything I can do to make up for the burden on your time."

"It really is fine, Ms. Morgan," Rebecca sighs. "Fighting back against the aliens is everyone's burden, and you're going to be an important part of that. If you get a handle on half of what I've seen you do, you'll be a fine superhero."

I look away, unable to meet her gaze.

"...Thank you, ma'am," I say, not really knowing how else to handle the situation. Universal counter: change the subject! "Um, how long was I in that tank?"

"Nearly an hour," she answers. "I stayed in there to make sure you were still moving and your gills were still working. Everything else was a bit over my head."

"I see," I nod. "Well again, thank you. Regardless of what you think, I feel like I owe you a debt."

"Then when they send you out there to fight the bastards," she says, "make sure you win."

Geez. No task too great, huh? Just send me off to accomplish something the entire human race has been failing at, no big deal.

Still, though…

"Will do, ma'am."

…It's not like I can say no.