Okay, all this staring is getting a little irritating. There's still a battle going on, people. Let's focus on our priorities here.

  "There are other Angels to kill," I remind my squad. "The source of that blue fire, for one. Should we just be standing around here?"

  Sí Gaoithe scowls at me.

  "We will deploy when we have orders to deploy," he snaps. "The mind-altering power is dangerous for us to interact with. We need a proper plan and coordination with the rest of our forces to take it down without more losses."

  "I’m mostly immune, though," I point out. "That's how I grabbed you out of it. I have a favorable power interaction."

  His frown deepens.

  "Well, that's good to know. I’ll inform Command. What do you mean by ‘mostly’ immune, though?"

  Hmm. Well, no reason not to explain, I think.

  "It locks up my body and tries to get me to obey, but I can override the signals it sends to my muscles via shapeshifting," I tell him. "So the power doesn't really work on me, but it does make it somewhat awkward to move around. Manageable, though. I can always just blind myself and rely on other senses, too."

  "Okay, I’ll make the report," Sí Gaoithe says. "I hope you’re not just being arrogant, but after that… well, your power is definitely something special."

  "Special is one way of putting it," Rafflesia frowns, her vine-tentacle growing steadily more flushed as it drinks her leaking blood. I can’t help but reach out and… yeah, wow! It’s linking up with her circulatory system, rejoining the severed connections and routing them through itself to maintain blood flow. That’s awesome! Rafflesia herself flinches back, though, withdrawing synchronicity and quickly blocking me out.

  "...Why’d you do that?" she accuses. "Quit staring at me."

  "Huh?" I blink. "Oh! Sorry. Your power is really neat. I was scanning it a bit. I’m glad your wound isn’t putting you in mortal danger; everything seems to have connected quite well."

  Sí Gaoithe picks us up with his power and starts lifting us into the sky while we talk. I suppose he’s gotten a report on where to head next.

  "Uh… huh," Rafflesia says. "You can tell?"

  "Well yeah, my power involves scanning biology as well as copying it. Otherwise, how would I know what to turn into?"

  "Makes sense," Rafflesia hums. "I guess it figures you wouldn’t be weirded out. That has to be the freakest fucking kill I’ve ever seen, and I’ve shoved my plants down more than a few throats."

  Throats…? That doesn't sound like a very efficient way to kill Raptors, and most other aliens don’t have throats, which means…

  "Do you do anti-supervillain work?" I ask.

  "Yeah, that’s my normal job," she nods. "But most hit squads also do Angel work during big pushes like this. Similar skillset."

  "Well, you seem to be taking the loss of your arm pretty well," I say. "Have you lost a limb before?"

  She gives me a look.

  "No, Seraphim, I have not lost a limb before," she says. "And I’ll thank you not to remind me I’ve lost one today. My arm’s stuck like this. Most everyone’s would be. Healing powers are rare, and they don’t tend to work miracles. Not like what you can do."

  Ah. That makes sense. The super that helped me survive getting my skin burned off certainly didn’t leave me in a very good position afterwards. I assumed that if there was a super capable of reversing the damage, they would just be too busy to handle every little civilian, but I suppose it’s possible that there was never anyone capable of fixing me in the first place. For some odd reason, that makes me feel a little better.

  "Apologies," I nod. "I hope it all works out well. Do you think they're going to pull you back with the other injured?"

  "I… certainly hope they do?" she says, giving me another odd look. "I lost an arm. The fact that I'm currently not bleeding out doesn't make that no big deal."

  Right. Yeah, I guess most people would react in a fairly major way to losing a limb or two. Anastasia could almost certainly survive losing an arm, but I would still pull her off the battlefield if that happened to her. Then again, I'm looking for any excuse to pull her off the battlefield in general. I'm probably biased.

  "That thoughtful look on your face implies that you consider what I just said to be insightful, and that worries me," Rafflesia says. "How long have you had your powers?"

  "Um, a few months, I suppose," I answer. Wow, it feels a lot longer than that.

  "Jesus," Rafflesia swears. "And you're already like this? Try not to forget you're human, okay kid?"

  "Does it really matter whether or not I'm human as long as I'm fighting for your team?" I sigh.

  "Yes!?" Rafflesia gapes. "I mean, that's what our team is. Humanity. It's us versus them."

  So does that make supervillains part of the 'us' or part of the 'them?' The penalty for draft-dodging certainly seems to be the same as the penalty for being an omnicidal alien, at least in cases where it's infeasible to simply kidnap and mind-control you. So does that mean anyone who doesn't agree with the military isn't human? It sure sounds like it does. But of course, I doubt it will at all help the public perception of my loyalties to start saying things like that to a professional supervillain hunter, so I decide to walk it back.

  "I don't mean it like that," I insist. "I'm just tired of everyone freaking out around me as if I've ever done anything other than kill aliens. You're all constantly worrying and asking 'what is she?' when everything you really need to know should be plainly answered by 'what has she done?' Seriously, how many Angels am I going to have to kill before I start getting treated like an asset instead of a bomb? It's almost like you'd all prefer a bomb, just so you could dispose of me and be done with it!”

  Rafflesia gives me a considering frown, seeming to judge her next words carefully.

  "It's not uncommon for superpowers to drive the user insane," she says slowly. "Particularly among very strong powers, or powers that change the user's body. You have both. I just watched an Angel almost entirely disintegrate you and you still killed it. There's no way any of your major organs survived that. You must have regrown your brain, and destroying that is usually a surefire way to down a super. Of course everyone's scared of you. The way you act, it feels like only a matter of time until you snap."

  Oh. But… I mean, I feel sane, obviously, but presumably that would be the case even if I wasn't. Except… no, plenty of my friends would have said something if I seemed to be going straight-up mad. Instead they mostly just think I’m somewhat odd, which I cannot reasonably deny but is absolutely not the same thing. I understand, intellectually, that I don't have a normal person’s response to pain, gore, and the like. But… hmm.

  "I do seem to have an instinctive level of comfort with what I am and what I can do that other people obviously don't," I admit. "It's possible that's a direct mental influence on my power’s part, but I’ve never really considered my body as more than a flawed tool since long before I gained these powers in the first place. I’m okay with doing whatever’s necessary to win, and if that means I seem a little creepy in the meantime, well… I mean, that's not nothing, I do care about what other people think, but I have so many other priorities during a war, you know?"

  She considers my words for a moment, then slowly nods.

  "Yeah, I can empathize," Rafflesia agrees, wiggling her new tentacle-arm. "I don't exactly have a good PR power myself. It's good to hear you're thinking about it, at least."

  "I assume that’s why I’ve never heard about this before?" I press. "PR reasons? Superheroes being driven mad sounds like it would be important for us to know."

  "It depends," Rafflesia shrugs. "For some people, knowing about the risks is helpful when it comes to mitigating them. For others, especially for the newly empowered, telling them there’s a chance they’ll just go mad within the next few years tends to do bad things for their mental health."

  "Ah," I say. "And I’m already considered to be at-risk in that regard. Alright. So… does this mean the brass doesn’t think I’m an Angel in disguise?"

  "You’d have to ask the brass," she answers. "I can see why they might: your power would be perfect for it, you claim to speak the alien language which is definitely suspicious because no other human can do that, and you use your power like you’ve had it for a lot longer than you claim to. Even the Angels you’ve killed could easily be a cover story; we know they infight sometimes, there's nothing stopping an Angel from happily killing other Aliens of other factions and calling it a cover story. If someone was paranoid, there’s a very good argument for it. For what it’s worth, though, I don’t think you’re an Angel in disguise. I think you’re just a really, really unlucky girl."

  I sigh.

  "Yeah," I agree. "Always have been."

  "Mmm. You’re copying my tentacle."

  "Huh?" I blink, and oh yeah! I am. It’s just so interestingly designed! A lot of very notable improvements from other tendril examples. "Well, it’s a very nice tentacle. I like it."

  She chuckles, shaking her head.

  "Yeah, you’re a scary fucking weirdo, alright. But I guess you're right; you definitely got results. You did good."

  "Uh, thank you?"

  "Are you serious?" Sí Gaoithe suddenly shouts into the radio. "Alone!?"

  Oh boy.

  "I told you I have terrible luck," I sigh.

  "No way," Rafflesia gapes. "Are they really going to make you…?"

  "They are," Sí Gaoithe scowls. "They’re sending Seraphim alone to take down the mind controller."

  Yep. It’s a win-win for them, I suppose. Either I’m strong enough to succeed, or a potential problem gets eliminated early. And honestly, I can’t say the decision is unsound? I have killed two Angels by myself already, plus a third with help, and for all I know I’m the only wing ripper with powers that resist mental control. It’s not totally stupid of them.

  "Well, orders are orders," I sigh. "It’s been an honor serving on your squad, Sí Gaoithe. If, admittedly, it hasn’t been for long."

  "What, that's it?" he looks at me incredulously. "Not even a complaint? You're being sent to die."

  "Why would I complain?" I ask. "I’m not a fan of doing pointless things."

  "God, you are one crazy kid. I know you’re tough, but not even being afraid of taking on an Angel alone is something else."

  I give him my best reassuring smile.

  "I’m never afraid anymore," I admit. "Not unless I want to be."

  "To A Cold Flame Tempts Endings: I intend to kill you next," I say at the same time.

  The humans give me concerned looks, so I suppose I didn’t end up reassuring them. Ugh. I swear, everything I say ends up getting interpreted in the worst possible light. It’s not like I’m unaware that manipulating my own emotions is potentially dangerous to my mental health. I wish people wouldn’t just assume by default that I’m going to screw it up. It’s insulting.

  "To Thief of Torn Wings: then come and find me in the smoke your people have so graciously granted my fire."

  Hmm. A huge plume of white smoke still hangs in the sky, covering the spot where the blue flames once burned. Someone must have managed to drop it there. I wonder whether the Queen’s power is unable to affect smoke, or if she just chose not to. …Or maybe, she did change it, and I just can't tell.

  I should make sure to swallow a lot of clean air so I don’t run out.

  "...Raff, give her your radio," Sí Gaoithe orders. "You’ll be sitting out the rest anyway. Seraphim, don’t break it, this time. Maintain contact. If things get too hot, bail out. This is not a do-or-die mission. There’s always another way to tackle an Angel."

  Every mission is do-or-die. It's a fucking war. I accept the radio anyway of course, Rafflesia peeling it off her helmet and radio and tossing them to me as we fly.

  "I can’t promise constant contact," I admit. "Trying to keep gear safe the whole time I fight is a lot more difficult than just fighting."

  "Just do what you can," Sí Gaoithe insists. "We’re still trying to get eyes on the Angel that used those flames, so sit tight."

  "I already know where he is," I admit. "He’s hiding in the smoke, baiting me inside. You can just toss me in that direction."

  "You saved lives today, kid," Eruption says. "Don't go throwing away yours."

  I sigh. This is getting a little annoying.

  "Why does everyone seem to be under the assumption that I am either suicidal or foolhardy?" I ask. "I have every intention to keep living. There are people I care about who need me. I respect your expertise and experience, and I appreciate that you care about my well-being, but would you please just throw me at the enemy and let me slaughter them already? We’re wasting time, and that means we’re wasting men."

  I feel my flesh twitching and shifting beneath my skin, a luxurious feeling I can’t help but lean into as anticipation flows into me. I am, I like to think, a team player. I am happy to follow orders. I am happy to work with a squad. Cooperation is one of humanity’s greatest strengths, if not its single most powerful capability. An organized, flawed plan is better than a perfect plan nobody follows. These are all things that I know to be true and respect wholeheartedly.

  But god damn, I wish they would just let me off the leash already.

  People are so annoying. They’ve always been annoying, and it’s gotten even worse since I gained powers. I might have plenty of experience being treated like a freak but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t wear on me. It’s always, always, always about making everyone else feel better, about not drawing attention to all the ways my existence makes them feel bad, about ensuring no one has to acknowledge the poor disabled kid and suffer the horrible consequences of having to look at me. How awful it is for everyone else that my skin is a revolting mess of scar tissue. How terrible for the rest of the world that I’m not fucking pretty!

  Always, always, always, hold back for everyone else’s sake. Grin and bear it, never call them out on their hypocrisy, never demand that I stop being forced to shoulder the burdens that they should be lifting off of me. But not anymore. Not today. Today I use everything. Today is finally about efficient, brutal, optimal violence. And no one will even have to suffer the indignity of looking at me when I’m hidden away in the smoke.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Just let me free already. I can do so much more than all of you if you just let me free.

  "Go, then," Sí Gaoithe sighs. "Godspeed, Seraphim."

  I feel my body accelerate and so I swallow my new gear and quickly shift into a falcon, riding the speed forward to head towards my destination. Growing larger, I inhale as much air as I can, moving it to my storage instead of exhaling before sucking in more. I have no way of knowing how much air I actually have in my meatspace, but it pays to be overprepared.

  The white plume gets closer and closer until eventually I breach the edge, immediately shifting out of raptor form and into Raptor form. I ping the surrounding area, calling for enemy force locations, and though I receive a few the smoke leaves the smell garbled and indistinct.

  Somewhat expected. I shift some more, trying to set up a brain to properly comprehend echolocation. Bats are the obvious choice to emulate; while many aquatic mammals are arguably far better at it, they are, as mentioned, aquatic. Their systems aren’t designed for open air the way bats are.

  I give myself a headache a couple of times trying to fuse alien brain matter with that of a bat’s, but it doesn’t take more than half a minute for my body to stop thrashing about and obey me properly, my brain feeding me information on where everything is around me. Good. Let’s do more. The thermal senses I have access to are a lot more limited than just basic night-vision goggles, but I’ll take what I can get. I extend a collection of thin legs to lift me off the ground, growing sensitive hairs that will detect nearby vibrations and help track anything walking along the ground. More and more, I stack on advantages as I prepare a body to find my target.

  It doesn’t need to be any good in a fight. I can become anything else any time I want to.

  I drum my legs against the ground, letting out a high-pitched squeak and getting my bearings. Oh my god, it’s so much information, it’s so neat. It’s like knowing where all my limbs are without looking at them, but instead of limbs it’s the terrain, the impacts against the ground dozens of yards away, the temperature fluctuations all around me trying to make sense of what is and isn’t alive.

  And I can tell. There’s something very close.

  "Greetings, Thief of Torn Wings," my enemy says.

  "Greetings, A Cold Flame Tempts Endings," I answer in kind.

  "This unit suspects that it will die this day."

  That throws me for a moment. I wasn’t expecting that level of… resignation.

  "That is the intention of myself and my people," I admit. "There is still time to retreat, if you wish to live."

  "Do not speak to me of what-ifs. The Council of Blasphemy lives as one and dies as one. I deny the possibility of retreat."

  The scent of corpses, victims of frozen fire, cuts through the foul smell of the smoke, and I remember why I'm here.

  "That's perfectly fine by me," I admit. "I expected to hate you. You are strange and cruel. But I find it difficult not to return some of the joy you seem to be filled with in my presence."

  "That you do not wish to reciprocate what we grant you freely only fuels our love for you ever more," A Cold Flame Tempts Endings responds. "We, too, never imagined we would find one such as you on this day, let alone among your people. It is so very rare to find one blessed by another god that nonetheless prefers Blasphemy. Of all the ways we could meet our end, this is one of the most preferable."

  Their long speech gives me time to figure out where the scent is coming from, so I step lightly that way, taking my time. As long as the smoke is down, there's no real rush as the Angel can't use their line-of-sight mental control. Vomiting up my gear, I keep an ear to the radio to make sure that hasn't changed, but there's no calls about the blue flames. Good.

  "Is that what you're here to do?" I ask. "To die in a preferable way?"

  "Negative. Though this unit may die soon, it will not be from you. Declaration: I will destroy you utterly and burn your soul to ash."

  "Bold claims. I possess doubts as to your capacity to back them up. Your flames cannot tempt me."

  Almost there. He's close. I can feel him… now! I pounce, shifting in midair from my spider-like monstrosity of a form to a mess of tentacles and claws prepared to latch onto my target and burrow into it before it can react. My body hits flesh, and I begin to devour it… only to notice it isn't accompanied by its own domain. A Raptor! Was the Angel rerouting his words through a different alien this whole time? I… suppose that is how the network functions over longer distances. Are they even in here?

  "Clever," I admit, quickly finishing my meal and switching back to my search body.

  "Denial. No particular creativity was required," the Angel insults me. "Your ignorance was the exclusive cause of your failure to identify the truth."

  "Fair enough," I answer, sensing movement from all around me as Raptors converge from all sides. I burst into several hungry maws, intercepting my prey and devouring them by latching my teeth firm and letting the rest of my skin roll over them to swallow them whole. It feels so good. I've spent so long being so worried about optimal operating forms, but I don't even need forms that function for more than a few seconds. It doesn't really matter if my heart isn't strong enough to pump blood through all this extra mass; I can shrink back down before it becomes an issue, or manually oxygenate my cells in a pinch. Basic viability as an organism is completely optional to me, merely holding merit as a noteworthy convenience for long-term body usage.

  "Confusion. It is unclear why you refer to the concept of fairness," A Cold Flame Tempts Endings says. "Response not required. No agreement or disagreement to your claim is necessary, as no god of fairness exists. A blasphemer may be as honorable or disgraceful as they desire."

  "Responding regardless. Apology: use of 'fairness' due to concept originating from native language which translated poorly. Clarification: intent was to convey a concession to the truth of your statements and an internalizing of their meaning."

  "This information is unnecessary and unimpressive."

  Wh—hey! I was being helpful! How do I tell him to go fuck himself?

  "Command: perform ineffective acts of reproduction," I try.

  "Rejection. This unit is incapable of acts of reproduction. Addendum: what?"

  "Your language's inability to convey my people's preferred methods of agitation disappoints me."

  "Territory-wide report: this unit does not care at all."

  WOW. I'm getting destroyed and we haven't even started fighting yet. I need to find this guy. A couple other Raptors leap towards me to kindly fill up my biomass, but no sign of the Angel themselves. Hmm. Wait. There. Those footsteps have a completely different weight and cadence from the Raptors around. That's my target, it's got to be.

  "Fascination," the Angel hums. "You have claimed my flames cannot tempt you, yet you run right for them."

  What? Oh. Oh! It's barely cooler than the surrounding temperature, but I can feel patches of what might very well be cold fire that I've been heading towards as I track the Angel. I avoid them as I continue to rush towards my prey.

  "Appreciation: your statement has made it much easier to find you," I snipe.

  "You remain ever welcome."

  I suddenly break free from the smoke, the fresh air feeling heavenly in my lungs. Yet all around me the world burns blue, a circle of fire that immediately captures my attention and tries to draw me in. I remove my eyes without a moment's hesitation, my other senses more than enough to do what I need to do. A Cold Flame Tempts Endings is right in front of me, behind a protective wall of fire, and I need only reach him to end this once and for all.

  "An attempt was made," I sneer, leaping over the fire, "but as mentioned, your power does little to me."

  "A curious falsehood. This unit is fascinated by your misunderstanding. You are immune to my temptations, but in what way does this make you immune to fire?"

  Our domains collide and pain erupts across my body. At first, I ignore it; it's just pain, after all. But it grows, faster and faster, spreading across the entire surface of my skin in moments. It's overwhelming, the chill sapping the heat from my bones. I've never felt anything more overwhelming in my life.

  I crash to the ground in a writhing heap, shifting rapidly to try to smother the fire, but any new body parts I grow simply catch alight. It's just pain, right? It's just pain, right!? I can handle it. I've always handled it. I can do it. I can make it stop. I just have to kill him kill him kill him kill him!

  I lunge a newly grown tentacle towards the last place I saw my prey, touching only air. He can't maintain his domain if he's dead, right? No domain, no fire. He has to be close. He has to be. I saw no wings on his body.

  But I can't see, I can't hear, I can't smell or taste. The flames devour my sensorium as quickly as I can grow it anew. I'm healing as fast as I can be burned, but I'm burning away as fast as I can heal. I numb my nervous system, but I still feel the pain, the agony clawing at me through means unknown. I no longer need to see the fire for it to tempt me to end it all.

  But no. There is a better way. I explode outwards in every direction, a net of tendrils growing rapidly into an inescapable web, eating through reserves I had thought to be plentiful with terrifying speed. Yet as I burn, I catch more food, swallowing everything that gets close as I continue my search for the source of my agony. I just need to find it, I just need to catch it! Where, where, where, where, where!?

  I devour many, but the pain doesn't cease, the domain doesn't leave. It remains all around me. Couldn't I put the fire out that way, too? By escaping the domain? I rush as fast as I can in a random direction, withering and growing as I twist around obstacles, and for a moment I feel salvation. The tip of my tendril escapes the flame, escapes the pain, but the enemy domain quickly catches up with me and sets my whole body alight once again. He must be close. I immediately reverse direction, and I almost, almost, manage to grasp my prey before it leaps away, and despite my desperate thrashing I do not find it again.

  Despair fills me, as if replacing my lost flesh. I can't escape, can I? I can't catch my target. My reserves are already dwindling down to dangerous levels, my insistence on growing and healing only accelerating my demise. I want to move, to fight, but it's hard to even think in the overwhelming agony. Shuddering, I shrink down, trying to let less and less of me experience the pain, but even a concentrated domain doesn't put out the flame. It digs deeper and deeper into me, peeling away at consumed skin, muscle, and bone. Soon, my brain catches fire, and the pain quickly stops.

  It's like coming up for air after nearly drowning. Without my brain, I can think again! I can't feel anything, of course, not without a nervous system, and what little is left of my body is still on fire. But the agony and the desperation is gone. There is no longer anything left that can experience it.

  Shrinking my domain doesn't help, so why not expand it instead? Power pours into me, indignantly defying the attempt to consume me whole, and I reach my domain in every direction at once, analyzing as much as I can, as fast as I can. My power grows so thin that the Queen takes hold of me, corrupting my flesh into a dark opposite, but what does it matter to me? Why should I care if my blood is poison, my bones are liquid, and my skin is steel? It's still mine. I can turn it back whenever I want.

  And speaking of mine, I find my prey. It hides on a rooftop, watching me burn. The body could not be anything but an Angel; five radial legs like a hand skittering across the ground on its fingers, my meal is impractical and grotesque, its body designed to be a prayer first and a machine of war second. What an insecure god Blasphemy must be, to demand such idiocy of its followers.

  Like the crack of a whip, I grow towards my target. The flesh I extend cannot even be called a tentacle; it has no muscle, no blood, no viability as an organ or organism. But it is a pathway along which my true self travels, ascending the wall of the house with a spider-like grip toward my victory. The tail end of my body unforms as quickly as the front end grows, and so A Cold Flame Tempts Endings likely sees nothing but a patch of their own burning blue rushing towards them very, very fast.

  The surprise makes it jump away too late. By the time it reacts, I'm already reaching out to grab it. I have no time to waste on this kill. I go for the eyes, drill deep into the socket, and tear the brain asunder with a perfect accuracy afforded only by my perfect knowledge of their body.

  The flames wink out, and I ravenously engulf the carcass, ripping it apart to sate a deeply terrifying hunger. I almost died. In some ways I did die, much like I died in the process of killing the last Angel, but this time it almost cost me everything I had. Months and months of accumulated biomass, burned away in minutes. I came dangerously close to having no body left at all, no remaining reserves to restore from, and I have a strong feeling that truly would be the end of me.

  I can't risk that happening again. I can't. Carefully, fearfully, I reform myself a fully functional body, bracing for an overwhelming pain that never comes. Vomiting up my radio again, which I find miraculously intact, I call in my report.

  "Control, this is Seraphim. Target eliminated. The blue fire is extinguished for good. Over."

  "Acknowledged, Seraphim. RTB to await further instructions, over."

  Back to base? No.

  "Control, this is Seraphim. Unable to comply," I respond. "Hostiles in the area are preventing a safe retreat. Requesting permission to eliminate unpowered enemy forces."

  There's a pause.

  "Throwing your request up the line, Seraphim, please stand by."

  I wait, my hunger gnawing at me with desperate urgency.

  "Seraphim, you are cleared to engage. Please do not drop radio contact."

  Oh, thank god.

  "Understood, Control. Fair warning, I'm going to stop looking pretty for this one. I'd appreciate it if you could get the boys to not waste ammo on me."

  Another pause.

  "…Acknowledged, Seraphim. Over."

  "Seraphim out."

  I take a deep breath and let it out, pulling the radio and helmet inside my torso to help prevent it from getting destroyed again. Reconnecting to the alien network, I exhale the loudest message I can send.

  "Request to all units: WHERE ARE YOU!?"

  Responses come in waves, and I start to hunt.

  In terms of helping the other troops, the most effective targets to kill are the ones trying to wait in ambush. I make my way closer to the front lines, punching into occupied buildings along the way to devour the Raptors hidden inside. I counter their tailmaws with a half-dozen of my own, a rising, ravenous hydra tearing them apart in droves. With Wasps, I need to be a lot more careful, not wanting to waste even a single pound of flesh. I ambush them by shrinking down and slithering close, restraining them and killing them with precise stabs to avoid puncturing the acid glands. I eat around them, leaving nothing left but the caustic organs as I move on to my next meal.

  Something almost akin to panic starts flowing through the alien communications, with most of their commanders dead and an unstoppable monster chewing its way through their ranks. I'm far from the only threat, of course, the rest of the battlefield seeing excellent progress on the human side, the major threats having been systematically cleaned out. But no one else can boast of having killed three of their god's chosen, so the air fills with despair as reports of my kills waft out from everywhere I walk.

  Using raw shapeshifting to move is freeing like nothing else. There are faster ways to get around, with many body plans sprinting or flying much more quickly than I can grow, but the flexibility it adds as yet another option to parkour across rooftops, rush through small gaps, adjust and shift in thousands of small ways that make nearly every movement just a little more effective than before cannot be overstated. The realization that I do not necessarily need a body to be intrinsically functional on its own has me crafting countless new ideas for forms as I carve my way through Blasphemy's worshippers. Using an armadillo's body to crash through a window? No need. I can simply become a sphere of bone, a living cannonball to crash through targets without needing to eat, to sense, to breathe. I am evershifting motion. I am unparalleled freedom. I am infinite possibility, and my domain sings with strength.

  So kind of my enemies to set up this buffet to celebrate me.

  When I have enough mass to grow comfortable with it, I start shifting into larger and larger bodies. Size assists greatly with speed and reach, and I want to reach as much food as I can, as quickly as I can. I want to sate my hunger to such a degree that I will never have to fear death again. My warpath takes me close to the frontlines, crashing into an active battle as a chaotic mass of hungry maws, consuming the aliens in moments and leaving with dozens of new bullet wounds for my trouble. But what does it matter, in the end? I swallow the bullets, too.

  I am Seraphim, the human Angel, and I will not allow this society of overgrown edgelords to hurt my people any further. I have offered quarter plenty of times now. If they intend to fight to the end, then it is an end that they will reach.

  I'm not totally sure how long my rampage lasts. I've never had this much fun before. I know that should be concerning, enjoying the slaughter of countless people to this degree, but what do I really get from making an effort to resent something that I'm supposed to be doing? I know it's still sad, to force this society to nothingness, but is that not the ultimate goal of war? To craft a tragedy so great that no one left has any will to continue fighting? I am, objectively, a monster. But it is not as though these aliens didn't annihilate the entire population of St. Louis when they claimed it for themselves. They have sown, and so now I reap.

  I wish we could have all gotten along, but I don't mind the consolitory feast.

  A blood-red flash catches my attention, and I leap over a group of Raptors praying to their god and descend on the fight in the street over. Raptors and Behemoths swarm the humans' entrenched position, and I doubt they stand much of a chance. The aliens, that is. Without Angelic support, whatever enemies the machine guns fail to rip apart get easily taken care of by Anastasia.

  Though of course, I'm obviously going to lend a hand anyway. Or a tentacle. Or twenty.

  I dance through the remaining opposition, going for quick kills over efficient consumption for the first time since beginning my rampage. There are a startling number of Raptors here, perhaps sensing the threat that my little girl poses, the swarm of them actually starting to overrun her position as I make my way closer. Six different Raptors pass a line created by the machine guns, Anastasia quickly dealing with five of them. I descend on the sixth, dropping into the middle of the encampment and wrapping my entire collection of tendrils around the infiltrator, crushing and swallowing it all in one motion. I move onto Anastasia next, tendrils reaching towards her.

  The immediate reaction from almost everyone around us is panic, every soldier moving to try and intercept, knives out to prevent crossfire. Why the hell are these dumbasses… oh, right, Anastasia's the only one who can feel my domain. As my tendrils wrap around her shoulders I shift them into arms, hands, a body and a head and all the other unnecessary things one needs to look human. Then, I wrap her in a big hug.

  "Ana! Hey, I see you're doing great."

  Half a dozen knives sink into my back, which is very rude. I wrap them up in flesh and eat them, shooting a brief glower at the soldiers. Anastasia giggles and squeezes me back.

  "That was so cool!" she exclaims. "I had no idea you could move like that! You were like 'Graah! Smash! Bam bam bam! Homph!'"

  I laugh, giving her one more big squeeze before putting her back down. The human body might be unnecessary, but that doesn't mean I don't love certain parts of it. Nothing enjoys a hug from family quite like the human brain.

  "S-Seraphim?" one of Ana's squadmates asks hesitantly. Like it's a question.

  "Nah, I'm the other shapeshifting wing ripper personally acquainted with Vermillion," I answer, rolling all of my eyes at him, including the ones on my wings. He gulps.

  "Control told us to tell you to, quote, 'get on the damn radio,' end quote," he reports.

  Oh. Right. I was supposed to stay in contact. Ugh, that's really frustrating. I can't believe I failed such a basic instruction. My high somewhat diminished, I form the radio and pull it out of my chest, finding it half-melted and mostly nonfunctional. I think… I think I might have tried to digest it. Oops.

  I clear my throat.

  "Uh, mind if I borrow your radio, Private?"

  "Go ahead, ma'am."

  Awkwardly, I accept it as he hands it to me and make my report.

  not wish you were a werewolf or a mothwoman or an ever-shifting mass of free-forming flesh. I, myself, would greatly prefer a body beyond the one I'm forced to inhabit. But as a professional imagination-user, I would be remiss not to extol the virtues of what we as humans already are. You're not going to hear me say that much. It's not really my main platform, but even my main platform is something best enjoyed in moderation. The world is beautiful, and so are you. You can embrace that without giving up on dreams.