I wish I had a better plan than just 'gain altitude.'

  My borrowed instincts insist that it is an important first step, and the logic is sound. Acid spit isn't pressurized enough to fight gravity for long, nor is it particularly aerodynamic. This is a bomb, not a bullet or missile. Wasps are slow enough that acid spit can be used in air-to-air combat, but only from an altitude advantage. My opponent is a lot faster than a Wasp, and therefore currently a lot faster than me, but if I can get gravity on my side I should have plenty of bird forms that can hypothetically pick up enough speed to close the distance with this Angel and put them out of my misery.

  Unfortunately, the Angel knows this, so they are simply also gaining altitude, and I have no idea what to do about that. I am outclassed in both skill and physiological design, which is really annoying, but what other choice do I have? I need to find some way to bait the Angel into making a bad move and allowing me an opening. I don't deserve this win, so I need to fight dirty.

  The Angel vomits out a glob of acid, forcing me to dodge to the side, but a burst of excitement from them has me immediately regretting the decision. My squad is still below me! Anastasia is forced to block the shot with a shield of her own blood, which is rapidly eaten through and rendered useless, draining her supply. Shit, I need to get away and draw the Angel… no. They wouldn't even follow me, would they? They would make a point of killing the rest of my squad first, just for fun.

  My enemy shoots again, and they're even more delighted to see me take it head-on this time. God this fucking hurts. Worse, even with my ability to rapidly reform the damaged areas, I still lose a lot of height. This isn't sustainable, but what else can I do? Ana is going to run out of blood long before the Angel runs out of acid, but I can't defend her and attack at the same time.

  "So unnervingly uncommunicative," the Angel sends between bursts of entertained joy. "Will you not at least share your pain and injury? Inform me the degree to which you suffer."

  Why does this jerk jabber so much while they're fighting? Ugh, I know the answer to that. It's partially because they're a freak, but mostly because constantly projecting everything on their minds is pretty normal for aliens. Despite the fact that I'm an enemy combatant, this Angel fully expects me to obey their orders to chat, because that's just what aliens do. The concept of privacy is barely even acknowledged in their culture, and usually isn't considered to be possible.

  So… I could probably just lie, right?

  "Not at all," I tell them. "This aggression is irrelevant to me."

  "Confusing. Your actions indicate a desire for their continued survival."

  "Observe my disregard," I respond, twisting around and firing my acid cannon directly at Anastasia. Her eyes widen as the shot accelerates towards her, but then a grin lights up her face. The projectile reaches the edge of her domain and halts in the air, the enormous glob of her own blood that I just loaded my weapon with having successfully reached its target. That should be more than enough to defend against the remaining ground troops.

  "…That payload appears to be exclusively beneficial," the Angel remarks, seeming irritated.

  "You have assembled this belief exclusively through ignorance," I brazenly gaslight them. "Your intelligence is lacking and your aesthetics are displeasing to the eye."

  The Angel gets substantially more irritated, which is hopefully a good thing because it's part of my plan now.

  "Contradiction," they accuse angrily.

  "I am not performing a contradiction," I gaslight them some more. "You are simply performing a failure."

  "Insolence!"

  "Negative. Observation."

  They furiously fire another acid glob in my direction, which I comfortably dodge by shifting into a bird and swooping out of the line of fire, making rapid distance and hoping my taunts are enough to get the Angel to follow. Thankfully, they do, allowing me to make the necessary space to safely ascend to their altitude. Or so I thought, but the moment my bird form starts outspeeding what the Angel should be capable of, the damn thing folds its wings and starts flying without using them, accelerating towards my position frighteningly quickly.

  Okay, change of plans! There's no way I can outmaneuver this thing in the air, but now that I'm away from my squad I might be able to force it to engage on the ground. I'm not super worried about getting swarmed by Raptors when I rush into a building; frankly, as long as I can eat their corpses fast enough, it's unlikely that they'll remove more of my biomass than they replenish. Wasp acid and superpowers are the only two things that I'm actually worried about chewing through my reserves, and while the Angel unfortunately has both, most of the alien ground troops have neither.

  I swoop towards a window, remind my bird brain that windows are still solid at the last second, and quickly shift into an armadillo before impacting the glass, mostly as a panic pick. The organic armor plates aren't anywhere near as effective as I was hoping they'd be, and I still shatter nearly all of my bones when I hit the floor, but those are both mild problems at worst. I rise into my humanoid combat form as I shapeshift away the damage, sniffing for nearby enemies.

  Luckily, the house smells empty. I quickly head for the kitchen by force of habit, opening up the cupboard and surprisingly finding quite a bit of food still in it, though most of it has been ransacked or rotted. The canned foods are almost entirely untouched, though. I get that a Raptor would probably struggle to use a can opener, but they could probably just bite them open. I guess they haven't bothered. Well, waste not want not.

  I drop a cylinder of tomato soup concentrate down my throat as I listen for the telltale hiss of acid eating through the ceiling. A new plan bubbles slowly up in my mind, pieces of the puzzle coming together to assemble a flowchart to victory. Step 1: Hide out in one of the copious nearby buildings. 1a: The Angel follows me to fight me mano a mano. I eat them or something. (I'm just sort of hoping and assuming that I can succeed if I manage to get the fight on my own terms, but I can worry about that when I get there.) 1b: The Angel refuses to follow me and instead vomits acid to destroy my cover. At this point, I simply retreat to more cover and repeat Step 1 until the alien engages in melee or runs out of vomit. As long as I keep them angry enough that they don't just leave and do something else, there's no way I'll run out of buildings before they run out of spit.

  A steady noise above me creaks and groans, indicating that we are dealing with a 1b situation. It doesn't quite sound like how I'd expect acid to sound, but instead more like the house is being caught in a windstorm and the wood is straining to remain in place. …Yeah, this is probably not good. Should I exit to figure out what's going on, or do I just—

  With a wood-tearing snap, my answer is chosen for me. The roof of the house I'm hiding in rips itself off its foundations and accelerates into the sky, passing by the Angel before ultimately tumbling back down to the ground on the other side of the street. I quickly dodge to the side as another glob of acid gets fired my way, but the projectile swerves in midair and hits me in the chest anyway. I drop every part of my body that got struck, quickly reforming it and ducking behind the broken remains of a wall to block the next shot. What the hell!? Does this thing just have telekinesis? What's blasphemous about fucking telekinesis!?

  "You flee, but you do not let me taste your fear!" the Angel sneers. "Must you ruin the happy day this was to be?"

  "Yeah, I do that a lot," I tell them. "I was infamously unfun at celebrations until I figured out how to be unobtrusive."

  "That is not an enjoyable sadness," the Angel responds, actually seeming like they're empathizing? Which is not where I thought this conversation was going to go.

  "What can I say? When people start falling out of the sky and slowly driving your species to extinction, life tends to get a little sad. If you don't like it, you can always stop killing us."

  "I decline your proposal, though once again offer you a haven within the pull of Blasphemy, after the elimination of all you once knew and worshiped," the Angel responds, hucking another deadly glob of flesh-eating liquid at my face.

  Sorry dude, I'm just a cynic, not an outright contrarian. That's a solid no-go.

  "I reject the self-destructive farce you call Blasphemy," I tell him. "I worship nothing and no one. There are values which ought to be profaned, but profanity itself is not a value. It is a zealotry of the very breed that you deride, and I have no patience for the hypocrisy of your devotion. I will support any who support me and blaspheme any who stand in my way, be they Possibility or Blasphemy itself. I do not care that you reject the gods. I never acknowledged them in the first place. Now cease breathing at me, and die."

  Silence, or at least the olfactory equivalent of it. Even the rain of acid halts as I finish my response. I don't have time to get comfortable, though, because the air soon fills with incandescent rage.

  "Wasp squadrons, ascend. Groups three, five, seven to my position."

  I spit out my radio.

  "Seraphim to Control, Wasps are on the move, over."

  "Acknowledged, Seraphim. Please confirm your status, over."

  "Still engaging the Angel. Power appears to be some kind of versatile telekinesis, notable Strike and Transit, possibly Artillery. Ripped a roof off of a damn building. Armor rating unknown; they haven't let me get close so far, but Leonidas clipped them with a shot while they were focusing their power elsewhere. Over."

  "You're too far forward for reinforcements, Seraphim," Control informs me. "A power like that will crush any birds we try to send your way. You have permission to disengage. Over."

  I hesitate. Wouldn't that just reset the situation to where it was before…?

  "I can continue delaying this target, Control," I tell them, ducking to avoid another splash of acid. "They're good and mad. Anywhere I run to, they're going to follow. Over."

  "Acknowledged, Seraphim. Be advised that the enemy has the sky."

  Boy do they. A buzzing roar fills my ears as Wasps hidden around the city rise into the sky, assembling into formations to begin their bombing runs.

  "Understood. Seraphim out."

  Wasps occupy an irritating corner of this particular game of Rock Paper Scissors Gun. Helicopters beat Wasps. Angels beat helicopters. And while I hopefully beat Angels, Wasps beat me. Even without their powers, this Angel is annoying because they can fly and spit acid. Even if I can beat a Wasp one-on-one, what about one-on-five? One-on-ten? One-on-fifty? I'll be out of places to dodge and out of biomass faster than you can say 'Br?nsted–Lowry.'

  So what do I do? The Angel has me beat in the skies, but I clearly can't do much to them from the ground. I might be able to outmaneuver Wasps and prevent them from ganging up on me, but there's no reason to believe the Angel can't just accelerate them directly at me the same way they have with themselves and everything else. Come on, what tools do I have at my disposal? I need to figure something out!

  I regrow my wings, inflating one arm to summon my gun as well. Detaching my domain from my body like the Angel does would be doubly stupid; if it didn't already cause my brain to stop functioning the Queen would certainly be happy to help me with that. Still, I might be able to take advantage of the trick where they shape their domain into something long and thin in order to create a firing line. And even if not, well…

  The Angel spits at me as I rise into the air, and I respond with a burst of bullets. The projectiles inflate into rapidly crumbling foam tumbleweeds as the Queen's power inverts them on some weird conceptual level, and while this makes them terrible projectiles they serve as adequate shields. The acid eats through them in moments, but they halt its momentum in the process, giving me a much broader window to get out of the way.

  The Queen could almost certainly choose not to corrupt my projectiles at basically any time, of course, so I always make sure to aim them at my enemy just in case she wants to try and help out.

  Altitude is still a problem, of course. I can't make up the difference in maneuverability by just trying really hard (and isn't that the story of my life), which means I have no choice but to lean on the one skill—I suppose it would be more accurate to call it a 'natural talent'—that I've tried to avoid using for most of my life.

  Pissing people the hell off.

  Alien brains are noticeably less emotional than human brains, which is why I like them so much. It's much easier to remain in a rational mindset during high-stress situations when using them. Some aliens barely even feel certain emotions at all, like Raptors and fear. But Angels are different. Raptors have a neutered fear response because they are designed to react quickly and immediately to orders no matter how suicidal. Angels, on the other hand, are significant investments. Whatever method is used to create them, they're clearly a rare commodity, and as a result they need to be able to preserve their own well-being above that of others. That's what fear is good for, so they can feel it. I'm not totally clear on what anger is supposed to be good for—zealotry, I presume—but if you want to erode someone's rationalism and self-preservation, that's the emotion to focus on, and boy howdy have I proven Angels can get mad.

  "That is quite a lot of help to summon just for me," I muse. "You feel rage, but you should feel shame. You are pathetic. Blasphemy weeps at your orthodoxy."

  "There is no need for a shame that I will wash away with your blood," the Angel silently howls.

  "But there will be no blood, and certainly not for you. You gather your lessers to fight me, because even with your gifts, they exceed you."

  Without warning, I feel the Angel's domain suddenly surround me. I keep my own tight against my body, ready to ward off intrusion, but the power suffuses the air around me until a sense of sudden vertigo twists me around in the sky, my body tumbling into a spiraling freefall as my wings suddenly start to beat the wrong way. I'm falling! How did—

  A building's roof passes by underneath me, and I realize I'm not falling towards the ground, but parallel to it. Then, my body exits the Angel's domain, and I am once again forced to right myself as gravity returns to the proper direction.

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  Gravity? Not telekinesis? Well, I suppose they accomplish the same thing in practice, at least in a broad sense. The Angel isn't picking things up so much as violently causing them to fall in a direction of their choosing.

  I can work with that.

  "Are you quite certain you are a Blasphemer?" I ask. "The evidence appears to indicate you worship the god of Failure."

  Their response is wordless fury, along with… amusement? But not from my Angel. My taunts have started to get my foe's own allies to laugh at them. Perfect. I feel another tug of gravity take hold, this one yanking me in a different direction, so I shift into a bird, tuck in my wings, and let myself dive sideways.

  A swarm of Wasps are in position, waiting for me. Well, that's another good opportunity for an insult. I do my best to weave around them as I speed by, avoiding any direct collisions with their bodies but still getting splattered with a couple globs of acid. I slough off my epidermis, regrowing my feathers mid-flight.

  "I detect denial. Apologies for the mistake. Upon further review, you obviously worship Legion."

  The Angel's power flings me towards the ground, but birds are famously good at ignoring that particular problem and I've built up quite a bit of speed. Snapping my wings out, I launch myself outside the Angel's domain, getting more distance before beginning to circle my target in a wide arc.

  "Had I known your true allegiance," I continue to taunt, "I would not have come out all this way to fight you alone. But clearly, your god prefers that you outnumber your foe."

  The abject fury of my target builds, and the surrounding amusement of their peers does too. I've inadvertently started a show, the Queen's gaze heavy on my wings. Again, I am thrown around by gravity, but this time it's not towards any reinforcing units. Just one last push.

  "Come, you who claim to love Blasphemy. Is that unique body of yours so weak that you cannot profane me yourself?"

  With one final tug, gravity shifts and multiplies manyfold, finally yanking me in the one direction I've been waiting for this entire time: directly towards my target.

  And I haven't just shifted into any bird. I'm a peregrine falcon.

  By the time the Angel realizes their mistake, I'm already going too fast. Though a quick reversal of gravity slows me considerably before impact, I still finally make contact, slamming into my target's body dead-on. The extreme difference in current mass means that I may as well be impacting a brick wall, and my avian body just about splatters on impact, my brain briefly blacking out before I reshift the entire structure, twisting my shattered limbs into tentacles and wrapping the Angel tighter and tighter as I gain more and more weight.

  Gravity splits between us, the Angel's body being pulled one way while my body gets pulled in the other, but I hold on tight and just allow my rapidly-increasing mass to force the Angel to fall in my direction. After all, they can no longer do anything but fall: I have my limbs wrapped so tightly around their wings that the frail things have long since broken. And the larger I get, the more muscle I can add.

  "No!" The Angel shrieks. "No! You!"

  They try to spit acid at my flesh, uncaring that they'd be caught in the burn as well, but my domain worms its way into their body and tells me exactly where to puncture the glands. A blade grows on one of my arms and drives itself deep into the Angel's chest, detaching while the acid leaks out with abandon.

  "I'll kill you!" The Angel howls.

  "If that is your goal, I must have been right the first time," I answer. "You clearly worship Failure."

  I make another blade, a larger blade, and thrust it into the Angel to puncture their hydraulic pressure tank. The explosive release of fluid tears an even larger hole in their body, and the hold their domain has on gravity crumbles along with my enemy's consciousness. We fall back towards the Earth, impacts shaking us as we crash through a wall and bounce off of the ground. I ride the body the whole way down, using them to cushion my landing.

  And then we stop, the only sound is my own breathing.

  "Report: this unit (Thief of Divine Love) is dead."

  Dead. Dead! I can't stop my body from making the celebratory shift into a new template, and frankly, I don't particularly want to. The Angel of Blasphemy's instincts light up in my mind, the communications suffusing the air suddenly gaining that much more nuance.

  Ah, yes. I should also make my report, as well.

  "Report: this unit (Thief of Torn Wings) is victorious."

  The air churns in tumultuous answer.

  "So noted."

  "So noted."

  "So noted."

  "SO NOTED! PROPOSAL TO COUNCIL: MAY THE THIEF OF TORN WINGS BE CONSIDERED AN ALLY TO BLASPHEMY, AND SO BE GRANTED ARMISTICE WITHIN WAR."

  "Agreed."

  "Agreed."

  "Agreed!"

  "Agreed."

  "AFFIRMED. WELCOME, THIEF OF TORN WINGS. WE GRANT YOU REST THAT YOU MAY ENJOY THE FRUITS OF YOUR VICTORY."

  What? What the hell!? I shift back to my Seraphim form to recover at least a little bit of human brain to feel less insane with as I figure out what the fuck is going on here. My heart hammers like a drum, my breaths heavy from adrenaline.

  "Confusion? But thank you, I think?"

  "YOU ARE AND SHALL ALWAYS BE FOREVER MOST WELCOME!"

  Oh. Okay. Shit. I don't know whether or not it's a good thing to be beloved by Blasphemy, but I'll take it I guess? A reprieve is… nice. Ah, I'm still standing on a corpse, I should get off of it maybe. The damage I dealt to them has the body leaking all over, a puddle of blood and hydraulic fluid spreading out from the enormous hole blown through their side, exposing ravaged organs. Should I eat them? Do I have time to? My reserves are a lot lower after that fight, but I could keep going if necessary.

  …Is it necessary. Okay Julietta, calm down and think. I fought the Angel, got it away from my squad, and killed it. What am I supposed to be doing now? Ah! Right. I need to tell Command about all of this.

  I spit out my radio, turn it on, and hear… nothing. It and my entire helmet are corroded to hell, eaten away by acid. Crap. Is all of my gear…? I vomit out my stuff and find none of it to be in usable condition, not even the gun. Did I eat some of that Angel's acid without even thinking about it? When did I do that? Not that much got in my mouth.

  Well, whatever. It's time to head back to base, or maybe just find Anastasia. Anyone with a radio, I guess, but Anastasia would be preferable. I stretch out the phantom soreness from my wings as I walk around. Where the hell am I, anyway? I am… a lot farther away from the fighting than I thought.

  I suppose that's what happens when you're thrown around by superpowers for the better part of ten minutes. I guess I should get walking. I could just fly back, and maybe I will, but I just kind of feel the need to have solid ground beneath my feet for a little while. That was… a lot.

  I killed my second Angel. Wow. Well, I'm definitely not getting assigned to a normal squad again, that's for sure. I wander down the street, marveling at the surrounding destruction. We were moving sideways very fast when the Angel finally lost consciousness. I think we might have crashed into the wall of that house, judging by the enormous hole in it. I'm hungry. Maybe I should turn back and eat that—wait.

  Who the hell is that?

  Through the torn-open wall of the partially destroyed house, I can see a small dining room. The furniture inside, like most of the furniture left behind in incursion zones, is untouched. If the aliens have any use for it, they have yet to disassemble this particular area of the city. But unlike most furniture, one chair in particular has a rather androgynous human being sitting on it, sipping what appears to be a freshly steaming cup of tea.

  They turn to me with a smile.

  "Hey Jules," they greet me. "Been a while, huh?"

  What the actual… what the… what… huh!?

  "In-Joke!?" I gape at them. "What the actual fuck are you doing in the middle of an incursion zone?"

  "Same thing as you, I suspect," they answer. "Just enjoying a bit of respite within an ally's territory. The Council of Blasphemy really is quite hospitable if you're fucked up enough."

  I blink, gears slowly turning in my head. Allied with the Council of Blasphemy? How would they even speak to the Council of Blasphemy? Did they need to, or did they just have to walk inside and sacrifice a baby or something?

  Wait, more importantly, why are they in that specific house? There's no way that's a coincidence. They must have some kind of precognition. 'In-Joke.' The name is entirely based around knowing things other people don't. Precognition and something else, maybe? They have the same god I do, and my god is apparently Possibility, so are they looking into possible futures? Do they get to determine possible futures? Sitting in a collapsing house seems like an enormous risk to take just for a flex, so their power probably made them certain they would survive some way or another.

  "Hello? Nothing to Jules?" In-Joke calls out to me, snapping my attention back to them. "You doing okay, sweetheart? That was a nasty fall."

  Am I going to have to fight them? I don't want to fight them, I'm so tired. But they're not doing anything aggressive…

  "It wasn't so bad," I tell them. "I had a cushion."

  They chuckle obligingly, like they didn't think it was that funny but wanted me to think they did.

  "Well, I wish I could say the same for these chairs, but the tea is quite good. Come have a cup! You've never had tea before, right?"

  "…Sure I have," I answer, but the too-knowing grin on their face doesn't waver.

  "Right, right. But this will be your first time tasting it. Don't worry, this is your favorite."

  "Do you really have nothing better to do than make ominous declarations?" I ask, and their smile dips a little.

  "Ominous? Oh, I guess I can see how that would be a little ominous. But it's just tea! Come on, take a load off, the caffeine will help."

  I narrow my eyes. This feels very different from the first time we talked. Is this even the same person? They certainly look like the same person, and they have that same smug fucking grin.

  "Is it poisoned or something?" I ask.

  They respond with a slow, drawn-out blink and another sip from their cup.

  "No," they answer. "It wouldn't even work on you if it was. Look, I get that I was a little… aggressive last time we talked. I regret going for the hard sell. So let's just, uh, start over, shall we? We could be friends, right Julietta?"

  I frown. I don't like this weirdo, but I suppose I don't really want them to be my enemy. Reluctantly, I make my way towards the table, still trying to figure out what exactly is going on here.

  "The problem with a hard sell is that it tends to poison any attempt at a soft sell in the future," I tell them idly, sitting down opposite to them after crawling over what's left of the wall.

  "Hence why I regret it," In-Joke answers, pouring me a cup and passing it over.

  "This entire situation is crazy," I continue, noticing In-Joke wince. Problematic word choice? I suppose I wouldn't be surprised if this weirdo had sanity problems. "Who even are you? Why'd you come out all this way to meet me when I'm exhausted and alone?"

  "Didn't I introduce myself last time? I'm In-Joke," In-Joke answers. "And I came out here to… I came out here to…"

  Their gaze unfocuses a little, signs of panic briefly crossing their features before their attention snaps back to me all at once.

  "I came out here to invite you to a tea party, I suppose! Haha! I guess I just changed my mind and decided I didn't want you to be upset with me."

  I frown, not really knowing how to take that.

  "You seem to know a lot about me," I prompt.

  "More than anyone!" In-Joke confirms happily. "But don't think you're too special, I could say the same about a lot of people. I mean, not that you aren't special, but you're not that special. In the general case. And most specific cases!"

  "…Okay," I answer, deciding not to press too hard over apparent nonsense. "Well, I don't know anything about you. I don't even know if you're male or female. Or neither, I guess."

  "Yeesh. No wonder Christine doesn't come out to you."

  "What?" I blink. I already know Christine is gay.

  "I suppose you could consider me neither. Or both. Or one or the other, really, I think at some point I just ran out of the ability to care. Overall, though, I like to consider myself some secret extra thing. It adds to the sense of mystique that is one of my few remaining pleasures."

  "It sounds like you're older than you look," I prod.

  "Mmm. The reality, I suppose, is that I feel older than I am. But enough about me, I'm boring, and horrible. How have you been getting along? Do try the tea before it gets cold."

  Eh, why not. I take a sip. Shit, it's actually really good. It's like… spicy water. I mean, I guess that doesn't sound good, but it is.

  "I don't know. Bad?" I answer, because fuck it, why not be honest to someone who seems to know anyway? "I'm in the middle of fighting a war and trying to manage the mental health of a nine-year-old child soldier. Also I just killed somebody and all of their former allies got really excited because of it and want to be my friend, which is a little fucked up."

  "Ha-HA!" In-Joke suddenly laughs loudly. "Yes! Imagine someone wanting to be your friend over something like that!"

  Well that's certainly a way to respond.

  "…Are you trying to be my friend?" I squint at them.

  "No! Well yes. No. Maybe. But not because of the killing-an-Angel thing, although that was really cool."

  "You already knew it was going to happen," I frown. "Because you were already sitting here. Waiting for me. With a freshly brewed pot of what you claim is going to be my favorite tea. …Am I never going to find a tastier drink than this?"

  "No, sorry, this is the best one," they answer. "I'll send you the brew sometime."

  Damn. This really is good, though. I take another long sip. I've never tasted anything like this! No, wait. Focus, Julietta.

  "So you can see the future?" I press. They shrug. "If so, do you know why the world is apparently going to end in three years?"

  "Hmm? Oh, yeah, it's the moon," they answer immediately. "I mean, obviously it's the moon, just look at the thing. Honestly, I don't know why it isn't everyone's first thought when someone mentions an impending apocalypse. I suspect everyone with powers instinctively feels some level of reverence to the Grand Queen, but maybe we're all just stupid."

  "Wait, the tentacle monster the size of a major celestial body isn't dead!?"

  "It's mostly dead," In-Joke answers. "Unfortunately, in our case, there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive."

  I blink.

  "The Princess Bride?" I ask, recognizing the quote.

  "Eyyy!" In-Joke grins, pointing at me in acknowledgment. "Grandma movies are so much better than modern ones."

  "They really are," I sigh. "Only about half of them are propaganda."

  "That's fifty percent less than all of them!" In-Joke agrees happily. "RIP Hollywood. Despite all odds, you will be missed."

  I nod, taking another long sip of tea. I can't believe this is the best one. Like I mean damn, it's good, but now I want to try more just to prove them wrong.

  "So I'm going to have to kill the moon or something?" I prompt, and In-Joke spits out a bit of their drink as they fail to hold back a laugh.

  "Are you what!? The moon? How would you even do that!?" they chuckle between coughs. "Ha! Hahaha, oh man. I forgot how… you you are. Pffahaha. Gods, do you expect people to just put you in a rocket and fly you off to eat some continent-sized calamari? Calm down, girl. I know you're a one-woman murder machine but tap the brakes just a bit, okay Jules?"

  I bury my face in my teacup to hide my expression, having already stopped my capillaries from expanding into a blush. My head-wings are what ultimately betray me, covering up my eyes and squishing tight against my face as if to squeeze out the mental pressure. In-Joke's knowing smirk implies that, somehow, they can read the body language despite the fact that this is literally the first time a body like mine has existed in the history of the world.

  Then, just as quickly, the smile fades.

  "...Julietta, I mean," they correct to my surprise. "Tap the brakes, Julietta."

  I give them a long look, trying to figure out how to respond. I… appreciate the correction. A lot. I do truly hate that nickname, and I've dearly missed hearing my real one. But they know that. They know a frighteningly large amount about me, for reasons I don't quite understand. Who knows what kind of manipulation they could pull off with that kind of knowledge? They could be leading me around with ease.

  …Or they could just be apologizing. I guess I have no way to know.

  "I suppose I should," I agree. "Unfortunately, I'm still lying about knowing how to drive."

  They stare at me. I stare back. They break first, erupting again into laughter. I smile too, though once again I hide my expression behind the teacup. This was far from the reception I was expecting after my most recent battle to the death, but I suppose I don't hate it.

  It really is absurd how good this drink is.