11. Who's Lia? (Patreon)

A/N: Hey everyone! Sorry for the long wait. For those of you that didn't see the update on the last Bioshifter chapter, I managed to get really sick while I was resting my wrist, so I've been out of commission for a while. But now I'm back! Also also: it looks like Patreon has redesigned its everything again! It's terrible and bad. Please send Patreon a bunch of messages about how they made everything worse and fixed absolutely none of the issues that impact authors on their platform. I hear italics are broken on some browsers! Like wow, how did they even do that? Please go give them firm (but appropriate) admonishments and help me beg them to actually make a halfway decent text editor. Maybe someday I'll be able to use super advanced features, like the html support THAT THEY USED TO HAVE BEFORE. Anyway. Enjoy the chapter.






"Hey, um. It's… it's morning."

I shiver at the sound, a million legs twitching all across my body, grasping helplessly at the air. Even combined, they could never possibly support the weight of the body they're attached to. Useless things. I hiss, frustrated with the nonsense I've become overnight.

"You said talking helps, so I'm talking," a voice continues. "Um. Please let me know if you're okay?"

It's a distracting sound, and I try to push it out of my thoughts because of course I'm okay, why wouldn't I be okay, I just need to focus and I can take care of… of whatever I'm taking care of right now. What am I…? Oh. Oh! That's Christine! I'm in bed, I'm waking up, I'm… some kind of horrific, disgusting blob of skin and insect parts, how lovely. I shudder, letting my flesh twist around, re-absorb all the extraneous bits, and return my form to the very-slightly-more-preferable body of Lia.

Blinking groggy eyes open, I give my roommate a thumbs-up.

"...I'm good," I assure her. "I'm awake. Sorry."

"You're fine," she reassures me, though I can tell whatever I looked like just now made her a bit green around the gills, so to speak. I suppress my instinctive irritation at her unnecessary placation, sitting up and then quickly covering my chest with one arm as Christine looks away. God damnit, what happened to my clothes overnight? I eventually find them shoved into a wad in the corner of my bed, under the covers, where they must have fallen off and gotten shoved around during my unconscious transformations. I dress myself again, and then get out of bed so I can go grab completely different clothes and dress myself in those instead.

It has been a week since we've started getting trained here, and my control over my power has not improved during that time. If anything, it's gotten worse. I've even needed to ask Christine's help with waking up in the morning, my dreamless nights always ending with me disoriented and inhuman. My days aren't really much better either.

Extending my domain beyond the confines of my skin is still overwhelming for me, though that apparently isn't uncommon for people with information-gathering powers. I'm not even expected to have a handle on it for another week at least, though I'm damn well aiming to figure it out way before then. No, what makes my situation problematic—according to the doctors and experts—is that my power doesn't seem particularly interested in protecting me from the consequences of that information overload.

Most people find themselves unable to use aspects of their power that would overwhelm their mind or body. When Christine starts to reach the limit of how much information she can parse, her domain just… naturally stops increasing in size. Which makes sense! Increasing the size of our domains requires conscious effort, and if all your conscious effort is busy trying to handle the influx of information, it can't really focus very much on expanding the domain itself. For other people, their domains are instead limited by power—increasing a domain's size reduces its density, and there's apparently a minimum density domains can physically be, so even if your domain isn't doing anything you cannot physically stretch it beyond a certain limit. Most people, therefore, can't even reach a domain size that would overwhelm them; they straight-up lack the raw power required to do so.

I don't have either of these issues, and people don't know why. People also don't know why my power seemingly activates based on my subconscious, either. It's another one of those things most powers simply can't do; most people are simply incapable of activating their powers on accident, especially new powers.

"It just doesn't really feel like me, I guess?" Christine says, pulling her bed out into its constituent parts, yanking the sheets away, and putting the rest back together.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Well, I dunno. The way you describe using your power is like, the same way you'd describe using your hands, right?" she says. "You just grab things. You don't have to think about every individual finger."

"Is that not what it's like for you?" I ask.

"No way," Christine shakes her head, wadding up her sheets to toss in the laundry. "Like, my power is always there. I can feel it, because I can feel objects around me, but it's just like… a little buzz in the back of my head, you know? It's background noise. Always there, always annoying, but it mixes in with everything else most of the time. If I take the effort to focus on that sense, I can feel things out and I know what'll happen if I take them apart, but if I don't focus on it, there's no way I could ever use it. It's too complicated to be automatic."

"That sounds really nice," I admit. Both being able to keep control of my power and being able to ignore a smell. "It's not like that for me at all. I have to be constantly thinking about maintaining my body or else I just start… well, not maintaining my body. I guess it's not unheard of, though. I'm the only person with this problem in our intake, but some of the researchers say they've seen it before."

"Well, that's good," Christine nods. "Maybe you can ask to talk to a hero who had your problem? Like just send them an email or something?"

"Yeah, that's not a bad idea."

I'd rather figure this out on my own, though. That's what we're expected to do, after all. Power training class is mostly just all of us lining up with enough supervision to prevent us from accidentally killing each other and just working on our domains. There's hardly any actual teaching involved, just expectations. And everyone seems to be getting closer to meeting those expectations except me. It's unacceptable.

At least I'm doing well in other areas. Christine is slowly getting used to my power and my company, so our roommate situation is amicable. She can be a bit neurotic about things—she needs a lot of space and will have a nervous breakdown if I so much as accidentally bump her toothbrush—but while it's annoying it's nothing I can't accommodate. I wouldn't call us friends, exactly, but she's starting to trust me and that's a very good thing.

I've been handling Andrew fairly well, too, at least in the sense that he's not suspicious of me not being Lia. I'm honestly not sure what else to do with the idiot; he's adapting to life as a soldier a little too well, if anything. Ed doesn't need my help, but I like his company and he seems to like mine and it's nice to have somebody in my life that I don't need to constantly manage. And Anastasia is… adjusting.

Christine and I head down the hall after getting dressed, knocking on Anastasia's door on our way to breakfast. About thirty seconds later, the young girl groggily answers the door with her sleep clothes on. She starts to greet us, then seems to realize it is us, and immediately jumps forward to wrap my waist in a hug and bury her face into my stomach.

"Lia!" she sniffs, squeezing me tight enough to hurt.

"Ana, hey," I greet her softly, running my fingers through her hair. She's been crying; I can see it on her face and feel it in her flesh. She's an emotional mess; part of it is the trauma, part of it is exhaustion, and part of it is the fact that she's still not eating enough, leaving her mood fragile as hunger gnaws away at her stability. She's obviously had a really rough night.

"Are you alright?" I ask anyway.

"I c-couldn't sleep," she blubbers quietly, looking up at my face. I realize, suddenly, that I'm not wearing Lia's face right now; somehow, I've already slipped into mixing it with Anastasia's biology. I mentally push it all back into place, but Anastasia seems… disappointed, somehow, looking away and squeezing me even harder than before.

…I probably look like her older sister when I do that, don't I?

"...Sorry, Ana," I tell her. "I didn't mean to… y'know."

"It's okay," she says quietly. "It's okay if you do. I don't mind."

She wants to see them again. Of course. And I'm not them, but… I guess I'm the closest thing she has to a sister right now. Fuck. The face returns the moment I start considering whether or not I should let it, weighing my desire to keep Lia's form against the possible advantages of adjusting to placate Anastasia. It's probably not healthy in the long term for her to project her dead family onto me, right? I'm not sure how, exactly, but that seems like it could fuck her up, maybe?

…I force myself back into Lia's body again. None of this cost-benefit analysis matters at all, if I can't get my body under control. It's not like I'm going to stop trying to take care of her either way.

"Alright," I tell her. "We're going to go eat now, okay? Do you think you could come with us?"

"...Okay," she says. "Would… would you come in, please?"

I glance at the soldier guarding her door. Room entry permissions are a bit weird throughout the building, but Anastasia's are the strictest of all since she's so much younger than everyone else. She motions her head at the door, though, allowing Christine and me inside. Oh, great! I am officially trusted to not be a pedophile! Just look at me jump up the social ladder like a goddamn rabbit.

"I hate it here," Anastasia admits quietly as we head into her room behind her. It's smaller than the room Christine and I share, since it's only for one person. It's otherwise the same as ours, though, devoid of personalization or decoration as one might expect from being part of a place in which personal belongings aren't allowed in the first place. Of course, I don't think Anastasia is just referring to her room.

"Yeah," I agree. "Things are difficult, huh?"

"The Army is bad, isn't it?" she asks. "They're the bad guys."

I blink.

"...The Army is trying to save humanity from extinction," I answer slowly.

"You can try to save humanity and still be a bad guy," Anastasia asserts, crossing her arms. "That happens all the time in cartoons."

Geez, what cartoons does this girl watch? I guess she's not wrong, but I'm not sure what else she expects out of life.

"...I think they're worried that if they're too nice to us, we won't be very good at killing aliens," I tell her honestly. "And they need people that are good at killing aliens really badly. Does that mean they do evil things? Yes. They aren't treating us as well as they could be. But they don't feel like they have a choice."

"That's stupid," she says, rummaging through her drawer and pulling out a clean shirt. She holds it out to me. "If you make people fight who don't wanna fight, you're the bad guys because fighting is bad. Christine doesn't want to fight. Maria doesn't want to fight. Put this on."

She hands me the shirt, then returns to her drawer to extract and force more of her clothes into my hands.

"Um, I'm a little too big for this?" I manage. "Also, who's Maria?"

"She's nice. She makes pretty fairies. And you won't be too big if you become small, duh! I'm tired of being the only person my size! You promised to play with me!"

"...We have to go to class today, Ana," I remind her. We have to go to class every day. There are no breaks.

"I go to class small, why can't you?" she counters. And, well, obviously I can't because… well…

…Hmm. Because it would be creepy, I guess? I'm already creepy, though; you can't wake up in the morning with bug legs all over your body and avoid that title. I instinctively steal parts of people's faces whenever I shake their hand, what's a little running around as a kid going to do to hurt my reputation? I guess I'm ostensibly expected not to use my powers without permission, but the more we hear that, the more we've all come to realize it's bullshit. Everyone uses their powers here, pretty much all the time, and no one cares unless we're in class. I'm starting to get the impression that the main reason instructors get on my case about it is because they assume that using my power means I'm not paying attention to them. Like Christine said, for most people, power use is a conscious act of focus. The rest of my intake can't use theirs and pay attention to the instructor at the same time, while I'm pretty much the opposite.

The expected situation is that my body would remain Lia's by default, and I'd be able to shapeshift out of that form via conscious effort. But I don't have a default form; my original body is gone and I can't shapeshift into it even if I try. The best I could do is try to reconstruct my real body from a photograph or something, but I'm nowhere near good enough at using my abilities to attempt something like that. It would take a ton of trial and error, and even if I did it successfully, that wouldn't be my real body either.

Every form I can take is equally fake.

Ha. Actually, something about that thought strikes a chord with me. Like… fuck, of course it's all fake! I do nothing but present a fake face to the world, managing relationships and situations like the manipulative little bitch that I am. Sure, I'm not trying to hurt anyone—quite the opposite, actually, I want very much to help everyone around me succeed—but I'm still not exactly being honest when I tell Andrew that I forgive him, or tell Christine that I don't judge her for trying to skip class even though she's just going to get calmly but firmly forced to by people with guns. But I can't help that my inner thoughts involve me being a judgemental asshole, right? Or if I can, I certainly don't know how. The best I can do, therefore, is be kind on the outside. To say what I think would help people to hear, rather than what I actually want to tell them. If I can't be a kind person by nature, I can at least be kind in action. That's just the right fucking thing to do.

It's fake, and it's exhausting, but it's the right thing to do. So if Anastasia wants me to shrink down, pretend to be a kid, and hang out with her… what does it matter how uncomfortable that makes me feel? If the nine-year-old can survive this militaristic hellscape a little better if I let her dress me up as a doll and humiliate me in public, sure. Whatever.

It's all equally fake, and something about that makes me smile.

"...Alright, fine," I say, playfully exaggerating a long-suffering sigh. "I'll be tiny for the day."

"I'm not tiny! You're big!" Anastasia insists. "You'll be normal size for a day!"

"Is this seriously happening?" Christine asks, already seeming resigned.

"Well, I did promise," I smirk at her, heading to Anastasia's bathroom to change. "I guess you'll have to chaperone this field trip for the day."

"Ah yes, responsibility," she deadpans. "That thing I am definitely very good with."

I shoot her two finger guns as if that comment was funny and relatable rather than extremely annoying (please become better at responsibility, Christine, you are going to be a soldier) and lock myself in the bathroom. Alrighty then! Time to definitely not think about the fact that I'm about to put on a nine year old's underwear. I mean, technically it's not her underwear. It is owned by the Army because they don't even have the decency of letting us pick our own clothes. …Though I guess to be fair, most of us don't own any clothes because our homes were destroyed by aliens, so like, what are they gonna do? Not buy us a dozen fresh pairs of panties? That would be way worse. Wait, shit, I'm still thinking about it.

…Whatever, let's get this over with. I shrink down, strip my clothes off, and get dressed in something appropriately child-sized. Everything from the shirt to the shorts is a bland, clean white, all of it decently comfortable, freshly washed, and the final nail in the coffin for this dumb decision I'm making: if I return to normal size (or 'big size,' I guess) while wearing this, it will not go well. I'm committing to being a mini me until at least our morning class. I hope this isn't a terrible mistake.

The moment I step out of the bathroom, though, Anastasia squeals in delight, rushing forward and squeezing me in an absolute deathgrip of a hug, lifting me bodily off the floor as she does so. I can't help but smile, feeling suddenly vindicated. Yeah, there's no way something that makes her this happy could be a bad call.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" she cheers. "Aaah, this is great! We're gonna have so much fun today, Lia!"

"O-oh yeah?" I ask, marveling at how huge everything is, Anastasia included! Gosh, it really is different looking at her face-to-face. And Christine is so tall!

"Yeah! It's gonna be great! Come on, come on!"

For whatever reason, Anastasia immediately pushes me back into the bathroom, following me inside and shutting the door behind us.

"Okay!" she declares. "Now turn into me!"

"Huh?" I manage.

"You can turn into copies of people, right?" she asks. "I've seen you turn into other people on accident before."

"Wait, you have?"

"Yeah you do all sorts of little shifty things whenever you're thinking about something hard, so you'll definitely have to not do that because we're going to prank everybody!" Anastasia declares. "Today is a no thinking day! Now come on, turn into me!"

Well I don't think I can stop thinking, nor would I want to, but turning into Anastasia is easy enough. If anything, all her weird, inhuman biology feels easier to shape and maintain. It's better optimized, but more importantly it's different. It's not just the same hated form I've been pressing myself back into more and more and more.

I frown, staring down at my tiny, newly-clawed hands. Is that why I'm having so much trouble staying as Lia? God, I hate how much emotional bullshit I have to try and wade through when figuring out these stupid powers.

"Oooh my gosh oh my gosh you look perfect!" Anastasia squeals. "Now let's do your hair like mine, and then nobody will be able to tell us apart!"

I glance at her massive braid, which is something I put together for her after realizing her crazy cell regeneration wouldn't tolerate any haircuts for long. For reasons I don't entirely understand, the shorter her hair, the faster it grows. Cut off too much of it and it can increase by more than a foot of length over the course of a day! Putting her in a fancy braid just seemed like the logical thing to do, but Anastasia loves it, so she insisted on learning how it was done. …I doubt she's actually very good at it, though, since it's only been a few days since I taught her, which is a problem because while I have a ton of experience braiding other people's hair, I don't actually know how to do my own. Because like… y'know, I never used to have any.

"...I think that might take a while," I hedge, running my fingers through my now knee-length black hair. I'm getting a little better at handling the constant, overwhelming sensations of touch, taste, and smell, but everything still constantly feels weird and new to me. I can't help but fidget with things, always learning new things about what textures I do and do not like.

"No, I got it, it's okay," Anastasia assures me, and then she clenches a fist hard enough to stab her own palm open with her fingers.

"Ana!" I yelp, but blood pours out of the wound faster than I can react, snaking through the air like fluid, prehensile tendrils. The crimson snakes pour themselves onto my scalp, scaring the shit out of me before I feel them flow around my hair, saturating everything so Anastasia can twist it all into a braid with her mind. It all happens remarkably fast, the blood still pouring from her hand and feeding into the red medusa she's made my hair into via a thin trail through the air. Before I know it, my hair is braided, and the sticky blood extracts itself from me without leaving even the slightest droplet behind before touching up Anastasia's hair, too.

I take it back. I guess she did learn how. But also: holy shit!

"...Ana," I say again, staring at her hand, "you don't need to do that to yourself."

"We're supposed to get used to using our powers, aren't we?" she counters. "It doesn't hurt that much."

Which means it still hurts, of course. But the punctures in her palm are already healing, the flow of blood slowing down little by little. She levitates it all over the sink, and when her injuries fully close it all drops with a big splat, her hemokinesis deactivating the moment she's no longer wounded. I suspect that the more seriously Anastasia is injured, the more powerful her ability will become. It's a sick joke of a power to give a child, horrid and heartless and brutally, criminally unfair. But she's right, isn't she? She's supposed to get good at using it anyway. She's supposed to wield it as best she can. She's supposed to stop being a child altogether, and turn herself into a weapon.

It makes me sick, but there's nothing I can do about it. I can only try to keep her happy in the interim. Ultimately, this war creates injustices like a cow creates cud, regurgitating it repeatedly before swallowing everything all over again. I have lived my whole life with this fact at the forefront of my mind. We are dying, we are losing, and that means people like Anastasia will keep being created and keep suffering, even if the Army wasn't the one forcing us into facing it. If we learn to fight, maybe we can keep as many people as possible away from hell, for as long as possible.

Even if we lose in the end, that's still worth it, isn't it?

…It's hard for me to believe in that, of course. I'm the type of shitty cynic to wonder if it might be better if we just get it all over with quickly. But at the same time, I'm the sort of person to push those feelings aside and do my best to solve whatever problems happen to be in front of me. People are just contradictory that way, I guess.

"If that's what you want to do, then okay," I tell Anastasia. "But for today at least, using your powers will probably give away who's who, won't it?"

"Oh yeah!" she gasps. "Good point! Gosh, do you think people will notice my hand?"

"Maybe, but that's fine," I say, grabbing her hand with my own, doing a quick scan of her body, and matching her scabs almost exactly. It's a bit tricky, since I can only influence how the dead parts develop indirectly, but I think I do a pretty good job. "There we go! Identical once again."

Anastasia seems startled as I shapeshift injuries onto my own body, which makes me smirk.

"Doesn't that hurt?" the cute little hypocrite asks.

"I mean, it throbs the same way yours does, I imagine, so you'd better not make me hurt myself anymore to keep up this prank, okay? Because we are so going to prank the crap out of everyone."

"Oh! Yeah! We are!" she agrees, her excitement returning instantly. "Are you ready?"

"Hold on, let me get into character," I hum, placing two fingers against each of my temples. "Let's see… I hate vegetables… yes… I think bison can fly… of course."

"Hey!" she giggles, playfully smacking me on the shoulder.

"Hold on, hold on, let me focus!" I fake-whine. "Now I have to start over! Let's see… so basically, I am very small…"

She shrieks and laughs and hits me some more, causing me to laugh right back. Then, I actually get into character, keeping Anastasia's habits, tics, and speaking style in the forefront of my mind as we finally emerge from the bathroom and present ourselves to our first victim: Christine.

"Oh, no," the poor woman whines. "No, no, no. Lia, you can not do this."

"Who's Lia?" Anastasia asks, tilting her head.

"Yeah, who's Lia?" I parrot, tilting my head the other way.

"Aaagh," Christine groans. "Nope, fuck this, I give up already. I refuse to be responsible for this."

"Language!" Anastasia and I both accuse her, and then we giggle, heading for the door. It is time to unleash ourselves upon the world! None shall escape our twin gremlin shenanigans!

Christine stops to apologize to the startled soldier as Anastasia and I emerge from the room, shrieking with laughter as we race to the cafeteria for breakfast. Heh, this is actually kind of fun. People stare at us in confusion, realization, concern, and then yet more confusion, emotions flashing over their faces one after the other as we pass. I'd normally hate every second of it, the judgment, attention, and disgust, but Anastasia's plan is actually perfect for dealing with it all.

If I was just shapeshifted into a child version of Lia, everyone would treat me like a complete weirdo. But as long as no one can tell Anastasia and I apart, they can't do that because they don't know which of us is me. They're stuck in the social position of being nice to both of us, because otherwise maybe they're being a jerk to a kid! It's awesome.

I'm not Lia anymore. I'm not me either, but this is still pretty good.

"Food please!" Anastasia and I say together, causing us both to giggle as we lift our trays up to the serving lady. My chin barely peeks over the counter!

"Well well, I seem to be seeing double," she comments, plopping a heaping helping of extra food on both of our plates. We have our official extra ration permissions granted, of course. "Don't get into too much trouble now, you two."

"That would defeat the point!" I tell her.

"Double trouble!" Anastasia chirps.

The lunch lady laughs, content in the knowledge that she will be immune to our mischief because we're not stupid enough to mess with the mess hall.

"Take good care of each other, you two," she says, and then we scurry away to our usual table, where Ed watches us with amusement and Andrew watches us with his jaw on the floor.

"Uh, is one of you Lia, or…?" he asks as we approach.

"Who's Lia?" Anastasia and I say together. Gosh, it's weirdly easy for me to match my responses to hers, especially when we're standing next to each other like this. Wait, is my domain expanded? It is! I can feel it brushing against her, keeping track of whatever she's doing so I can match it in real time. That's… okay, geez, I need to think about this.

"That is so freaky," Andrew insists. "You look completely identical!"

"I say poke 'em until Lia starts to steal your skin color or something," Christine says, sitting down across from us. "No way she keeps this up all day."

"No cheating!" I insist. Ruining the kid's fun right off the bat would defeat the point.

"Yeah, no cheating!" Anastasia emphatically agrees.

"Well, Ana and Ana, it's good to see you both!" Ed says, an amused twinkle in his eye. "I suppose there's no one around to make you eat your veggies, since Lia is gone."

Oh, foul play old man! You know she needs it! I plaster an excited expression on my face anyway, turning to Anastasia with a gleeful wiggle as she does the same. Both of us push our trays towards Christine, begging her to fix them with a stereo "pleaaase?"

"Fine, you little weirdos," Christine allows, disassembling our food and hers before flicking all the plant matter at Ed, who laughs and tries to catch some in his mouth, failing miserably. She tries to flick a few at Andrew too, but he actually succeeds at catching them in his mouth, without fail, and Christine quickly gets bored of it.

Our entire breakfast is silly and fun, which is… weird. I actually feel myself relaxing for a second, but when I panic and check to make sure I'm still in the right body, I actually am. Soon enough, though, we have to get up and go to our general power knowledge class, which is disappointing in more ways than one.

Frankly, I've been unimpressed with the class overall. Very little of it is practical information on how powers are actually used; there's a lot of study of past military engagements, procedures, and other information that is helpful to know, but doesn't deal with my current issues at all. Powers are apparently too unique and individualized for there to be much in the way of universal advice.

…Which just sounds absurd to me. Sure, powers are insane, but something has to cause them, right? Even if the commonality is weird extradimensional alien bullshit, that's still a commonality, and we have no reason to assume that it's incomprehensible. Does the military seriously not have time to just sit a ton of people with powers down and do a few experiments? …I guess they might not now, with how bad the warfront probably is, but surely back when things were just starting out we'd have looked into this stuff? How could the grand total of our knowledge be nothing?

There are people who have figured out all sorts of absurd things, things that don't make any kind of sense to common logic. Particle physics, orbital mechanics, calculus… it's easy to find examples of things that feel like magic to the common person but are deeply understood by experts. Even if they aren't completely understood, the point is they are still understandable. But the military doesn't care about any of that. They only care about how to use us to kill aliens.

It's annoying, but I suppose I can't entirely blame them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to be spending more time researching this stuff. I'm just annoyed no one else has actually gone and done it.

As usual, whenever I see a situation like that it makes me want to figure it all out myself.

"Morgan, what are you doing?" the instructor snaps at me when Anastasia and I walk inside. Well, I guess she snaps at both of us, since she can't tell who's who.

"I'm Anastasia," I correct her innocently.

"Uh-huh," she says, glowering at the real Ana. "And who's this, then?"

"Anastasia," she says smugly.

"Don't worry, we'll pay really good attention!" I promise.

"Yeah, yeah! We'll be good!" Anastasia confirms.

The instructor sighs.

"Whatever, just go to your seats," she grumbles, shooing us away. Anastasia and I share a grin of victory and do just that, hopping up into chairs that are suddenly way too big for me.

Oh, well. I wasn't going to take notes today anyway; I mostly write them for Anastasia's sake, but since she doesn't do that herself, it'd kill the ruse. Today we're mostly learning about various military equipment and how it's used; it's a pretty basic overview that likely won't be of much practical use until we get all the way through boot camp. I can't help but find myself thinking back to the weird ways my power has been acting today.

…Maybe throwing myself headfirst into this 'stay as Lia' wall isn't the best way to make progress after all. That's the obvious conclusion, right? But why isn't that the solution? Why is 'stay as Anastasia' so much more effective? Is it her odd biology? My power seems like it prefers less humanoid forms, when it gets the chance to turn me into them. I realize I've been told not to think that way, to consider my power as my power and not some entity with its own will, but I literally talked (or at least kind of communicated with) an extradimensional entity when I got my powers in the first place, and in that one weird dream I had that may or may not have been real.

Of course, it could also just be the fact that the real Anastasia is physically nearby; something about that does seem to be influencing me, with how my domain seems to be trying to expand to cover her whenever she's close by. Which fortunately hasn't been causing my cognition to explode, but that might change when we go outside and there are bugs and plants and crap everywhere rather than the occasional spider or roach inside a wall. The real Lia is not and can never be nearby, so whatever it is that's making my power so happy to have Anastasia as a reference can't apply. Is my power built for copying people? For infiltration? Are powers 'built' for any particular thing at all? If they are, and mine is supposed to mimic things, why can I also create custom combinations of forms?

I guess it could just be that I hate this body less, but that would be a stupid reason and I don't want it to be true.

…Though that actually brings up a good point by itself. I hate this body less! A lot less! Why is that? It's certainly a constant marvel seeing things from a child's perspective, reaching up to grab door knobs and food trays and generally struggling to get around in an environment not built for me. There's a certain nostalgia to that; while it isn't anything quite like how my real body (or at least my original body, I guess?) forced me to interact with the world, it's certainly comparable. I never really thought about how almost nothing in day-to-day life is designed for use by a kid. They just have to constantly deal with environments that are explicitly inconvenient for them, and they don't really know anything else so why complain?

Honestly, the fact that the world isn't going to accommodate you so you'd damn well better learn how to deal with shit by yourself is a pretty good lesson for kids to get used to. It shouldn't be, of course, but it is.

All that being said though, I feel like it's still dumb of me to prefer it when things are inconvenient. But even if that's part of why I feel this way, I know it's not the only reason. I like making Anastasia smile. It's one of the only objectively good things in this fucked-up place, and getting to supply it in spades has made my day. It's weird and awkward that people stare at us, that people judge me even if they can't tell which one of us I actually am. But maybe, just this once, I can say fuck 'em and be done with it. Who cares how weird they think it is? I'm not doing anything wrong, and I'll never be able to stop being weird ever again.

Because even if I get these stupid powers under control, it's not like I'll be able to stomach staying Lia all the time.

The thought hits me like a toothache, throbbing in my head and refusing to go away. Face it, Julietta. You don't have the amount of self-control you think you do. But also: do you really need it? Yeah, maybe I can't maintain a singular form a hundred percent of the time, especially if that form is Lia's. But that doesn't mean I can't excel. That doesn't mean I can't fool people into believing I'm Lia. I've been looking at this all wrong, haven't I? The blow to my ego hurts, the admittance that maybe I can't do this stabs at me like a knife, but the realization that I never needed to have perfect physiological control over myself at all times bandages the wound right back up. It is not failure to change to a more effective strategy, right? The results are what matters, in the end.

I glance over at Christine, watching her hands fidget under her desk as she struggles to pay attention to even a fraction of what the instructor is talking about. That's sort of what my power does, isn't it? It fidgets, constantly shifting and changing and twitching in little ways because otherwise I can't focus. Christine might be struggling in class, sure, but she'd be doing worse if she tried to stay perfectly still. Maybe that's the trick.

…Of course, I don't test this right away. Maintaining Anastasia's game is more important right now, and if I'm right, the way my mind is constantly updating her template and keeping track of her physical state so I can match it is a form of fidgeting anyway. When class ends we go right back to playing, and I let myself have fun with it, following Anastasia wherever she wants to go. We do silly things like waiting for her to greet someone and turn a corner before I follow and do the same, or have Anastasia 'mess up' and act like me for a bit to make people sure of the wrong answer. My favorite is when we copy each other exactly, and I let my power run wild with being Anastasia's perfect mirror in every action, which creeps people the hell out in ways I never expected to find myself enjoying.

It's good. It's fun. But of course, when we get to our practical power training class, Commander is having none of it.

"Recruit Morgan, what the fuck are you doing?" she snaps, her domain smothering both of us and easily telling us apart by touch. She stares directly at me when she talks, with no confusion or uncertainty. "Do you think you're here to play kindergarten games?"

It is a terrible idea to try to keep up the ruse right now, but I glance at Anastasia anyway, wanting to make sure I don't sacrifice even a smidge of the trust I've earned by letting her make the final decision to have us stop. Fortunately, she's a bright kid (and also duly terrified of Commander) so she gives me a rapid shake of her head.

"No, ma'am!" I tell Commander firmly.

"Then why the fuck are you dressed for 'em?" she snaps. "You already waste enough time here, do you expect me to have you run back home to get your big girl panties on, too?"

"No, ma'am!" I repeat.

"Then what are you doing!?"

"Training my power, ma'am!"

"You bet your ass that you're going to be! Get Patrova's face off yours and get in line!"

She shouts at me until I head over to exactly where I was going to go had she not interrupted me in the first place, letting my face settle into… something else. Anything else, I don't really care what. Because it doesn't matter, it's all equally fake.

And that means it's all equally me.

I haven't been doing a very good job at these power training things. After my nasty initial performance, I've been hesitant to push my domain out too far, not wanting to accidentally trigger another mental breakdown. I keep towards the center of the clearing when I can, avoiding as much wilderness as possible so I don't add yet another unwanted form to my repertoire. But today, I do the opposite. Today, I immediately ask to move to the edge of the clearing, endure getting screamed at until I'm allowed to do so, and touch a tree.

Information floods my mind, but I resist it. My feet do not break through my shoes in their desire to become roots. My arms don't stiffen into wood, and my hair doesn't spread out into leaves. I don't need those features right now. The ability to understand and become them is enough.

It's probably ten minutes before I open my eyes, finished with my understanding of the tree. My body itches to become something else, so I let it writhe, twisting around without purpose but never making any fundamental alterations. It helps, but it's unsatisfying, and so I finally start to push my domain out. I feel the worms in the ground and the domains of the soldiers watching over me, but these are things I already know so I push further. Higher. Wider. My mind shudders as my power encompasses more and more, feeding me little updates on already-present templates until something new smashes into me and nearly shatters me like glass.

A squirrel. Nothing more.

That always-screeching part of my mind wants to become it, try it, test it, so fur sprouts from my skin and Anastasia's claws twist into a bonier, curved variation, used for climbing. …And that's it. Because what else do I need? Cheek pouches? Oversized incisors? A bushy tail? No. Those things don't need to be tested. Whether or not I can support human weight with squirrel claws does.

And this thought process works. It actually works! I let a feral grin bloom on my face, finally having figured out a way to make this mine. If I can't stop myself from using my power, then I'll just force my power to use itself the way I want it to be used. There's a satisfaction to it all, a feeling of elation as I finally wrangle this insanity back under my control. I slam my newly-grown claws into the bark, pull myself up… and then immediately let myself drop because my fingers hurt like hell. But that's okay! I can reinforce those bones, strengthen those tendons, improve those muscles because that is what I am.

I solve motherfucking problems. This stupid superpower bullshit is no exception.

…The next thing I know, of course, I'm waking up on the ground in a twitching pile of my own newly-grown feathers because a bird flew into my radius. But y'know what? That's okay. I have my path forward. And that bird was really fucking cool.

"You taking a fucking nap, Morgan!?" Commander snaps. "This is why everyone else is kicking your ass!"

"Not for long," I fire back before I can stop myself.

"Is that so!?" Commander shouts. "Well listen to that! Which one of you bastards is going to have the unfortunate fate of being shown up by Cadet Comatose Morgan over here!?"

All of them, I manage to keep to myself this time, a grin still stuck to my face as I get to my feet. Just watch me.