Are You Even Human

I stare at Peter. He stares back.

"...Are you an idiot?" I eventually ask.

"Ha! Woah!" Peter laughs. "Wow Jules, Lia's brain is really doing wonders for you. Normally you'd just politely try to talk me out of it so I change my mind without you ever having to nut up and say no."

I roll my eyes. I'm not 'normally' alone with Peter. Peter doesn't care if I toss insults his way, but I can't do that around other people because it would make me look like an asshole. …But I'd rather say something else as my excuse; it would be annoying to have the subject changed.

"There's a bit of a gulf between politely asking you not to order me maximally spicy food because 'I can't taste it anyway' and plotting treason inside an officer's bathroom. You can't blackmail me into committing treason, you idiot. The consequences of treason are worse than what happens if you release the blackmail. It's not even a tempting kind of treason! I mean, supervillain? Really?"

"Whaaat? Come on, Jules, it's not like we have to rob a bank or some shit. We just have to, y'know, walk away and not get ourselves killed in forced conscription to a hopeless war."

"No, we'd just be more likely to die in a hopeless war. If we run off, the military will come after us and force us into suicide missions anyway, except now they'll be mad at us."

"Not unless we suck at it. Aren't you a winner, Jules?"

"Don't. Call. Me. Jules," I growl. "My fucking name is Julietta! If you're going to insist on outing me, screwing Emily over, and wasting my goddamn time, then you can at least spend that time saying my name right!"

"Wait, Emily?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. "What does Emily have to do with this?"

"Do you think I'm pretending to be Lia for fun?" I snap. "She needs me to be Lia so I can get her a combat exemption."

Peter absolutely lights up.

"Oh holy shit you're scamming the government!" he says happily. "And Lia's parents! Alright fuck the blackmail thing I'm so down for this. You can count on me to back you up. And like, if I run off later, maybe just don't tell anybody if you see me?"

"What makes you think you'll have a chance?" I ask. "Do you really think you can escape an entire military compound?"

He shrugs.

"Yeah, probably," he says nonchalantly. "My power kinda kicks ass. I'm inviolable."

"...You mean 'invulnerable?'"

"Sure, I'm that too," he smirks. "I'm not gonna leave today or anything but I bet I'll have a fair shot at it sooner or later. I'm surprised you aren't planning to leave, honestly. You always hated the idea of being a soldier."

Well, there's a pretty simple reason for that.

"I can't leave Anastasia," I say firmly.

"Then bring Anastasia, ya damp shoggoth. You think I'd leave a poor, helpless orphan behind?"

I narrow my eyes at him. He smiles back unrepentantly.

"...Even if I thought I could, I'm not sure she'd let me," I say. "She's… a fighter. She wants to go back out there, to kill aliens. But I don't think she could stomach fighting our way through humans, which we'd probably have to do. Plus, it's just a bad idea. I think it's a riskier gamble than just doing what we're told."

Peter rolls his eyes.

"You're just saying that because you're so pathologically conformist that you literally steal other people's faces," he groans. "Ugh, I can't believe I almost thought you were cool."

"Well if it makes you feel any better, I probably can't disappoint you more than you've already disappointed me. Can I leave this fucking bathroom now?"

"But it's so nice in here!" Peter protests. "Hey, do you think I should turn my shirt inside out and skew my shorts a little? It is the Army, so if we get spotted it's probably better if people assume I'm a pedophile than a seditionist."

I flip him off and unlock the door, since a comment like that doesn't deserve any other response. I bet more people have been sexually attracted to me looking like a nine-year-old than my actual real body. Agh, that is not the intrusive thought I wanted to have today, what the fuck, me?

I wonder how many people have been sexually interested in Lia's body?

Probably… a lot? I feel like it’s probably a lot. Though I'm no stranger to getting stared at, being lusted over is obviously not something I've ever experienced before; being ugly is an unforgivingly grave sin in the relationship department. I can certainly recognize the look, if only from how different it is to the way people stare at me, but I don't know if I ever really understood it. Attraction was always something I could only view from the outside, as I never felt it nor evoked it in others. I mostly just knew it as 'that thing that makes people stupid and gets you in trouble,' and of course I was completely right about that.

That's exactly why Lia would always flaunt it. Lia enjoyed any power she could hold over others, and the baby's first manipulation she could pull off by being sexy as hell was one of her preferred sources of dopamine rush. It was a habit for her to present herself that way, from the way she dressed to the way she walked to the cruel little teases that she could pretend were flirting rather than base abuse. And I have inherited at least some of those habits.

But not all of them, right? Hopefully? I slip out of the bathroom and sneak my way down the hall, thankfully not running into anyone as I try to figure out if I'm walking weird to emphasize my butt. I'm not, but then I realize I'm not using Lia's brain anyway, since I'm still in a kid body. So I guess I have to table this for now.

Still. I realize that I've been struggling with suddenly being attracted to people, but the reverse? That's… no. I steal people's faces, for fuck's sake. Quit overthinking things, Julietta. You're never any more than the local freak.

The mess hall is closed when I finally get there, which is really annoying since I still haven't found anything close to a limit on the amount of biomass I can hold, and that could potentially be very important. Also, hunger is uncomfortable, but I can handle that pretty easily. Actually, I wonder if I can shapeshift into a template of myself that isn't hungry. Just like, shift food directly into my stomach. I try it, and it works easily. Huh, I wasn't expecting that. Neat. It's a net loss of biomass, of course, but at least I won't feel hungry.

My power is so fucking weird. Like, in a general sense, but also it seems like it shouldn't be able to do a lot of the things that it does. Like, okay, I can eat stuff and add it to my biomass, then I can use that biomass to shapeshift living tissue. That seems like it should be straightforward, but it's kind of… not? Like, my scales aren't living tissue. They're crystals. I can rapidly develop them with hyper-accelerated biological processes, but then they stop being alive. Yet my power only works on living things, right? So why can it unshift those crystals? Why can I remove my hair, for that matter? Hair grows, but then it's dead. Maybe it still counts as 'my body' so it's subject to shapeshifting? That's kind of an arbitrary descriptor, but when you get down to it 'biological material' is an arbitrary descriptor, and powers have long since established that they do not particularly need to conform to any sort of logical or scientific consistency. There's a guy we train with who can lift himself up out of his own shadow at whatever height his shadow was long. My brain hurts just looking at it. It is absolute bonkers nonsense.

I make it back to my room unaccosted, which is a pretty good sign. That conversation with Peter might have ruined my plans, but that's worse for Emily than it is for me and there isn't really anything I can do about it either way. No sense worrying about it; it'll bite me in the ass or it won't.

"You're back!" Anastasia cheers when I open the door to my room, Anastasia practicing her powers while Christine lies on her bed and seemingly does nothing at all.

"Hey Lia," Christine grunts, and I suppress my scowl at the name. "They keep you longer at therapy?"

"It was an interesting day," I answer with a scowl. "Apparently some of the higher-ups think I'm not a real person? In addition to the normal way they think that about us, I mean. So that's cool."

"Huge mood," Christine says for some reason.

"Hey, hey! Check this out, look at me!" Anastasia demands suddenly, wrapping blood tightly around her waist and lifting herself precariously into the air. She wobbles as she hovers slightly above the ground, an enormous smile on her face.

"Woah!" I say, giving her a big smile back. "That's super cool, Ana! You can fly now, huh?"

"I can fly!" she agrees shortly before her control slips and she falls flat on her face. "Ow!"

"Oh, gosh, are you alright?" I ask, rushing up next to her.

"Hehe, yeah, I'm fine!" she promises, sitting up and pulling the small trickle of blood coming out of her nose into the air. "It's a little hard for me to keep the blood stable enough to hold something. When I stab a monster I only have to keep it solid for a second!"

"Still, that's a really useful thing to practice," I praise her. "Good work, Ana!"

"Thanks!" she beams, standing up and wrapping me into a big hug. "You're still me-sized, so maybe I could make you fly too!"

Hmm. That's probably a safer way for her to train, if she keeps dropping whatever she lifts up. I open my mouth to agree, but then there's a knock on the door. Anastasia and I both instinctively stretch our domains in that direction, and brush up against a domain that feels almost like carbonated water: an uncountable number of bubbles swirling, mixing, combining to form bigger bubbles, separating into smaller ones, creating new bubbles seemingly out of nothing, all of them ultimately part of some greater whole.

"It's Maria!" Anastasia announces happily, and I nod, the two of us heading to the door to let her in. I shapeshift into a full Anastasia copy-body before we open it, matching Anastasia's smug grin.

"Hey Maria!" we both say at the same time, causing the large young woman to flinch in surprise, her eyes flicking back and forth between us with a moment of worry before she plasters a fairly serviceable fake smile on her face.

"Well hey, Ana. And hey, Ana! Have you two seen Lia anywhere?" she asks. Anastasia and I giggle.

"Maybe we have, maybe we haven't," I tell her coyly, swaying my body back and forth in opposite time to Anastasia's.

"Maybe she's here, maybe she isn't!" Anastasia agrees.

"I-I see," Maria manages. "Well, I was hoping to talk to her about something… a little private? You know, if she's around."

I look at Anastasia as she looks at me. I say nothing, letting her decide.

"...She's probably nearby," Anastasia allows. Alright then.

"I think she's in the bathroom," I agree. "Let's bring her some clothes."

We head over to my dresser, collect some stuff for large me to wear (wait, I mean normal-sized me) then head into the bathroom together, though only so Maria can't confirm who was who before Anastasia turns around and leaves. Now alone, I strip out of the kid's clothes and shapeshift myself back up to an adult body before… uh.

I stare into the mirror, where Maria's naked body stares back at me.

My body's reaction is immediate, and all the more powerful as I see the blush on my face light up her (my) freckles in bright red, the heat crawling down her neck. The freckles themselves go even further, dusting her broad shoulders and even the top of her breasts. But Maria's body hardly has Lia's absurd supermodel genetics. Her chest is fairly large, but the stretch marks at the sides indicate they perhaps grew too quickly when she hit puberty. The left boob is a little bigger and has a slightly different placement of the nipple compared to the right. A bit of a belly completely hides the strong abdominal muscles my powers know are underneath the skin, and her body type would be better described as 'rectangular' than any distant synonym of curvy. Her legs are unshaven, her armpits are prickly, and her feet are so big she probably can't even find men's shoes to fit them in without shopping online.

And she is so, so beautiful.

It's a thought that makes my whole body tense, my instincts jibbering incoherently in an attempt to make me do something deeply unwise. W-why am I even having this reaction!? I'm using Maria's brain just as much as I'm using her body. Is she attracted to herself? I swap the brain (and only the brain) back to Lia's just to find out, and the feelings only multiply tenfold, no longer drowned out by the countless little critiques and pet peeves of her body that Maria is apparently so used to focusing on. Fucking fuck fuck fuck, I can't be letting myself get this distracted all the time, I have to… right. Yeah. I swap to a Raptor's brain, and the burning attraction finally recedes back to a manageable level. But it isn't totally gone for some reason, and somehow I doubt that reason is because Raptors are secretly attracted to human women.

It's about ten more seconds before I realize that I should probably stop using Maria's body entirely instead of just changing which brain I stare at it with.

I shift back into full Lia body, the numbness of my Raptor brain leaving me uncomfortable in my stolen skin. I just don't want to keep relying on it as a crutch, especially with all the suspicion floating over me. I don't particularly dislike how Raptor-Julietta thinks, but I can tell that I present myself… differently when I'm using it. It's especially noticeable when I'm moving a lot, every step feeling unbalanced and odd without a hunched posture and a tail to counterbalance with. Using a full Lia body is just so annoying and so hard to actually maintain. Hmm. You know what? On a whim, I grow myself crystal claws on my fingers and toes. Even just that little bit of variation helps me feel more comfortable wearing Lia's far too perfect (yet far less enticing) skin.

God. Am I still thinking about Maria? What the fuck is wrong with me?

Shaking my head, I make a few other minor adjustments to Lia's body (mostly little changes to details of my face and skin; I'm not really sure why I feel the need) before quickly getting dressed and finally exiting the bathroom. I spot Maria, shapeshift my cheek capillaries back down to their normal size when they try to make my face red, and greet her with a smile.

"Hey," I greet her. "You wanted to talk somewhere private?"

Could it be about—no oh my god it obviously isn't, shut up. I don't even know if she's gay. I don't know if I want her to be gay, that would make everything so fucking complicated. …Wait, no. No it wouldn't. I'm not going to date anyone either way so it doesn't actually change anything.

"Uh, yeah, Christine and Ana were nice enough to head over to Ana's room," Maria says.

Oh. Huh. We're already alone. How did I not notice that?

"Uh. G-great. Okay. So what did you want to talk about?" I manage to ask.

"Well, uh, Anastasia told me earlier that you'd be happy to chat with me about… you know. Our powers messing with our heads."

Oh. Right. That. Obviously. It's not like it was going to be anything else. Come on, Julietta, would you just quit being a moron already? You've wrangled your mind into obedience under worse circumstances and you can damn well do it now.

"Sure," I say. "What's on your mind?"

"Uh. Heh," she half-laughs at my half-joke. "Well, it… okay, first of all, do you know how my power works?"

"Not really," I admit. "I'm a bit too occupied to pay a whole lot of attention to other people in power training class, but I pretty much never see you use your power. It… summons a little fairy or something, right? It's all small and glowy?"

"Yeah, I try to avoid using it as much as possible," Maria admits. "I've been training my domain, but Commander insisted that I have to actually practice using the power if I want proper domain growth. But… well, it freaks me out."

"Why, what happens?" I ask.

"Uh. Okay. So yeah, my power basically summons a little fairy. But… I'm the fairy. And I'm also me. But only kind of? Like… I split into two. And neither part is quite fully me but they both feel like me while I'm them, but when they recombine back into me it kinda stops feeling like they were me? And it just. It really freaks me out! I'm breaking continuity of consciousness and basically killing myself every time I use my power, and then I kill the two new mes in order to revive the old me!"

"Huh," I say. "Okay."

"I dunno, I guess just… is your power like that? My therapist isn't being particularly helpful but I needed to talk about it with someone who might get it, you know?"

I nod slowly. I do know.

"So… when I shapeshift into someone else, my brain also shapeshifts. And like… that's kinda scary, because I don't just instantly fucking die when it happens, but… I should, right? It feels like my software just starts running on someone else's hardware, but that's not how brains actually work. As far as I know, the hardware is the software. A person is their brain. So while I keep the same memories and I feel like I keep the same me, things definitely change."

"Yes!" Maria agrees. "Yeah, that's… Isn't that terrifying? How do you convince yourself to keep using your power?"

"Uh… well I've kind of had to get used to it because of… uh. The incursion. And my powers don't really turn off, either."

"R-right," she says, scratching her cheek in embarrassment. I'm not sure if Maria knows much about what I actually did in the incursion, but basically everyone knows that Christine, Anastasia, and I were trapped there for a while.

"...But I'd probably still use it anyway," I continue. "There's not really much choice, you know?"

"How do you manage it, though?" Maria presses. "How does it not completely freak you out?"

I think on that a little, trying to figure out the best way to phrase it.

"...Look. The first rule of discontinuity of consciousness club is 'don't think about discontinuity of consciousness club.'" I tell her. "Of course it's freaky. Of course it's scary. This kind of stuff always is. But it's also literally all inside your head. I think differently when I use different brains, sure, but I don't think that means I'm not me? Like, people are allowed to change without dying. Changing is normal. So what if it happens way faster and more dramatically than a normal person? We aren't normal. A sense of self can be broader than one exact state of mind or point in time. What counts as 'you' isn't objective. It's something that you decide. And while making that decision won't stop it from being scary… well. If I start to spiral about it, I just remind myself that I made my decision and force myself to stop overthinking it."

Maria is quiet for a moment, so I stay quiet too and give her the time to think it over. My strategy isn't exactly perfect, but it works for me and I hope it can work for her, too. At the very least, I hope it helps. It's no fun having to deal with an existential crisis while there's also a normal crisis going on.

"...I think I should show you my power," Maria ultimately concludes. "Uh, if you're okay with that."

"I… don't see why I wouldn't be?" I hedge.

"Um. Well, first off, fairy-me might be kinda mean," Maria hedges, a blush forming on her cheeks. "And second off she'll be, uh. Y'know. Naked."

Oh. Of course. That figures, honestly. Well, come on, Julietta, there's no better time for an apology than this. I open my mouth to speak, but the words don't come out. Damn it, why is this so hard? Just say it. Say it!

"I… um. I already… know what you look like," I manage to choke out. "Naked, I mean. Sorry, but with how my power works…"

"O-oh," Maria says, her blush growing ever deeper. With how pale her skin normally is (barring the freckles) the change is very noticeable, and very cute. "Right. I guess I've seen you turn into me once or twice. Or like… kind of turn into me, but shorter?"

"Am I shorter when I do it?" I blink, thinking back to the bathroom just now. No, that was her normal height… oh! When I'm doing it unconsciously I'm probably blending a bit with other bodies so that my clothes still fit. "Huh, good to know. I'm not really doing it on purpose most of the time."

"...Just most of the time?" she asks. Shit. Go anti-blushing powers! The optimal use for shapeshifting!

"I've… been meaning to apologize," I stammer. "Using other people's bodies without their permission is… extremely uncool of me."

"...It's a bit uncomfortable, but I guess it's not any weirder than your usual stuff," Maria says softly. "I've seen you do stuff like slowly matching your skin tone with whoever you're talking to? That's always a little off-putting, but like, nobody's suicidal enough to tell you what your skin tone 'should' be."

I open my mouth and then shut it, having absolutely no idea how to respond to that. I didn't even know I was doing that. Once again, I feel a blush threatening to ambush me.

"And then you'll just move wrong sometimes, you know? Like you forgot how to walk and settled on puppetting yourself from the inside. Same with facial expressions. Most of the time it's normal but sometimes your face just does this thing like you asked an AI to blend two photographs together over a timelapse. Like instead of smiling you just… take a smile out of a box and wear it."

Okay, yeah, now I'm definitely getting embarrassed. I mean, I guess it's not surprising that Maria thinks I'm a creepy weirdo freak, it's just… gah! Emergency abort, shift the focus back to Maria, STAT!

"You're stalling," I accuse, keeping my voice as even and unbothered as possible.

"...Yeah, I guess I am," Maria admits. "Okay. Doing it now. Apologies in advance, and I promise to shift back whenever you say so, alright?"

Uh. Bit of a concerning set of things to say, but alright.

"Ready," I nod.

She nods back, and her domain starts to churn. The bubbly water now feels like it's flowing down a drain, making a beautiful whirlpool funnel that bends further and further and further until it collapses entirely in on itself, twisting apart like taffy and forming a brand new sphere of power. That sphere is small, but it becomes an entirely separate domain from Maria's, like a mini-version of her power budded off via mitosis. And within the tiny new cell of eldritch might, there is a fairy.

She's about the size of my hand from wrist to fingertip, and sure enough she is stark fucking naked. She doesn't look exactly like Maria, though. Her face and body are similar, but sharper, thinner, more angular. Diamond-shaped dragonfly wings keep her aloft in the air. Long, pointed ears extend from either side of her head. She even glows a rich orange color, enough to light up a dark room. The larger Maria is still there (and still clothed), but this new Maria just… appeared, seemingly out of nothing.

"Hey!" she snaps. "Eyes on my face, bitch!"

I blink. Huh. Well that didn't sound very much like Maria. I suppose I should defend whatever tattered shreds of honor I have left.

"You are literally so small that I can't actually focus on one part of your body over another," I point out.

"W-well you know what, fine!" the fairy fumes. "Look, then, I don't care! I bet you already jilled off to me anyway!"

What. I've literally never… I keep my hands entirely off those parts of myself as a general rule. I frankly don't think I could handle it.

"Hey!" original body Maria squeaks, her voice surprisingly timid. "D-don't say that to her!"

"And what are you gonna do about it, huh?" fairy-Maria snaps. "You're not even real!"

"You're an energy construct," I butt in, pointing to the fairy. "I've got my domain on you and I don't sense anything biological at all."

"So?" fairy-Maria demands, crossing her arms. "That just means I have our soul, and the big ugly bitch over there has all the useless stuff."

Original-body Maria just cringes away from the insults, not contesting them. Okay. That's a red flag.

"You implied earlier that you share memories, or at least recombine them when you recombine yourselves, right?" I ask. "So… that's you. And you're not ugly."

"She's not me," the fairy rolls her eyes. "But of course you'd think that. You implied earlier that you don't believe in souls, even though you're basically walking evidence that they exist."

"...That's not how evidence works," I protest. "You can't just point at a single thing that could have countless explanations and say it proves whichever one you want to be true."

"Oh yeah? Then what else could explain it, genius?"

"Your energy construct could simply have a working brain composed of materials my power can't detect. Or maybe your power partitions your main body's brain into two distinct streams of consciousness and remote-controls the fairy body."

"Or I have a soul, and using my power frees it from the husk of my shitty organic body and puts me into this objectively cooler and less painful one," the fairy says, motioning to herself. "God, I should just be doing this all the time. I feel so much better like this!"

"...Um, please don't," flesh-Maria says. …Wait, no, I shouldn't call her 'flesh-Maria,' that's creepy. "I don't wanna be stuck like this."

Physically, the non-fairy Maria looks exactly the same as before, except for maybe a sharper, brighter color to her eyes (but that could just be the gay talking, and it's a dumbass). Yet in terms of her posture and how she speaks, she's as different from the original as the fairy is. The poor thing has the general demeanor of a wet cat, scrunched in on herself and looking like she's on the verge of crying if someone makes too loud of a noise.

"I think it's absurd to say that either of you have a more valid claim of being the 'real' Maria," I say. "You can consider yourselves separate from her or from each other if you want to, but one way or another you are all Maria, and you are all people. That makes you intrinsically equal in value, full stop."

Flesh-Maria gives me a thankful smile while fairy-Maria pouts, but doesn't protest.

"I guess I can't argue with that," she grumbles. "I remember us being one person, and so I remember being her. She's just… I dunno. Mostly the annoying parts of myself that I don't like, I guess."

"...Like courtesy, thoughtfulness, and tact?" flesh-Maria snipes back bitterly.

"Call it what you want," the fairy scowls. "I don't have to justify myself to myself."

"Really?" I ask. "Most people do."

She snorts with something close enough to amusement to make my heart flutter a little.

"For now," I say slowly, "I think it would be best if you two shifted back, at least for a little bit."

"What!?" fairy-Maria protests. "Already!?"

"Don't worry," I reassure her. "You'll be using your power a lot more from here on out, one way or another. There's just some things I wanna check."

"...Fine," she sighs. "I guess I did promise."

Ah. Well, that was in fact one of the things I wanted to check. Do the 'new' Marias consider the actions of the singular Maria to be theirs? It sounds like the answer is a firm yes. I glance over at the other Maria's body, and as expected she nods. It's an agreement; she also promised. Fairy-Maria flies towards flesh-Maria, and when the two touch the fairy turns into light and soaks into the other's body, their domains recombining.

"How are you feeling?" I ask.

"...Embarrassed, mostly," Maria answers. "A little panicky. It's just… it's so weird. Fairy me is so confident all the time. It's nice, but in the back of my mind I'm always reminding myself that it's temporary, and soon enough I'll also remember being the other half. And more than that, I… I know what you said about how a person can change and still be themselves, but I'm not just changing. I'm splitting. I have two contradicting sets of memories now! It's really disorienting."

"And to be clear, both of those sets of memories remember being the combined you, and consider your actions to be theirs?"

"Uh," Maria says, shrugging. "I mean, they are, aren't they?"

I pretend she didn't ask that as a question. Let's not open that can of worms right now.

"You have self-esteem issues," I tell her bluntly. "I bet your fairy self isn't at your throat in any way you don't already have thoughts about while combined, is it?"

She cringes away miserably, not answering. I take that for the confirmation it is.

"Well, that's a good thing, right?" I ask. "You're not dying or being replaced when you use your power. It's all you, fully and completely. Just different aspects of you."

I have no idea if that's actually true, but it's what she needs to hear right now to get over this slump. She's stuck with this power one way or another; she can come to terms with how it actually works once she's had enough practice using it that it doesn't instinctively freak her out anymore. And hey, maybe I'm right! It looks like I'm right, anyway. I just can't be sure after a five-minute examination.

"It's kind of a useless power though, isn't it?" Maria asks. "I make a tiny little fairy. Whoop dee do. Compared to everyone else, it's kind of… I don't know. Worthless?"

Now that's just a lack of imagination.

"Even ignoring the countless uses the army would no doubt have for the fact that you can separate your domain into independently mobile pieces, I somehow suspect that you haven't fully explored everything that fairy can do. It's not flying with those wings, that'd be biologically infeasible, so it must have some kind of pseudo-telekinesis. Can it apply that to anything other than itself? Whether it can or can't, how much can it lift? How fast can it fly? How durable is it? Can you make more than one?"

"Why would I want to make more than one!?" Maria cringes.

"I'm just saying that you're judging yourself harshly on next to no information," I tell her. "If you're going to use your power well—and I think you can—the secret might just be being kinder to yourself."

"...This is not how I expected this conversation to go," Maria mutters, her blush returning. "I just wanted to pick up a few tips on dealing with an existential crisis."

I stare up at the huge girl and try not to imagine her picking me up.

"...Honestly?" I tell her. "Having a higher opinion of yourself is a good way to deal with an existential crisis. You are what you believe yourself to be, Maria. And if what you believe yourself to be isn't what you want yourself to be, you work to close the gap."

No matter how much you have to beat your head into a wall to get it to stick.

"I can't just decide not to be an awkward, ugly mess of a person!" she insists.

Uh, well, you kind of can. Deciding doesn't magically make it true, sure, but making that commitment is something anyone can do to take the first step towards change. I've done it dozens of times. When I decide what I want from myself, I force that truth into reality by any means necessary. I hate not living up to my goals. I despise every failure I've ever had. And that anger, that burning shame, drives me to be better. If Maria really hates herself so much, then let that be the fuel that drives the combustion engine of her soul.

But instead of saying any of that, a completely different set of words drops stupidly out of my mouth.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I blurt. "Awkward? Ugly? You're considerate, clever, and drop-dead gorgeous. Fuck anybody who says otherwise."

Including you. Especially you? Wait, shit, phrasing. Oh god. Why did I say it that way? Why did I say it at all? And for the last time, you stupid capillaries, you will not blush without my say-so!

Maria stares at me with an expression my mind is too overwhelmed to interpret. Fuck, shit, does she think I'm coming onto her? Am I coming onto her!? This is like the one aspect of interpersonal interaction that I have no idea how to perform or interpret. Fuck these stupid fucking hormones! You know what, screw this, alien brain time. I don't need Lia's stupid gay flirty bullshit thoughts.

The human in front of me has a problem, and I care about them, so I am going to help. That's all this is.

"Apologies," I say. "I just mean that you're judging yourself unfairly. Your self-perception is biased against you, but those things you're so sure of aren't how the people around you see you. Anastasia especially seems to have taken a shine to you, and if that's not a sign of good character I don't know what is."

Maria gives me a funny look.

"...You just started talking different," she accuses me.

Um.

"Did I?" I ask. "I feel like this is pretty much how I normally talk?"

"No. No, you… you shapeshifted something just now, didn't you? Was it your brain?"

Um. I open my mouth to deny it, but that would be stupid, right? It wouldn't even work. Wait, why wouldn't it work?

"Nnno," I say deliberately, feeling an odd surprise at the act.

"Yes you did," Maria insists.

"Yes, I did," I admit, mostly because I don't actually want to lie to Maria, I just thought it was weird to assume I couldn't. This has happened before, hasn't it? Can aliens not lie? That's just weird. Maybe it's a Raptor thing; it would be fucked up to design some kind of working-class species that physically can't lie to its superiors, but the aliens are committing omnicide on the human race so it wouldn't exactly be out of character. I'm glad that whatever it is doesn't seem to work on me, though?

"...Did you do it on purpose?" she asks.

"Yes," I confirm.

"Why?"

"To flush out an overwhelmed endocrine system," I answer succinctly. "I believe we were talking about you, though?"

"...No, you're not getting out of this that easily," Maria affirms. "Did you seriously shapeshift yourself an entirely different brain because you said something embarrassing?"

Emergency maneuvers! Deflect, deflect, deflect!

"Why do you think what I said was embarrassing?" I ask. It should have been embarrassing for her, too. Emphasize that, and she might focus too much on her own feelings to press me.

"Because you acted embarrassed for a few seconds before all emotion completely dropped off your face!" she accuses. Damn. "Are you seriously going to lecture me about unhealthy cognition and then go do something like that?"

"...I don't see anything particularly unhealthy about having self-control," I frown. Intentionally. Because I had, in fact, not been emoting at all.

"How is swapping to someone else's brain so you don't have to feel your own emotions 'self control?'" she asks.

"The part where it helps me control myself," I answer simply. "It's not like I'm going out of my way to emotionally numb myself at all times. I'm not an idiot; I know emotions are a necessary part of who we are and that I will have to manage them the normal way sooner or later. But right now, this conversation is about helping you. My feelings should not be inserting themselves into that in unproductive ways."

"Unproductive… Lia, come on. I want to talk to you, not whoever's brain that is. I'm asking you because I want your input, and how you feel is part of that."

"It shouldn't be."

Maria gets an odd look on her face that I can't interpret. I feel like I should be able to interpret it, but I can't. I can see the position of her mouth, the tension in her face muscles, the slight squinting of her eyes, but putting it together into a coherent, singular image is weirdly difficult all of a sudden. …Is my Raptor brain face blind? I guess that would make sense, huh? I feel like I can usually figure this stuff out, but I guess people's expressions are normally simple and my memory of those expressions is established with a human brain beforehand.

"Can I please talk to you while you use your own brain?" Maria asks.

"No," I answer immediately, which seems to surprise her.

"Lia," she presses. "Please."

"No."

"Why not?"

Because I hate the way my body feels when I'm aroused. Because I don't know how to handle talking to someone who makes my mind go haywire from just looking at them. Because you deserve better than a mess of confusing urges and emotions that a normal person would have figured out when they were fourteen. But above all…

"Because I can't," I say, like a fool.

"Lia, come on."

"No, Maria," I say, frowning deeper. "I mean that I can't. It's gone. The brain you associate with me isn't mine. I've been exclusively using other people's brains since before you met me."

I should not have said that. I should not have said that. They're almost certainly recording this conversation. They're going to use this against me. They're going to say this is proof that I'm not real. I should not have said that!

"I… whose is it, then?"

"Someone who died in the incursion zone," I answer. "Someone I failed to protect. They aren't using it anymore, so it's less weird than using something like Emily's brain, or your brain."

"Emily?" she asks.

"My…" My what? Not 'sister,' I can't say 'sister.' "My maybe-girlfriend. She escaped the incursion with me, but she doesn't have powers."

Maria's eyes go wide, mouthing something I can't identify to herself for a moment before she focuses back on topic.

"Why can't you use your own brain anymore?" she asks.

"My power copies the exact condition of a body," I answer. "I gained my powers during a car accident. To survive, I had to shapeshift into someone who could walk. I've learned how to fix most of the injuries I suffered at that time, so I can still use my body, but brains are too complicated. I don't understand them yet. The damage to mine is enough that I can't stay conscious."

The lie drops off my tongue with ease, to the surprise and wonder but not the protest of my current instincts. It's spun with just enough truth to be easy to remember and hard to contradict; even if they insist on dropping me in another MRI, I can pretty easily just give myself severe head trauma to sell it. It's not like it would kill me.

"Oh my god," Maria says, her hands over her mouth. "I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

"Please do not worry about it." Or bring it up again. "What matters is that I have a fairly vested interest in believing that I still count as 'me' even when major aspects of how I feel or act suddenly change. That belief applies to me, and it applies to you. No matter how many Marias there are, you are still Maria if you want to be. And if you don't want to be… then go ahead and be something else. You are up to you."

And therefore, any deviation from who I wish to be is my fault, and my failure. Lia's brain wants this, my power wants that, none of it matters. I am in control. I have to be in control, because no one else can be and I will be held responsible for myself either way.

"...I am up to me," Maria repeats softly. "Okay. I'll think about it."

I nod.

"If you want to have me around to tell you when I think you should recombine while you practice, I'd be happy to help," I say. "Ultimately, you and I both have powers that prevent us from thinking entirely like normal people. I'm glad you reached out to me; we can both probably use the support."

"Yeah, no kidding," she sighs, giving me another inscrutable look. "I guess we'll call this the first meeting of the discontinuity of consciousness club?"

I have to force myself to smile, though the emotion behind it is genuine.

"Don't think about discontinuity of consciousness club. But yeah, let's do this again soon."

"Will do. Thanks, Lia. See you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow," I nod. "Would you let Christine know we're done on your way out?"

"Sure thing," she agrees, and then I'm left alone in my room. I allow myself a long exhale, shifting Lia's brain back in place and bracing for the inevitable overwhelming feelings. They aren't as bad as I expected, though; I feel bad about lying to her, but that lie ironically let me be honest about a pretty relevant truth so I don't feel that bad. Overall, I think the conversation went well. I can only hope that I was helpful to her, but I got the impression that I was.

She wanted to talk to me again, after all.

A weird sort of squirmy happiness blooms in me at that thought, though an extreme irritation immediately follows so I crush it mercilessly. It's a stupid thing to be happy about. Don't let it get to your head, Julietta. She's not gay. Not that I would care if she was.

Actually, wait, can't I check?

I have her brain. My sexuality is affected (though maybe not determined completely?) by the brain I'm using. I could just use her brain to look at naked women and see how it reacts. I mean, obviously that would be kind of intrusive, so I shouldn't. I guess I've literally already seen her naked, but that's not really a good reason to intrude even further.

Yep. I shouldn't do it.

…I'm not going to stop thinking about this, am I?

That, of course, is also a stupid reason to do something. Talking yourself out of the clear best decision isn't self control just because you gave yourself an excuse before fucking up. Yes, it's probably true that I won't be able to focus very well while this question is both on my mind and an easy answer to it is available to me. But that's just something I have to deal with, right? That's my problem. It shouldn't ever, in any way, spill over into something unfair for Maria. I just have to not do it.

Because, you know, that strategy has been working so well for me lately.

Failing at things isn't an excuse to fail at more things.

It's a trend, though. A trend with a cause I can't identify. Expecting perfection from myself won't solve the problem, it will just blind me to what the problem is.

Still not a reason to fail on purpose.

Is it even actually immoral? Just look at Lia's body in the mirror with Maria's brain. I don't even have to be naked. It's not like I'm doing anything to Maria's actual brain. I'm just using my power, which is part of me.

That's a bit of a gray area. I think a lot of people would argue that I don't have a right to copy their body parts without permission.

But are those arguments correct?

In the context of using them to learn things about a person that they haven't willingly told you? Yes, probably.

And yet, here I am. Back in the bathroom. Looking at Lia's awful, irritating face in the mirror. Lia's brain, of course, doesn't find itself particularly turned on, not even in that vague, muted way I was attracted to Maria while using Maria's or a Raptor's brain. I consider Lia's body to be attractive, but in a manner that evokes hints of pride and smugness rather than arousal. But Maria's brain would feel differently, wouldn't it? One way or another. I just have to do one little shift, and I'll know.

To my shame, I do it.

The effect is obvious. I stare into my eyes, directly and intensely, and my cheeks flush. My chest tingles. The various other parts of my body react in their predictable and irritating ways. Yes. A resounding yes. I hook a finger around the neckline of my shirt, dragging it down to expose the top of my chest, and I find it hard to look away. So I let go, shift everything back to 'normal,' and sigh.

This didn't really help, did it? Now I know, and it isn't going to solve literally any of my problems. I just kind of let myself be a nosy asshole for no reason. Spectacular work, Julietta. Truly. If this is what puberty is like for everyone else, it's no wonder they all dread it.

"Lia?" Christine's voice calls as the door opens.

"Hey, Christine," I greet her, stepping out of the bathroom and giving her a performatory smile. "Have fun with Anastasia?"

"Yeah, she's as cute as always," Christine shrugs. "Exhausting, though. I'm ready for bed."

"Sounds good to me," I agree.

We do our nighttime routines, and soon enough I find myself clean and under the covers. Christine, true to her word, falls asleep almost immediately, but I'm not so lucky. My brain is still racing a mile a minute, thoughts making my fists clench and my body tense, begging to hit something just to give some physicality to the regret.

But of course, I don't do that. It would be juvenile, and it might wake Christine. Instead, I take advantage of a use of my abilities that spending a day constantly shapeshifting myself to match Anastasia made me think to try. I have 'templates' of bodies I encounter, but maybe I'm thinking about them wrong. They aren't really templates for a body, they're records of a given body at a given point of time, in a given state. A body isn't a static thing, after all. It's literally always changing, growing, shifting, living. At a microscopic level, a human is in perpetual motion. Billions of cells die and are replaced with new ones every day.

What's to stop me from shapeshifting not into 'Lia,' but specifically Lia from last night, while I was in bed, right before I fell asleep?

My eyes close, a sudden wave of fatigue hitting me so quickly that I partially jolt back awake, an addle-brained panic making me question reality for a moment before the exhaustion takes me fully. The next thing I know, I'm somewhere very warm and uncomfortably moist.

Ah. This dream again.

I try to open my eyes, then shapeshift myself some eyes and open them uselessly, once again seeing only darkness. Dutifully, however, I form myself the rest of a body: a full head, a neck, a torso, arms, legs… everything I need to be human. Being human doesn't mean much here alone in the dark; frankly, alien bodies are easier to navigate with as they rely much less on sight, but this is still the body that comes to mind first so it's the one I start with.

I take my first step, trying to find the closest wall to navigate with, and nearly trip over something that feels like a person. I kneel down, patting it over with my hands. Is it alive, or is it dead? It isn't moving. I find an arm, feeling around the back enough to determine that it's a person lying face down on the squishy ground. Something feels like it's holding them in place, but they don't seem to be breathing so I doubt they're alive enough to care. I keep patting down their body, finding the butt and accidentally confirming that this body is female. Or was, I guess. This is interesting; I've never encountered a corpse in this dream before. I wonder what her body is like?

Huh. Wait. That's right. Why don't I know what her body is like? I can check with my domain, can't I? I'm not sure why I never thought about that before. Dead bodies aren't things I can shapeshift into (not that it would be particularly useful to do so), but my domain can still feel and analyze them. I try feeling for it, try figuring out how to expand it, and—

Meat.

Meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat it's all meat it's all flesh it's all me no no no no no no no no no no too much too much. The walls are meat the floor is meat the ceiling is meat it is not alive but it is alive it could be alive it could be anything but it is MEAT.

I try to vomit, realize that I don't have a stomach, but then I do and the walls give me the acid and the half-eaten food and shove it inside me so I may obligingly retch it out. I feel dizzy, delirious, like I just got off a teacup ride and folded my brain like a paper airplane. I don't feel my domain and yet I feel everything, an entire house of flesh and hair and crystal with rooms full of piss and attics of mushy food and dungeons of feces. Half-digested bodies sink into the floor, becoming one with the homogeneous skin and muscle below. I start to hyperventilate, my breaths coming out cold compared to the heat of the writhing room, the entire construct shifting as if in protest to my displeasure. I can't see it, but I can feel it, and it's too much it's too much I can't I can't I can't I—

With a gasp, I sit up in a panic, my alarm blaring to announce that morning has come. Sweat coats my skin and my sheets, but I swallow, take a deep breath, and push it all aside.

There's more work to do today, and I already have too many distractions.