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It's easy to forget just how potent Emily's power is with my organisms being so durable, even more so as they adapt to it. As we cross the city towards the building I had picked out for her, we leave a fairly large sterilized swath behind us. While it's not quite enough to topple trees instantly — as long as she keeps a tight hold on it — I have little doubt that any touched by it will be dead within the week. Grass, flowers, and bugs do not fare anywhere near as well, fully liquefying by the time she has walked by them.

At first she is full of high spirit, I think from the change in environment, of not being cooped up in the one room. The outside air and sunlight bring a smile to her face. That lasts until we near too close an overgrown lawn, and everything in it wilts and dies on the spot. If it wasn't for her limited range and nature of the quarantine zone, she would be labeled a class S threat, wouldn't she? Just as bad as Ash Beast, except maybe easier to kill via a sniper.

The smile falls off her face, and her shoulders droop. The Ratlings around her pick up soft sobs and mumbled words. "Why… why does he… help me? I just… kill everyone… everything… grass… flowers… animals and… and people… mom…" Tears trickle down her face as she quietly sobs while plodding along after my clone.

I stop suddenly, it takes her a few steps to realize I did so, and she jerks to a stop. This will damage my clone, but it's necessary. If only it was in a better location than the middle of the damn street in the middle of a dying city, but… such is life. I turn and walk back towards her, stepping into the field of her powers, ignoring the slight tingle on my skin as it takes effect.

"Wha…. No, you sh-should stay back. I'll… hurt you too." She says.

The clone instead walks right up to her, and before she can backpedal, I wrap my arms around her and pull her into my chest. "No. You won't hurt me, not in any lasting way, and I promise it won't be long before I have complete immunity figured out. Then you won't have to worry at all, alright? I'll grow grass and flowers that are immune too if I have to."

"Can… can you really do that?" She asks. Her face is burrowed into the clones wrappings, her voice weak.

"Yes. They might not look exactly like what you are used to, but they will be immune." Making creep bloom won't be too hard. "It will take longer, though. I have to focus most of my creation on preparing for the coming conflicts. I will make sure all my minions are safe to be around you all the time, alright? Just give me a few days."

Emily sniffles a bit. "Umm… how.. How many Ratlings did I… melt?"

To lie or not… Honesty will hurt her now, a lie might hurt her later. I take too long in answering, apparently, because her fists clutch at the fabric. "I did, didn't I…"

"My minions… they aren't really… this is not the right time and place to go into my powers, but please believe me you caused no actual harm or suffering." I will not be discussing the intricacies of my power in the middle of the street, no matter how well secured the area is by my Ratling scouts.

I hold her for a while as she sobs. As long as I can without undue damage, distancing myself from her now is bad, melting while holding her would be worse. "Come on, let's get you to the house first, alright? I promise things will be better."

Ratlings do their best to distract her for the rest of the trip. For once, I am not sticking to the shadows, overhangs, and back alleys. Alacrity in this one situation trumps stealth, and I try to avoid any greenery or other concentrations of life along the way.

I'm taking no chances with her safety. Aside from the Ratlings sticking to her heels like glue, I've also got dozens more scouting ahead and to the sides of our path. A pod… nest… ravening… wave… Hmm… A group — whatever the proper term is — of Zerglings soon joins us, keeping to cover and out of sight.

The last remaining clone, the one meant to infiltrate the raiders originally, also meets us there, though Emily doesn't know it. The two clones swap out unnoticed, the one that had led her retiring to rest and recover from the unexpected exposure.

The house I have selected is a rather stately affair, better suited for some estate than an urban residential block, even if it is in a rather well-to-do neighborhood. Well… once well-to-do. Now it's a graveyard of the recently deceased, something my Ratlings have been cleaning up with haste. If the creep in the sewers is more lush… nobody alive is around to notice.

I lead Emily inside the large entrance hall and bring my — swapped — clone within her range, despite the shudder as her power takes effect. "It's a nice place, right? You can stay here until we figure something better out."

She looks around, poking her head in the empty closet, and around the corner to the living room. "Who'd it belong to?"

"No idea. Some rich dude with too much money and a fetish for ultra-modern furniture."

She giggles at that. I think it's the first time I've heard her laugh. "Let's look around!"

I'm glad her moods improved. When she dipped into a bout of depression on the street like that, it concerned me greatly. I know I should withdraw, let the Ratlings occupy her.

Human company for a bit longer will be good for her though, as long as I don't overstay, and if the clone must be recycled after… Well, maybe it's time I got into the proper mindset of disposable organisms. I was never good at that part, no matter how cheap or numerous they were.

"Alright, let's take a quick look around." I have, of course, checked the place out throughly already, making sure it was safe. I am a bit surprised when she steps right up to my clone and hugs it round the waist.

"It… the minion will be okay, right?"

"For now, yes. Soon, there will be nothing to fear at all."

The house is quite large, with two stories and a basement. The basement alone has a game room, a bar, and a home gym. All done up in chromed steel and glass, except the pool queues. Those don't survive Emily picking one up. I'm worried that might bring her mood down again, but she seems to have recovered her strength of mind.

I notice as we go that Emily seems rather tense. Is she worried about the clone melting still? Or did she feel something off about it when she hugged it? I quite enjoyed that bit of spontaneity from her.

My concern is way off the mark. We are back on the ground floor, and I am about to offer to explain the nature of my power and minions, when Emily opens a door and finds one of the house's enormous bathrooms.

"Oh my god! A real toilet!" Emily cries out. Her sudden excitement brings forth a wave of power that causes by clones organs to burn. She dashes into the room, slamming the door closed behind her, nearly catching a Ratling's nose. Without a moment's hesitation, she pulls down her jeans and panties. I know she does so because the bathroom door she just slammed after blasting it — and everything else — with a wave of power was one of the few wooden objects in the house. Flakes of collapsing wood do little to keep me from getting an eyeful of her pert small bum before she sits down.

I don't need Ratling hearing to hear liquid splashing against porcelain. Emily lets out a sigh of relief… then her head tracks slowly sideways, her eyes panning up to the wide open place a door used to be, and where my clone is still standing, the last few flakes of disintegrated wood settling on him.

"Eeep!" Her face explodes into a bright blush. "Ah no! I'm sorry just… when I saw… toilet… Door!" She stutter while hiding her face with her hands, leaving her soft looking thighs quite exposed instead.

I wouldn't mind seeing a lot more of her, but decide to spare her further embarrassment. My chuckle is only slightly wet from the clone's collapsing lungs, that last burst did some damage. If I had not swapped clones before entering the house... She'd be looking at a puddle. "There may be some wooden doors around the house. Might want to be careful with those." Then I retreat to the entrance hall, partially for her privacy, mostly because her growing horrified embarrassment is accompanied by a spiking of her power.

A few minutes later, a very red faced Emily finds me there. "Umm… I'm done… sorry… needed to…."

"Ah. Don't worry Emily, I'm not upset. It's just a door." I smile at her, only to remember she can't see it through the wrappings, and would probably be terrified if she could. "Wait… what have you… there's no way you were waiting to use the bathroom for the past three of four days?" I ask.

"Um… no… just… closet… it all… melted…"

That it only melted after has… implications I can consider later.

"Can we still… keep looking around?" She asks, eyes cast down.

"Just this floor. Then the Ratlings will accompany you upstairs." I decide to postpone explaining the nature of my power. She's already embarrassed enough for today.

We don't manage to check out even half the ground floor before my clone starts soaking through the wrappings. "Sorry Emily, that's… that's as much time as I can give you without healing."

She pouts at me, her face still tinged in pink. "Aww must you? Oh… The minion, is it..." Her eyes lock on the dampening clothes hiding the minion from sight. "Oh, no, the poor minion! Why didn't you say anything?"

"It will be fine, just needs to rest and heal. We both needed some human interaction, and I promise no lasting harm has been done. Besides, a pretty girl taking her pants off in front of me always cheers me up." I can't help teasing a bit.

Her blush returns instantly full force. "Eeep! Hurry and go before the minion melts!" She pushes the clone towards the door. I let her do so without resistance. It would be hard to resist when that last spike of embarrassment-fueled power nearly finished the clone off. Probably shouldn't have teased her.

The Ratlings maintain their rotation while she finishes checking out each room in the house before collapsing on a bed. "Ahhhhh I can't believe I did that!" The waves of power coming off her out of embarrassment keep the Ratlings cycling out frequently. "Even if it… made him happy… when I… ahh so embarrassing! But he also said I'm pretty…"

The clone is as good as dead after the extended and increased exposure. It's carried back to the hatchery and unceremoniously tossed into the digestive sack as soon as its clothes are stripped.

Human clones… are a complete failure as representatives, but they have some use, I admit grudgingly. They can talk as long as they are unseen. An all concealing costume isn't unheard of among capes, right? For now, I order a Larva to evolve into a replacement clone. I only have one left and still need to talk to Emily. I should stop procrastinating and focus on creating a proper humanoid body. There's just so many options to go with…

If I want to help Emily survive — which I do — I need to provide her with two things at a bare minimum.

Food is… difficult but doable because of competition from other scavengers, but I find enough, and the Ratlings have been stocking up the neighboring house outside the reach of Emily's power. Worse case, creep should be edible to humans. I think.

Water was harder to figure out. On the boat, the Ratlings could just fetch cans of water out of the river, and her own power would prevent any nasty bacteria from causing her problems. Alas, Ratlings are not built for transporting large containers of water across half a demolished city, especially while staying out of sight of local scavengers, aerial observers, or random trackers.

I end up having to use the creep for the purpose. It already has its roots spread far and wide, including the river, and exists for the transport of material — mostly nutrients, but water too is necessary. The updated Essence causes the creep to sprout small, blue, soft fleshed pods that can be torn open to release about half a liter of water each. I toy with the idea of flavoring it with some sugars and such, but that would be rather frivolous.

Of course if the creep sprouted water bulbs all over, it would be rather inefficient and impact the creeps nutrition producing capabilities, so rather it only produces the bulbs in locations I intend, such as sprouting out of the drains in the food stock building. Ratlings can bring the bulbs to Emily as needed.

The black creep has been sitting at the bottom of the river for… around forty-eight hours now, and nobody seems to have taken an interest in it. Should I wait longer? I should. I really should.

I don't know how the quarantine zone is overseen; I expect there's a committee of some governmental types that has to receive a report about an odd large black splotch in the river, decide about what should be done, and then send out orders for somebody to investigate. Or not.

Hell for all I know there is no observation out of fear of memetic hazards left behind by the Simurgh or created by one of her bombs. If I wasn't already stuck at ground zero, I'd definitely be rather weary of looking too hard at anything going on inside. Honestly, I was expecting a Simurgh quarantine zone to be… a lot more crazy. I haven't seen a single cannibal cult so far. Granted I don't know what the raiders do with their prisoners…

Whatever the management method being used, I am fairly confident after forty-eight hours that it is not Dragon overseeing the quarantine project personally. I think she would have sent a drone to investigate by now. Same for any other single decision-maker really, regardless of normal or cape.

Maybe it's just not considered worth investigating. Maybe there is a committee that will get around to it in a month. Maybe nobody is watching the inside, just the perimeter. I… don't have time to wait for weeks to make sure, every passing day of sunlight not being captured by black aquatic creep is time lost in the long run.

I push out the Essence evolution, and within a few hours all creep submerged in water darkens to catch the maximum amount of sunlight possible.

Ratlings and Zerglings stalk outside the perimeter of Dundee's group of survivors. Shortly after noon, two of my newly hatched Roaches join them.

I had vague ideas about overrunning the place, take out Dundee with the Zerglings and if need be Roach, and then… what? Slaughter the completely innocent civilians? That… didn't sit right. Especially once I began preparing for an attack, and observed that Dundee is being kept at arm's length. Previously, he had been just another armed man among the others. Now, he is still armed, he is still on watch with others, but he is not standing with them.

Perhaps… during my failed attempt at diplomacy… I had assumed they were backing away from the brewing cape fight because of the common sense of not sticking around when a cape and a probably cape are about to have a showdown, especially when both are Brutes. But maybe they had feared Dundee himself as well? Not to imply that meant they were on my side. I saw their expressions when they saw the clone. There was fear and hate there too. Just… maybe not murderous.

Despite how much I want Dundee's body brought to me so I can extract his Essence, I hold off my forces and watch. It makes me feel rather happy when I see a cut across his cheek patched with crude stitching.

The day passes slowly. Dundee looks perfectly impassive, but any time he looks toward the other guards, his face contorts into a hastily hidden grimace. He also sticks to one place a lot less, rather than watching over the working farmers and playing children from the corner of the block, he wanders.

Stand around for a half hour or so, then wander to the gardens and back. Stand around again for a bit, eventually growl and take a walk around the block. He's uneasy and angry, and that's making things with the others worse. The guards are chatting together, but there's a definite pause whenever Dundee comes back, and it feels strained while he remains. It's not just the guards, either. Any time he draws near the gardens, the people working there are rather conspicuous in not looking up from their work.

How interesting. Did they not know he was a cape? Have they just never seen his Changer form? Was it the brutal method of killing my clone? Hell, was it the fact he jumped right to killing the clone? Maybe his casual admittance of having killed people even before Ziz showed up? Or just going plain old fear he might be crazy? People rarely react well to murder, even when it's warranted. I don't really know anything about him. For all I know, he used to be… actually, since he admitted he killed people before, he most likely had been a villain.

I wonder, given time, could he patch things up? Would he get kicked out? Or would he just get pissed off and leave on his own? There's also the nonzero possibility he'll just snap and kill everyone too.

I will not give him that time.

The next time he wanders around the block, when he's as far from the 'guard post' as possible, a Ratling scrapes stone against stone. Dundee freezes, his eyes searching the area the noise came from. The Ratling waits, and then the moment Dundee relaxes and is about to continue on his way, does it again.

"Whichever of you ankle biters snuck out, you better get back. I've no mood for games today." Dundee growls out at the same time as he pulls out his knife. Oh boy, if that was a kid sneaking out, that action would not have helped his current situation at all.

The Ratling retreats, not trying to be too stealthy about it. Here it scrapes against a pile of rubble, there it rustles through some bushes shaking them, but staying always out of sight.

Dundee takes a few steps in its direction. He pauses then, as if considering. Yes, yes, not wandering off after the noise you heard without telling anyone else would be the smart thing to do. I don't want him to be smart. The Ratling makes a low growl, just barely at human hearing and audibly rubs its carapace against a wrecked car that somehow ended up on its roof even this far from the main battlefield.

Dundee is careful, but he's obviously been on edge and wants to find trouble. His skin turns leathery and gray, his muscles bulge out, vicious teeth and claws burst out of his flesh. He takes the bait and follows the direction the Ratling retreated to.

I lead him away from the others, always just barely out of sight. We're six blocks away when he pauses and looks around. "Shit." He takes a step backwards, stance low, knife raised. Looks like he realized he's being lured.

Too late. Near a hundred Ratlings pour out of the surrounding buildings like a living wave of carapace, claws, and teeth. They form a thick wall all around him, preventing easy flight.

"The fuck are you all ugly bastards?" Dundee growls out, his knife glinting in the sun.

In way of answer, a lone Zergling steps out of the mass. It growls at him and its scythes unfold into combat position. It taps them against each other, then scrapes the road in a way I hope is meaningful. I kinda wish I'd given them the ability to talk. This would have been prime taunting material.

"Fuck. You." His right hand has the knife, his left only the claws his form gives him. The two combatants circle each other. I am… not a fighter. It would be delusional for me to control the Zergling directly. Instead, I keep myself back, watching from the many eyes of Ratlings and let its instincts rule. I want to see how the Zergling line performs.

The Zergling takes the initiative, leaping forward at its opponent with its scythes raised and ready to cut and slash and rend. This is what Dundee was waiting for apparently, as he steps forward, knife prepared to stab, his other arm reaching out, seeking to grab the leaping Zergling and interrupt its trajectory.

He's taken completely by surprise when the Zerglings back carapace opens up, revealing two semi-translucent wings. They aren't big enough to fly outright, but its parabolic arc flattens, and the Zergling pases just over his outstretched arm, over his head, and landing behind him.

It spins on touching the ground, launching itself at his unprotected back. Dundee is fast. He almost turns around in time to cover himself, but instead of a proper defense, he is forced to swing a hefty but awkward fist at the leaping Zergling before he's even fully turned. His block is clumsy, and lacking the proper angle to grab or claw at the Zergling, instead smacking into it and tossing it to the side.

That hurt, but the carapace holds with no significant damage. Dundee is not as lucky. Even as the Zerglings attack is interrupted, it gets one of its scythes into his forearm and rends a bloody gash down it.

Dundee growls and cradles his torn arm to his chest, not taking his eyes off the Zergling which deploys its wings to turn an ungainly tumble into a smooth landing. "Shit you little bugger. I'm going to fry you up on a barbie for that one."

The Zergling just growls back in response. They circle each other again, but this time it's Dundee that breaks the pattern and charges first. It waits for him, its stature stooped and low, then launches itself to meet him. This time he's expecting its flight though, and the moment its wings come out he stabs upwards, actually throwing himself at it to intercept its path. Two bodies collide in the air, his knife skids along carapace, failing to find purchase until it runs into the rapidly beating wing membranes, shredding them. One scythe is out of position, crushed between his crocodilian body and its own, but the other comes down in an arc and embeds into his back.

Then the two collide with the ground. The Zergling is on the bottom, not an ideal position with Dundee's mass pressing down on it. It goes for his throat with its teeth. Not a primary weapon, but functional in close quarters. He barely saves his neck by rolling sideways off the Zergling, pulling out the embedded scythe in the process and likely doing no favors to his wounds.

I'm impressed when he rolls to his feet. That blade went in deep. He's got to be hemorrhaging like crazy into his lung right about now. The Zergling rights itself too, but its mobility is heavily restricted with its wing shredded. No more mid-air course corrections will make it much easier for Dundee to get good hits in, at least as long as he can stay on his feet.

Dundee must realize he's on a timer too. He doesn't waste time with the cautious circling, instead charging at the Zergling as soon as he gets his bearings. The Zergling prepares to receive him, scythes raised in a threat display — where did that come from, there's no praying mantis in there — and is completely taken by surprise when Dundee uses his injured arm to throw a handful of dirt, debris, and dust at its face. Fucker was faking it being disabled?

That's embarrassing. Fortunately the solution to dust-in-eyes is readily available in nature. I make a quick Essence alteration for nictitating membranes on all my organism's eyes from now on.

Despite my fear, the Zergling isn't left wide open. Even with its eyes shut, it ducks low and to the side, catching the knife on its side. Steel and carapace scrape against one another, until the tip reaches a gap in the carapace and slides into a joint. The Zergling lets out a pained screech, but despite its wounds it doesn't stop fighting. Instead, it presses forward into the attack.

It's trying to go for his legs, but with only one scythe and reduced mobility, it doesn't have the reach or ability to avoid his heavy strikes.

Whatever else can be said of the man, he's an absolute beast and he knows how to fight. His blade flashes in and out of the Zerglings range, his injured arm batting aside attempts to counterattack.

The end comes rather suddenly. Zerglings are swarmers, not duelists. Much better on the attack and relying on numbers to cover defense. An opening left unguarded just a moment too long, and the Zergling goes limp with twelve inches of steel piercing through a gap by its jaw, and into its brain.

Dundee exhales hard, and coughs a chunk of semi-congealed blood onto the asphalt. "There. I bloody… win. Now… You all fuckers get out… of my way. I… gonna fry this…"

I never said this was going to be a duel. I actually didn't say anything at all, not being present in any body capable of speech. Dundee realizes this when he spots the Roach wading towards him through the sea of Ratlings.

"Oh come on mate, that just ain't… fair."

Further comment, if he had any, is interrupted when the Roach opens its maw and sprays him with boiling acid. It's not a full strength blast and most of it hits the ground at his feet, and yet his legs up to the knee just… wash away.

As soon as he collapses, my Ratlings grab his failing body and rush it to me. He's still alive by the time my tentacles wrap around him, though barely. I dig into his body, extracting the Essence created by his shard.

He has nothing that would surpass my carapace, but his crocodilian-like hide will improve the defense of my organisms' vulnerable joints, as well as any organisms that can't have heavy carapace for whatever reason.

His healing ability is quite impressive too. He might actually have been able to survive after the fight with the Zergling with even limited medical help. Mine is better. He couldn't last for even a minute around Emily at her weakest. With the acid burns that cover his lower body and pockmark his chest, arms, and face? And the acidic vapors he inhaled? He's dying.

The genuine treasure, the thing I had most hoped for when I saw him, is his immune system. Crocodiles can immerse open wounds in the most stagnant of swamps and risk little chance of infection. Amped up with a shard's take on the subject? If I didn't already have a pretty hard counter against Bonesaw, this Essence would be a good start.

He's dying fast, what to do with him… I want to see if there's anything different about a living human's Corona Potentia — I finally remembered the name. I also want to see if I can play with a capes Essence without breaking the connection to their shard.

Sticking a tentacle into his head will kill him pretty fast. Changing his Essence might revert him to a regular human, making him useless… Capes to experiment on guilt free are hard to find, and I probably only get one shot each.

I push Essence into him. As drastic a change as possible, a larva-like grub with no physical enhancements and no mind of its own, slaved to my will. Let's see if the shard maintains the connection when there is no similarity to the host, but death did not actually break it. Bonesaw managed, right? I think Panacea did too? Worth a try.

Photosynthesis? It is amazing! The creep growing at the river bottom has been providing some energy, but it's practically a trickle compared to the black variant. I can't wait till I can grow openly on the surface. As it is, there is no sewer line left on this side of the river — and many of those on the other side — that isn't bursting at the seams with the stuff.

I've been tempted to grow mats of creep inside unoccupied buildings to get more nutrients flowing while remaining hidden from any aerial observation, especially since I've already went ahead with the black aquatic creep evolution. In the end, I only refrain because of the certainty that the local survivor groups would definitely notice such growths.

I have good use for the increased nutrition. As many cocooned Larva as I can afford surround my Hatchery. My forces grow. The next time the Raiders come to this side of the river, I will see how my forces compare to theirs.

The only thing holding me back from launching an attack at their main headquarters on the hill is that I am certain, no matter how much or little attention is being paid to the interior of the quarantine zone… that level of troop movement will be noticed.