[???] Homecoming

USCS Yesterday's Tomorrow, Shallow Ocean.

Luna had questions. She had a lot of questions. So many questions, in fact, that it was extraordinarily difficult to decide which to ask first.

"You okay in there?" the woman next to her asked, utterly oblivious to Luna's internal monologue. That was Verdant Dawn, woman-dragon-warship and seemingly half a dozen other things at this point.

"What, you get people with this look often?" she asked in response. Speaking wasn't exactly easy, but she was trying her best. She was capable of normal speech, just... not easily. Her body, on the other hand, wanted to thrum, to vibrate some sort of soundless sound that dragons could just... do, apparently. Right. She was also one of those now. That, surprisingly, wasn't too much to take in. She'd wanted that, and she'd gotten it, just not how she'd expected to get it.

Verdant shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much every time I take a jaunt. Whenever we punch through the Ocean like that, it just so coincidentally happens to be near some sort of latent dragon. It's only polite to help sort out the result." Luna stared at her dumbly, which Verdant took as an indication to keep talking. "Also, it's fine if you do dragonspeech, your vocal cords aren't use-'em-or-lose-'em. Anyone here will be able to hear you."

"Oh." "I mean, oh." Thrumming did feel better than talking. But... "I think... I want to get used to talking like this. Not everyone back home can hear dragonspeech."

"Fair enough. Anyway, yeah, it's frequent enough that I have slides. Would that help? We're a few hours' flight away from the rest of your squad, we've got time."

Luna let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, still exhilarated by the way it flowed through her scaled neck. "Uh... no slides, please, had enough of those for a lifetime. And don't you have better things to do? Aren't you like... important?"

"I'm stuck here for the five hours it'll take Yesterday's drive to spool, we had to jump out to get you. And I've got plenty of time to burn."

"Right. Seven hundred years, I remember. How old do your people get?"

"We don't know, actually. We're pretty sure we're immortal."

"Huh?"

"Oh, don't get jealous, you are too."

Luna stared blankly.

"Oh, shit, right, I didn't have a chance to get into that. Let me get my notes so I don't miss anything, one sec." Her gaze unfocused for a few brief seconds, then snapped back. "Cool. Alright, you good to listen?"

"I think." She sat down on her... haunches. Haunches. She had those! And scales, and wings, and...

"Ah ah," Verdant interrupted her train of thought, "Attention here girlie, do you wanna be euphoric and confused or euphoric and not confused?"

"Right. Sorry. Immortal?"

"I'll get there, bear with me. You are currently in a place called the Shallow Ocean. Capital letters on that, it's a proper noun, and called that 'cause it's an ocean and it's shallow. It's basically an afterlife. You died with a portal open somewhere in your universe and didn't have an afterlife lined up, so you went here. Minor issue for some folks, it also makes you a dragon. Not just physically, mentally too. Kinda fucked that it's not exactly consensual, but fortunately not an issue for us or for you. More or less pulls the dragon version of yourself out of your mind and makes you that." Verdant gestured towards her, and it took some serious focus for Luna to not immediately get lost in looking at herself again.

That raised so many additional questions, the first of which was, "Can I go back home?"

"No, not usually—" Verdant must have noticed the lurch in her stomach, somehow, "—relax, there's a but. You can't usually go home, but, my people have tech that breaks that rule, if we know where you came from. And fortunately for you, we do."

"Oh. Okay," she replied dumbly, some stress draining out of her. From what she knew, afterlives didn't tend to be escapable, but she wasn't exactly on Earth anymore.

"And, yes, immortal. I can't die because I'm an upload, I don't have biology that wears out, and I have backups if my brain gets blown up. You, however, also can't die, for different reasons. The Ocean basically has a claim on you now. If you die, you respawn here, video game style, fresh new body, no aging issues or anything like that."

"A... claim? Like, forever?"

"As far as we know, yeah."

"You're sure." She didn't say it as a question, more of a resignation. Not that this was bad, just... well, it kind of dictated the rest of her life, in a way. It'd be a life that stretched on a lot longer than she'd expected it to, but it did make any notion of retirement a confusing one.

"Not at all. We've only been in here for a few years." Verdant actually sounded embarrassed about that, which was a significant departure from what Luna had seen of her so far. "Maybe it'll stop working tomorrow, we just don't know. But probably not. The magic in here is... intense, we don't think it's likely to break before that fades."

For some reason, her lack of certainty was comforting. "So, if I put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger..."

"You'd wake up in the water again. Probably very far away from here. Teensy little problem in that, this place is actually infinite, and where you pop back in is random. Best guess, most folks who wind up here are stuck wandering."

"...less than ideal. I take it you have some way around that?"

"Personally, yes, whoever built this place didn't really anticipate uploads. It just tries to shove any new memories we formed into our backups before it tries reforming our bodies. For bios, you'll have to wander a bit. This whole place works a little bit differently if you know where you're going, which is why we're going back to Windward after we grab your friends."

"Windward is... a place?"

"The biggest, best, and only real city in the Ocean. We'll get you home as soon as we can reopen the portal I came through when I met you, shouldn't take more than a few hours."

The structure was at least helping narrow down what questions she wanted to ask. "Do I have to go home? Can I stay for a bit?"

"Sure, you can stay. Not a lot to see, but... actually, given your Earth's tech level, there probably is. Anyway, you'll get to see Windward on your way back home anyway, your portal was close by. But I did promise a guy on the radio that I'd bring you all back, and our diplomats would be kinda pissed at me if I ruined relations over that. I mean, I won't make you, but easier to sort that whole thing out before they have a funeral for you. And you're always welcome to come back afterwards."

Right. Colonel Robertson was probably bugging the fuck out right now. In a roundabout way, the GOC had given her what she'd wanted, so it was only fair that she uphold her end of her oath. And besides, it wasn't like they'd turn down a whole dragon. Hell, she could... actually, she wasn't quite sure what she could do, now that she thought about it. Speaking of which, actually. "Um, what do I eat?"

"In here, in the Ocean? Nothing, unless you want to. In the normal world, probably raw meat in large quantities. We'll have you try some food before you leave so you know what you can and can't digest."

"Damn, I probably need so many calories now." That could make food awkward once she was home. PHYSICS paid well, but not "eat a cow a day" well. They'd probably give her a food stipend. Or just food directly, since it wasn't like she'd be able to go shopping... shit.

Verdant must have caught the look on her face. "Yeah, your Earth's pretty much all human, isn't it? Living there permanently might be tricky. Though you might notice you need less food than you should, bodies made by the Ocean tend to be a little squirrely on actually conforming to the laws of physics."

"Gods. Fuck, maybe I do need to stay here."

"Well, we can offer you some options. This place just makes it so you're okay with being a dragon, it doesn't make you hate being something else. You've seen me shapeshift, we can share that. And more, if you want."

"More? What do you mean?"

"I'll get you the catalogue! Shopping is so fun."

Levy stared at Luna as she glided down from the ship, his big blue eyes locking onto her like a cat noticing a mouse. Like her, he had also been transformed. Rather her own silvery-black scales, he had white feathers, with the edges tinged dark blue along his wings and spine. Kind of comically, his color scheme was only a little ways off from the UN-blue and white of the GOC logo.

"Hey!"

"...Varriano? What— is this what we sound like now?"

She flew in closer to him, scraping her wingtips along the water's surface before flaring to land. "Yup, and yup. You can probably talk normally too, it's just kinda tricky."

"....why am I a dragon? Why are you a dragon? What's go—"

"Long story," she interrupted. "Actually, short story, but we should do it while we're moving. We're gonna go grab Levy and Fletcher next, they're close."

Levy stared at her, then up at the hundred-and-fifty meter black wedge that was Yesterday's Tomorrow, decelerating in a wide turn. "You seem to be taking this well."

"Yeah, duh? I always wanted this. Did you think the 'theriotype - dragon' in my personnel file was a joke?"

"No, I... shit, I guess not. Are we stuck like this?" He turned over a forepaw like it was a hand, flexing his talons as if they were fingers. Luna caught his intent immediately. His claws didn't bend like fingers, he'd never have quite the same dexterity that a human hand did.

"Not at all, but you won't exactly be going back to normal, either."

"Is it bad that I'm not upset?" Morrison asked, bouncing around in a circle in Yesterday's hangar. He'd ended up not too dissimilar to Luna himself, a sleek quadruped with gunmetal-blue scales, though he lacked her tail and hip fins. Pretty horns, though..., she thought to herself.

"A little," Levy answered. "I'm not upset about the... new body, I guess, but that's not because I wanted it before we died, it's because this place made me want it. Or at least not dislike it. It's violating."

Morrison tilted his scaled head in a nod of sorts, "And is there anything we can do about that?"

"...not really, no," Levy replied, grumpily.

"Exactly," he replied. "In my opinion, we got off lucky. We're still alive, we're not being tortured for eternity by some sort of extradimensional pain vampire, and we're still ourselves in all of the ways that matter bar one. And also I can fly now."

"I'll agree about feeling violated," Fletcher added, "but, that said, it's a lot more of a mild violation than I've had in the past. You do remember Brussels, yeah?"

Levy winced, "...yeah." Brussels had involved a Green. He was still in therapy about it. Actually, his shrink would probably be tickled pink about this whole ordeal.

"Also, I look sick as fuck and am now apparently immortal. Hard to stay mad." Luna had to admit that she did look good. Unlike the others, Fletcher was a jet-black wyvern with violently yellow eyes, walking on her legs and wing-claws. She was the largest of the four by a decent margin, and seemed to be taking no small amount of pleasure in the fact that she looked evil.

"There's the additional issue of Verdant and Yesterday's people," Levy vibrated.

Luna cocked her head at a perfect 45-degree angle. "How so?"

"As far as we know, her entire species would be classed as PTEs. We probably shouldn't trust them this easily. Hell, they could be lying about things here and we wouldn't be able to tell. Maybe we're being manipulated."

"I mean, that describes the Fae, and we have a treaty with them," Luna countered, "No reason we can't treat them like people."

"Apologies for intruding," Yesterday's voice spoke over a speaker in the hangar, "but you're inside my body. I can hear you."

Levy looked as embarrassed as it was possible for a dragon to look.

"I can turn off my mics, but if trust is a concern— and, to be clear, you're not wrong to raise the issue, we understand —you might want to save that discussion until we're back at Windward, or at least until you're not on board. There's not really a good way to prove to you that I'm not listening in here."

"...right. How long until we're back?"

"Several minutes. My drive will start spooling momentarily, which should be audible."

"We'll wait."

And wait they did. Luna took the opportunity to flit to the top opening of the cargo bay, perching on the frigate's pitch-black skin. The surface was strangely cool, despite the balmy temperature. But the Ocean had no sun, just... light, so the normal rules of thermal absorption might not apply here.

"Can you hear me up here?" she ventured, speaking out into the air. Nothing responded, and she gave a few experimental taps on the hull. A few meters ahead of her, an unseen panel, previously perfectly flush with the ship's skin, flipped open. Some sort of machinery popped up— oh, shit, no, a weapon, and she was scrambling backwards, and—

"It's okay! It's okay! Sorry to scare you!" The voice was Yesterday's, buzzy and harsh and emitting from somewhere in the little turret. Luna cautiously creeped closer, panic response slowly subsiding. "I just don't have speakers out here, sorry! Have to do a little trick with the plasma gun in here to make sound."

Her curiosity instantly overrode her adrenaline rush— wait, did she even still have adrenaline? A question for later. "You have a mic, but no speaker?"

"Oh, no, I can just hear you through my skin." Oh. Of course the ship could hear through her skin. Why not? "Uh, sorry, I realize that probably sounds insane. I'm designed for atmospheric flight, my skin is touch-sensitive so I can feel the air. Side effect is also being able to hear through it."

Another sentence, another little revelatory statement. Yesterday had a bubbly, happy attitude about everything, which made it easy to forget that she was literally an entire ship, hovering above the water like some piece of modern art.

"Does it ever get old?"

"What do you mean?"

"Being... what you are, I guess."

"I wouldn't know, I've only been a ship for about three years. But I would think no, not any more than you'd get tired of being a dragon."

Luna laid down on the top of the ship while she thought about that, her wings absentmindedly extending into the breeze like a child putting their hand out of a car window to play with the airstream. After a while, she realized that she didn't think it'd ever get old either.

Luna glanced at the three other members of Assessment Team 535 while they waited. They'd said all that there had been to say to each other. Which was a lot, admittedly, but they'd said it, and now there wasn't much left. This place had rewritten three humans' minds into dragons, so seamlessly and perfectly that nothing could really have been said to have changed at all, aside from the fact that they were now perfectly content with no longer being human.

The mental change was the one thing Verdant's people couldn't undo, and the one thing they were most concerned about. The way Verdant had phrased it, they considered the mind inviolable, and enforced that with the most rigorous cryptographic protections they could conceive of. The Ocean simply didn't care: the first time a non-dragon upload came in, it broke their mind, forcing them into a reboot loop as it warred with their mind's safeguards.

They had figured out a solution eventually, at least as much as "just be a dragon before you come in" was a solution. For Levy, Fletcher, and Morrison, there was no hope of returning to anything truly normal. Verdant had offered to help strip away their scales if they were desperate, with the addendum that doing so would only be physical, not mental, and the next time they died— and they would die again, these bodies wouldn't live forever —they'd be right back to this. Nobody had taken her up on that offer.

No, rather than that, they'd all taken her up on the other offers. Uploading, shapeshifting, bioengineered bodies, everything her people had been willing to share, they'd taken. What was one more step away from their humanity at this rate, anyway? It wasn't like they had any left.

"Transit window opening in ten seconds, folks, stand by." Verdant's voice snapped Luna out of her reverie, along with the rest of 535.

"Three, two, one, aaand—" there was a crack, like the sound of air rushing in after an apportation, and the glimmering white sliver dilated, its edge tinting black as it expanded into a proper portal. "Stay safe, 535, and don't be strangers. We'll be here if you come back."

Luna caught the barest smirk on Levy's face as they stepped through, and felt herself mirroring it. Some things didn't change, even between dimensions.

Dawson expected to see a lot of crazy shit working in Strike, but somehow, the craziest shit was seeing the mundane with a twist rather than the outright otherworldly. For example, watching a portal to another dimension open up above a puddle in a tiny Massachusetts cave and disgorge a woman you went to college with. Better than a monster, that was for sure, but also a lot more surprising. He radioed it up anyway.

"Oh shit, hey Dawson. Fancy seeing you here."

Dawson raised his rifle. "Varriano. Who else is with you?" This time, he was the sacrificial lamb. You never wanted to leave the whole team on one side of the chokepoint, and it was a lot safer to blow the cave than it was to fight it out in close quarters with a PTE.

"Fletcher, Levy, and Morrison." Someone waved from behind her. "Can we get out of the cave?"

"Not yet. Don't make any sudden moves. You've been exposed, you know how this goes." Varriano nodded, moving slowly as she made space for the other three.

"Sure do. Nobody touched the water, right?"

"No. We got the initial reports."

"Good. You know the others?" Dawson nodded. The thin guy was Anton Levy, the big guy was Tom Morrison, and the other woman was Abigail Fletcher. PHYSICS Assessment Team 535, down to a T, except for the fact that there were four corpses matching their photos outside, and a reported but now missing humanoid threat entity.

Levy spoke, "Do you have containment prepped? We've been... modified, I guess. Nothing horrific, but we're expecting the box for a week or two."

"Can't talk about it, you know the drill. Gotta do ID checks."

"Right," Levy nodded, "memetic confirmation?"

"Yeah. You all ready? This might sting a bit." They nodded, and he read out one of the phrases that he'd been given to memorize. "The night falls on a weary forest, and all manner of beasts come out to play."

"And I am but a humble lumberack," Levy answered, looking concerned.

"...confirmed, but why do you not look happy about that?"

Levy fumbled for some words, and the other man filled in. "The pre-programmed meme should force a response out of us. I just had the response suddenly noticeable in my memory, I didn't get that forcing tingle."

The taller woman in the back sighed. "Now might be a good time to mention that we're not human anymore. Put us in the box now so we only have to explain this once, I've been awake for eighteen hours, I want a nap and some food."

Levy glared at her, then shrugged. "Honestly, Fletcher's right. This is gonna take too long to explain if we have to do it repeatedly."

Time to back away slowly, Dawson thought to himself. "If I toss you some zipties, can you put them on for me?"

"Sure." He slowly pulled out the ties from his rig and tossed them to the four people standing in the pool of water.

Varriano suddenly developed a wry grin as she tightened her own restraints. "And here I thought you were boring. We haven't even had dinner and you've already got me in zipties."

They had, of course, separated the four of them the first chance they got, not that it would have done any good. They each had an internal radio, they could talk to each other as long as they were in the same state. The interrogator had taken her statement, and it had only taken them a few hours to put a jammer outside her cell (large and well-furnished, but a cell nonetheless) after she shared that fact. 535 had all agreed to be forthcoming— this sort of thing happened from time to time, and GOC personnel who had been subjected to anomalous alterations were almost always permitted back on duty after big GOC gave the all clear. Everyone understood that if you worked with the anomalous long enough, you'd pick up a trick or two. Hell, it seemed like every Assessment team on the whole planet had a member with some sort of mild anomaly going on, and that was if you didn't even count Type Blues.

Footsteps alerted her to someone's approach. Three someones, by the sound of it. One of the changes she hadn't immediately noticed after her transformation was her senses. The Shallow Ocean was big and empty, without much to see or hear. But here on Earth... the little details popped out, even how easily she could hear footsteps. Interestingly, whatever kind of dragon she'd been turned into was different from those of Verdant and Yesterday's home. Those, apparently, had relatively poor hearing and smell, but not her. There were some hypotheses about how the Ocean pulled desires and concepts out of one's mind— 535 had dragonspeech, uncommon in other Shallow Ocean dragons, but presumably inspired by their exposure to Verdant prior to their transformation —which Luna would have loved to spend more time on if she hadn't been trying to get back before her own funeral.

"Ms. Varriano?" She lifted her scaled head from the concrete floor (which was not that uncomfortable for a dragon, surprisingly) to look at the French-accented speaker, a greying middle-aged woman in a lab coat. She was flanked by two guards, neither of whom looked particularly happy to be given this particular duty.

"That's me." Her voice as a dragon was still unmistakably hers, just deeper and more resonant. She wondered how it worked, and then realized that perhaps this doctor would be happy to try and explain it.

"We'd like to do a medical examination on you, non-invasive. Could you follow me?"

"Sure. Do you wanna have the boys unlock my door, or should I make one?" Luna was pretty sure she could melt through steel. It felt dragony enough to her, which probably meant that the Ocean had agreed and given her the ability to do so.

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "I suppose they should unlock it. Gentlemen?" One of the guards gave her a guarded look, but did so, and Varriano padded out into the hallway. "Could you, um. Switch back to human for me? They tend to get a little antsy."

She looked at the doctor and cocked her head, then shifted in a flicker of silver. "You know, this body isn't exactly much safer, right?"

"Appearances, dear. This way."

The walk was short, and terminated at a supersized examination room, big enough for her to fully spread her wings without touching the walls. Presumably it had been built long ago for some sort of supersized PTE research, like the rest of this whole underground complex. Hell, it might not have even been built by the GOC, it might have been "acquired" from some other group. Probably the Foundation, they loved their underground complexes. There was even still some construction equipment in here, presumably inherited from the previous owners.

Luna took a seat on the table. "So, where are we starting? Vivisection?"

"I said non-invasive, and I meant it," the doctor replied before turning to the guards, "thank you, you're dismissed." The pair looked at each other, hesitating, and she rolled her eyes. "Ms. Varriano, how long would it take you to kill everyone in this room? Hypothetically."

Luna blinked, then responded carefully, "I wouldn't do that."

"I'm making a point. Please."

"I'd like to reiterate that I don't have any desire or intention to do any blue-on-blue... but to answer the question? A few seconds."

"See? I don't need you here. Bye." They shrugged, and left. The doctor opened up a laptop on the desk and began typing on it. Notes, presumably. Luna felt like she'd have multiple books on her by the end of this, if people kept taking notes at this rate. "Alright. Let's take a look at you. A little bit of legal disclosure on my end, this is being recorded, and it will be considered for your reinstatement to active duty."

"I understand."

"Of course. You know, for not being human, you do a pretty convincing impression."

"My apologies," she responded, "I'll drop the act."

"Ah, not yet, please. But feel free to drop the trick with the eyes."

"You can see that?" Her eyes— a perfect match for her real body, brilliant blue with no white at all and slitted pupils —had an illusion enchantment that would make them appear as normal human eyes if she wished. It had been Levy's request, based on the understanding that field work might be difficult for a visibly parahuman team. It was notably different from the illusion workings she knew, actually manipulating the reflected light directly instead of altering others' perception of it, which should have made it totally undetectable.

"I'm a doctor that specializes in parahumans. I'm not exactly normal myself." And in what way are you not normal, dear doctor? Luna thought to herself.

"Ah." She dropped the illusion, and felt her pupils narrow as the doctor held a pen light up to each in turn.

"You have a fascinating pupillary response... Oh! Where are my manners, I should introduce myself. I'm Dr. Magnier. Rachel is fine." She pronounced it Rashel. Definitely French, then.

"Varriano, but you knew that. Luna is fine too."

"Lovely! Is it annoying if I do this?" She flicked the light back and forth between her eyes.

"Um. A little?"

"Ah, sorry. Your pupils just... snap open and shut with the light. I've never seen it happen this fast before. I assume you have excellent low-light vision?"

"Yeah. I can see in infrared too. MWIR, I think? More color-of-heat than lowlight vision with that."

"How? The cornea should block—"

"I have a secondary cornea. It's a little silvery band around the inside of the iris? You should be able to see it with the light at the right angle."

Dr. Magnier rotated the light around, trying to find the angle. "Ooh, yes, right there. That gives you good fidelity? Not blotchy at all?"

"Maybe a little? I don't think it's as good as my regular vision, but my vision is insane right now, it's hard to compare to how it used to be. And I've only had this for... what, a day and a half? I just finished my debrief yesterday."

"Right, yes. Your vision is also improved generally? Could you look at the vision chart over there, please?" She motioned towards the wall to Luna's left, with one of the charts with the familiar rows of text on it.

"I can read all of that. Um, and also the small print at the corner. South Coast Paper?" She was struck by a realization about the acronym. "Oh, don't fucking tell me that's a front company."

"It probably is. The Coalition purchased this compound, and it's not like there's many groups that build sprawling underground complexes. Are all your senses improved? Scent, hearing?" She peered into her ear with the little... ear scope thing.

"Not much with the human body. I have some, uh, software, I guess? That can help map sensory data, identify smells, that sort of thing, but the actual senses aren't much better. Dragon me is a different story, though."

The doctor waved her hand dismissively, "Yes, yes, brain in a cube. I'm here for the biology, I'm sure they'll send a computer scientist down later. Hm. Would you be willing to give me a blood sample?"

"Sure, but you might have difficulty getting as much as you want."

The doctor raised an eyebrow, a prompt for Luna to explain. "Uh, I just look human. This body really, seriously isn't. It's still my mind in here, just..." She let out a breath in a sigh. "Ugh, sorry. The whole isolation period is going to get to me."

"It's okay, dear. Take your time. If you want to come at it from a different angle, that's okay."

She took another breath, and calmed herself. "Right, yeah. Um... look, you've read my file, right? And my debrief?"

Dr. Magnier nodded. "Transgender, therian, mage. I'm aware. This 'Shallow Ocean' is less my expertise, but I did read your team's debriefs."

"Right. I didn't want to go back to human, not even a bit. But I did want to come home, and I wanted to be able to see my mom again... so, human-looking body and shapeshifting."

"Emphasis on the human-looking, I take it?"

"A lot. This is the most they offered us, which wasn't a lot by their standards, but by ours... yeah. They called this a militarized bioreplica. It's mostly biology with some implants, and my mind. But the biology itself isn't human, it's some bioengineered amalgamation. Like the blood. It clots almost instantly, carries more oxygen, and my blood vessels self-seal if there's a pressure drop, even the capillaries. I tried to do a working with my secespita just to make sure I could still do it, and I barely even got a drop out of the palm of my hand."

The doctor's eyes widened, and Luna could see the barely-restrained glee behind them. "The knife didn't slice? Or did you just not press?"

"This has a dermal aramid layer. Something like kevlar fibers in my skin, I think. I don't really cut beyond a moderate scratch, and it heals fast too." She showed her palm where she'd cut herself, without any visible mark. "So, yeah, I'm happy to give blood, but I think it might be difficult."

"We'll save that for the end. The science division wants data, but I would like to get to know you first. If you've been fully designed, what else has changed?"

"Um. Denser bones, denser muscles, secondary spinal cord, biothaumic heat insulation, metallic nerve filaments, better—"

"Nerve filaments?"

"I think it means my nerves grow little wires."

"Ah, of course." She said it like it was a perfectly understandable decision to make.

"...of course? You expected that?"

"Well, not specifically. But this is a engineered combat body, yes? These sorts of things are not unheard of to us, even your thaumaturgical resistance to flame. You know of the Foundation's famed Tau-5, I presume?"

Everyone in PHYSICS had heard of Tau-5. Prometheus Labs had dug up a dead god, hollowed out the flesh, and built it into a team of transhuman supersoldiers. Of course, it was Prometheus, so they immediately lost control of their own creation and had it wind up in the Foundation's hands, who knew exactly what sort of treasure they had found.

"I think everyone has, yeah." Tau-5 was something of a boogeyman, as much as this side of the Veil had boogeymen. If it was a joint op and they were on your side? Good news, everyone was going home in one piece. If they weren't on your side? Better hope you had white suits.

"We think the Foundation, or Prometheus, attempted much of the same improvements. Much more crudely, I suspect. But improving reaction time is a popular idea." She acquired a reflex hammer from a drawer, and motioned for Luna to sit with her leg over the table.

Luna moved, suddenly slightly concerned. The exact details of Tau-5 weren't something she had ever had access to. "Are... you allowed to share that information with me?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not." She tapped her knee with the hammer, the familiar patellar reflex causing Luna's leg to jerk. Dr. Magnier suddenly looked more fascinated than she had before, which was saying something. "I can't— ach, the speed. But, no, I am indispensable to the Coalition, they won't reprimand me over it. This information is not particularly sensitive, and it allows us to build rapport."

"Ah." That raised the question of how much of her demeanor was an act. "Wait, can you see the delay there?" Even to her own augmented senses, the reaction appeard instantaneous.

The doctor pointed to her left eye, and Luna noticed that while it looked the same as the other visually, the heat was different, as if it were slightly cooler. "Thaumomechanical replacement. I can see many things. I assume you're stronger than normal too?"

"The brochure said about double a baseline human. Oh, also I don't float in water anymore."

"A brochure? Cute. Can you squeeze this for me?" She handed Luna a grip strength trainer, and she squeezed it without too much difficulty. "Mhm. Not too hard?"

"Not really? Felt a little easier than normal."

"That's a hundred-kilo one."

"Ah." Just about double indeed, then, but it wasn't like the strength felt any different. If anything, she felt lighter, less sturdy. Verdant had told her that was normal— her strength had increased more than her weight had, so she would feel much bouncier until she got used to it. "Um, other things... I have a CBRN suite, I guess. I don't think I can get sick, at least with any non-anomalous disease that Verdant's people knew of? Some serious radiation and toxin resistance too."

"You can't get sick at all? That shouldn't be possible."

"From what I was told, they have a sort of... recreational bioengineering rivalry, making diseases versus stopping them. I guess they tend to add the defensive improvements into their bioreplicas."

Dr. Magnier gave her a look. Not quite disapproval, but it wasn't a positive look. "That wasn't in your debrief."

Luna sighed, "I was there for a day and a half and there was a lot of information. My memory isn't perfect."

"Despite the computer brain?"

"It's honestly doesn't feel any different, it's just running on silicon instead of flesh. I mean, I can record my senses now, but I didn't upload until... I don't know, twelve hours before we came back? We all took video and audio after that, but it's a literally different universe's computer system, I don't know if any of it's compatible with ours. Or even how to download something off my mind."

"Interesting," she replied, tapping away at her laptop's keyboard. "Why did you, if you don't mind me asking?"

They'd asked her that repeatedly in the debrief, and Dr. Magnier asking it again was certainly not personal curiosity. "I've answered that a lot of times."

"Then what's one more?" Luna was increasingly feeling that she was a particularly interesting bug under this woman's magnifying glass.

"You ever experienced a fatal cognitohazard, Doctor?"

"Can't say I have."

"I have. I died. I might not be able to die in a way that matters anymore— none of us can, I guess —but I particularly don't want to die like that again. I..." She could feel her heart seize up with anxiety just thinking about it, the way she had been briefly aware of her own mind betraying her, spinning in ever-more-painful cycles of self-destructive signaling, unable to escape the crushing prison she had been trapped in for that brief eternity. "...sorry."

"I don't think you need to apologize for having trauma about dying."

Luna sighed, "It's been... what, three days? I'll be more comfortable about the whole ordeal as long as I don't have to go through this the next time."

Dr. Magnier raised an eyebrow. "You expect to die again?"

"I mean, ideally not, but I'm still a PHYSICS agent, and I don't think they're gonna waste our time on the safe ones, you know?"

"Assuming you're cleared for duty."

"Assuming I'm cleared for duty, yeah." Another sigh. "Um, anyway... your question. That Earth's version of uploading makes you immune to cognitohazards. Just, entirely. Safeguards catch it and zero it out before it works into your neural processes. Also lots of convenient stuff for fieldwork, but... that was just a bonus for me."

"Understandable. I'm sure someone would like to run tests on that, if you're feeling amenable to the idea."

"No. Right now, I don't want to see another fractal for the rest of my life. Ask again in a few months."

"Of course, my apologies. Let's do vitals next. Blood pressure, heart rate, weight, height." Luna held out her arm for the cuff and the finger monitor, trying to simultaneously dig through her user's manual to find out what those numbers were supposed to be, only to give up when she realized the two Earths probably didn't share the same measurement system.

Dr. Magnier took a look at the monitor as it beeped. "Blood pressure is... high, actually, 140 over 80?"

"Thicker blood. More oxygen capacity in the same volume."

"But your brain— ah, of course, no risk of stroke, there's no blood there. Heart rate is 46... low, but with more dense blood... You feel fine, I take it?"

"I'd rather be in my real body. But other than that, mostly. I feel sort of weirdly light, but that's just the improved strength, the feeling is supposed to fade away in a few weeks."

"Of course. Height and weight, then you can drop the act." Luna hopped over to the scale, watching the readout as the doctor checked her height. It stabilized at 95kg, and she reflected on the fact that it certainly didn't feel like she'd put on thirty kilos.

"Alright. Go ahead, dear," the doctor said, taking a few steps back. Luna didn't hesitate to shift, feeling her scales wrap around her as her point of view shifted and her body became right. She took a step forward to give her tail a little more room, then froze when she saw a look of fear flash over Dr. Magnier's face for the briefest moment before it clamped back down into something more professional-looking.

"Did I do something wrong?" she rumbled.

"...no, I'm sorry. You, just..." Luna could hear her heart pounding in her chest. "...were suddenly very big and very close to me."

She hadn't realized she was scary. Or at least, she hadn't internalized it. Obviously she was scary, she was a PHYSICS mage, she could turn a person inside out with her mind and a knife. Being physically scary was new. Morrison and Levy and Fletcher were all her physical equals— even more so in Fletcher's case, given her size —but regular people, humans, not so much.

"Would it help if I laid down?"

"No, sorry, just... hoooo, panic response. Didn't expect that." She took a deep breath, brushing her hair out of her face and looking up at Luna again before continuing in a slightly less shaky voice. "Okay. From your debrief, I understand you don't know as much about this body?"

"Mhm. The... parahuman, I guess? That body's all normal science, or at least normal if gen plus five tech is normal for your society. The functions are all explainable to us, the hard part is just the bioscience and thaumaturgy to make it. This form... can that eye see aspect radiation?"

"Yes. You're... very difficult to miss, let's say. Yellow and blue EVE aura."

"Right. I'm a mage, so I can tell the weave of stuff, right? My parahuman form, that's all Tight. Explainable magic. The dragon form, even modified into an upload bioreplica? Locked. Same for most of the Shallow Ocean. Even the Union's people don't know how it works, but they do know how to modify and replicate the bodies it makes."

"I see. Let's start with what you know you can do, then." There was some confidence back in her voice, now that she was back to analyzing a subject. That feeling of being a bug under a magnifying glass was back, but at least she was a very scary bug.

"Um. Well, fly, for one." She stretched out one of her wings to demonstrate, the membrane blocking practically all the ceiling lights. The way they folded up against her almost felt anomalous in itself, given that her wingspan was wider than she was long. "My endurance with flying is really good, I can do a few hours of active flight without tiring. Probably longer, we were a bit busy."

Dr. Magnier tapped away at her keyboard, taking notes. "Do you know how fast?"

"Not exactly? More than highway speeds, maybe enough to keep up with a small plane? Soaring is a lot slower, but I could probably do that for as long as I can stay awake. You'd have to give me some space and time to actually test it." Hopefully, they would eventually. There were certainly plenty of airspaces where all the prying eyes knew not to look.

"And on the ground?"

"Fast. Probably twice as fast as a really fast sprinter, at least. Again, haven't had the opportunity to check, we wanted to get back before they started notifying next of kin."

"Right. You said you can breathe fire in your debrief?"

"A lot, yes. My body was shaped very heavily by my theriotype, and I specifically wanted an oxyacetylene flame. I can do a welding-torch flame, or a sort of fuel-rich gel that sticks to things. In quantities far beyond what could reasonably fit inside me. It's not infinite, I can sort of feel the fuel level, but there's a lot."

"Can you demonstrate safely?" She pointed to the cameras in the corners of the room. "We'd like to have a recording."

"...yes, but it's going to damage whatever I do it to. It's acetylene, it can melt concrete. And also bright enough it can hurt your eyes. Or eye."

"If I burn it out, perhaps they'll give me a matching set. Fortunately for you, I had some concrete delivered." She motioned to the back side of the room where a forklift was holding a large, square slab of concrete. Not just random construction equipment after all, then.

"Should we move the forklift?" The slab was a foot thick and about two meters on each side, but Luna wasn't quite sure she couldn't burn through that.

"Are you certified?"

"...no?"

"Neither am I. Alas, it will have to sit where it is." She took another few steps back, and Luna could hear her heart speed up again. "At your leisure, Ms. Varriano."

Luna slowly ambled over to the slab, doing her best not to make any sudden movements towards the doctor. It felt a little weird, performing on demand like this... but she was a dragon. Dragons breathed fire. Why not show off?

She opened her jaws, feeling the second little throat-within-a-throat flex, and willed up her fire, feeling the flame catch as something within her throat ground together to spark it. She pinched off the flow as much as she could at first, then slowly widened it, the foot-long flame in her maw slowly growing in length and intensity.

Ah, fuck it. Why am I holding back?

Luna let loose, bracing her neck and blasting the concrete with as much fire as she could muster. The room lit up with light and sound, the hissing cacophony of sparking flame and rock echoing against the concrete walls as the blinding-white light of her fire forced Dr. Magnier to look away. She could feel the heat, from both the flame itself and the occasional blob of molten rock that was kicked back and onto her legs and snout. But she could see just fine, a tinted nictating membrane sliding over her eyes like organic welding goggles, letting her see the how the concrete was being literally blasted away. And then she was through, widening the molten hole, and—

The forklift exploded. Not with enough force to fling her, but with enough energy to throw all of Dr. Magniers instruments onto the floor and scatter shrapnel across the room. She clamped her jaws shut instantly, suddenly chagrin, a feeling that was only worsened when the sprinklers turned on.

"Well. I suppose we should have moved the forklift. Are you unharmed?"

"I'm fine."

"Good. I think we might have to resume this another time, because I don't think my laptop will work like this, and I assume several angry men with guns are about to—" The door burst open, and then the shouting started.

Luna shifted back to two legs and calmly knelt on the ground with her hands on her head. She probably wouldn't be getting back on active duty today, at least.

May 25th, 2021
To: Col. S. Robertson
From: Dr. R. Magnier
Subject: Psychologist's Report, Assessment Team 535

I have repeatedly met with the four members of Assessment Team 535 over the last three months, both as a medical doctor and as a Coalition psychologist. While they have been physically transformed by their experience, I have seen no behavior that would justify their continued confinement, nor any indications that they are not truly who they say they are. All have repeatedly expressed a desire to return to work, particularly because they believe that their unique abilities are especially well-suited to the demands of the PHYSICS division, and I find myself concurring.

While anomalous transformation is typically an extremely traumatic event, this appears to not be the case for 535. I suspect that this is because their new forms do not deprive them of the ability to integrate into broader society, and give them the promise of being able to greatly contribute to said society. It will be important to ensure that they do not self-isolate from others, though I have seen no signs of such behavior in their confinement, and they remain gregarious and conversational despite their austere circumstances.

As such, I am recommending Assessment Team 535 for immediate return to active duty.