[???] Memetic Kill

██████, New Hampshire, United States.
████, February ███, 2021.

Luna Varriano gathered her thoughts, took a breath, and clicked her cassette recorder. "The cave here is about twenty meters across, vaguely like a flattened spheroid. Morrison says it was likely created anomalously, since it's too big and too regular for anything in the region. Uh, he's probably right, he knows more about geology than I do. Anyway. Uh. The object itself is in the middle, maybe ten centimeters off the floor, and appears to be a two-dimensional, glowing white circle. There's a, uh, constant flow of warm water coming out of the bottom, maybe a liter per second or so. I'm not feeling any phantom sensations—"

Her dictation was cut off by the anomaly suddenly turning cloudy, then black. She was in the process of scrabbling to get out of the cave when she heard something splashing in the pool of water.

"Hello?" a voice said. It sounded confused.

Well, shit, she thought. This had been supposed to be another 9950 instance. She risked a look back at the anomaly and saw—

"Oh! Um, hello?" A woman, maybe late-twenties, clearly fit, with dyed green hair and wearing fascinatingly little clothing. And she was waving at her. The circle behind her was clearly a portal now, leading to some sort of sunny beach environment, which perhaps explained the swimsuit and the temperature in here. Varriano grabbed at her radio, "Morrison, it's active—"

"Hi. I come in peace."

"Uh. Hi?"

"Hi! I'm Verdant!"

"Uh. Varriano..." She trailed off as ahe noticed her eyes. Stupid. Her eyes are up there. And they're weird. They were slitted, reptilian, and very, very green. Varriano felt that twinge again, the one she'd had for years. They could be anything... but they looked like a dragon's eyes.

"Hi, Varriano. I'm not from your universe."

She grabbed for her sidearm at the same instant that two other members of Assessment Team 535 poured in through the entrance.

"What—" Morrison said.

"Okay, introductions again. I'm Verdant. Are you Morrison? You look like a Morrison."

Morrison pointed his gun at her.

She slowly raised her hands. "You can put the guns down, I'm not going to hurt anyone."

"What'd you do now, Luna?" Morrison said.

"I didn't do shit!" She hadn't, really. Maybe she'd taken a step too close, but...

"Um, hello?"

"Hello," Levy replied, "I'm Levy." He lowered his gun a tad.

The woman raised an eyebrow. "No name tags?"

"I don't see one on you," Morrison pointed out.

"I'm wearing... this. Where would I even put it, my forehead?"

"...fair."

"Can we go outside? I get a little claustrophobic like this, I promise I'll be good."

"Um," Varriano tried, "I don't think we can take you at your word. No offense. We have standing orders about unknown humanoids."

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm actually fairly normal for my universe. And also not technically humanoid in spirit. Though I won't deny being dangerous."

The four members of 535 stared at her.

"Okay. Look. There's nowhere to sit in here." None of the others moved.

"I'm going to go outside and sit down on a rock or something. Is anyone going to try and stop me?"

Varriano looked around at the other two, then at Verdant through her VERITAS. "No reason not to. She's... honestly, I don't know, there's too much EVE in here to see anything, but I'm not getting anything nasty."

Levy backed up, keeping his rifle at the ready and motioning them out. Morrison kept his gun trained on her the entire time.

She sounded exasperated, "Look. I promise I'm not going to hurt anyone unless they start it."

"Go ahead," Levy spoke, motioning for Morrison to lower his gun.

"It's not the worst welcome I've had, but those ones are usually more fun." She sighed. "Oh, right, don't touch that water or it'll turn you into a dragon, and then you'll have to jump through a bunch of hoops if you want opposable thumbs again. Or do touch it, being a dragon is nice."

"Uh..." Varriano said.

"You touched the water?"

"Yeah."

"How long?"

"A few minutes?"

"You'll get species dysphoria in two to six weeks but dodge the transformation. Probably fixable."

Varriano blanched. "If, uh. I already had that?"

"...then I should probably explain some things first."

Outside of the cave was the frigid air of a New England winter night. Verdant seemed completely unbothered by the temperature, and a quick look at her through the VERITAS revealed the likely cause: absent the already-charged cave, she was resplendent with magic, almost like it was running through her veins. A yellow and blue aura was visible through the imager, but there were more pieces Varriano couldn't quite pick out.

She flopped down on a snow-covered boulder. "Okay. Now let's chat." She held up a finger as Varriano went to ask a question. "No, let me explain, it'll be faster. Then you can ask. Okay?"

"Sure."

"Alright. I'm an uploaded mind wearing a shapeshifter body. Humans started turning into a merged human-dragon species about fourteen hundred years ago, that's where the shapeshifting comes from. Voluntarily, on both ends of that. Uploading is newer, six hundred-ish years. I can't shapeshift into anything, just a few preset forms, but I can swap those out and modify 'em. And I can full-on swap compatible bodies because my mind's a bunch of bits. What else... um, my day job is 'warship,' I'm closing in on seven hundred years old, I've been in three different wars, and I'm currently on vacation." She took a breath. "Okay. I'm going to shift. Don't freak out."

Levy stared at her. Varriano was about to ask her big, singular question when she pulsed like a ripple of inside-out space, and a half-second later reformed as... a literal dragon. Wings, iridescent scales, long tail, the works. Varriano felt a pang of jealousy like she'd only felt a few times in her life. Verdant was on the smaller side, though, certainly not big enough to qualify as whatever the researcher-turned-dragon the skippers had bouncing around somewhere. She guessed she weighed maybe two tons, larger than a horse, smaller than a truck.

"Neat," Morrison said, matter-of-fact. "Never met a polymorph before."

"I can still talk like this, but you probably can't hear me," she said. Or vibrated. Varriano wasn't sure which.

"I can, actually," she replied. The other two looked at her like she was crazy. "Uh, some sort of weave-speech, I think," she explained hastily, "I guess it doesn't work unless you're Type Blue?"

The dragon cocked her head. "Type Blue?"

"Magic user, thaumaturge."

A twisting of space brought her back to human form. Well, not quite human, but human-like, at least. "Wait, you can't all use magic?"

"Not create it, no." It was rare enough that the fact that they'd accidentally made her a thaumaturge had been worth months of study.

Levy shrugged. "We make do. Do you need a coat?"

"Nope. I'm insulated, courtesy of my dragon side."

Varriano suppressed the pang of jealousy she felt at the thought of lying in the snow, nude in her scales and comfortable despite the freezing temperature. "We might have to take you back to base," Levy added. "At least if you're staying."

Verdant raised an eyebrow. "Depends. I would suggest not trying to make me to go somewhere against my will, though. That would end badly, and not for me." Morrison silently flicked the safety off his rifle, and Verdant apparently noticed it. "Just because I'm really good at violence doesn't mean I like doing it to random people," she added.

Varriano went to speak, and Levy spoke over her before she could. "Why are you here?" It was a fair question, really, and probably more urgent than the one that was on her mind.

"I'm on vacation. There was a portal. Why not?"

"...vacation?" Varriano asked.

"My body's in the shop. Refits and such. I don't normally wear a swimsuit. It's a beach over there!"

"Your body? But—" Fuck, she thought, not the question I wanted to ask.

"My normal one, not this. USCS Verdant Dawn, one million tons of alloy and stealth composites, and enough firepower to melt a continent. I needed my conduits replaced, neutron embrittlement's a bitch. It's either sit in drydock while they root through my guts, or go read a book on a sandbar somewhere, so I went with the latter."

"Are there others like you?" Levy asked, "We've got nonhumans and uploads here, but they're both rare."

"Posthumans in general? Yeah, something like three hundred billion..." she paused mid-sentence, suddenly looking concerned. "Is that sniper yours?" she asked, dropping the flippant tone and staring off... directly at Fletcher's overwatch position.

Levy sighed, then tapped his mic. "Fletcher, stand down, she can see you." Then, turning to Verdant, "How'd you do that?"

"This body is very, very far from baseline. I can see in most of the EM spectrum and your camo doesn't work in UV. Also I have an ELINT system in my skull, and whatever cloak spell she's using doesn't work on uploads."

"But how?" Varriano asked, "That should work on anything! It's a direct perception modifier—"

"Ah, that's why, then. I have an assurance module in here," she tapped her temple, "detects and reverts outside alterations to my mind. Oh, important question, while I'm at it, you folks aren't fascists, right?"

"...No? That's Obskurakorps. Or IJAMAEA. We're with the Global Occult Coalition," Levy said, "we just keep the peace. As long as you're not hurting people or breaking the status quo too much, we don't mind."

"Cops or actual peacekeepers?"

"Mostly peacekeeper, bit of scientist, only cops if you're going to hurt folks or break the Veil. And, sorry, give me a minute, I need to call... all this, in."

While Levy chattered on the radio, she turned to Varriano. "Veil?"

"Um. Most people don't know about the paranormal. Magic and... everything. It's started to change recently, but most people still don't know the details. Especially the really dangerous stuff, or how fragile it all is."

"I see," the woman replied, her tone noncommittal. "Well... species dysphoria, right?"

"...yeah." The Coalition had swapped her chromosomes for her and made her a thaumaturge in the process; they were no stranger to transhumanism. It wasn't like there weren't plenty of therians in the Coalition's ranks, but the transformation to something so fantastical was far outside of modern thaumaturgy's grasp, even if it wouldn't have caused a furor about maintaining the Veil. But she had pushed for 535 to take this UTE for one very specific reason: she'd heard about what the skippers had found, and she wanted it more than anything in the world. If this was the same thing...

"Not a thing for us these days, but I've been around long enough to remember. What species? Dragon? Or something else?"

"...yeah. Dragon." It wasn't like the other members of 535 didn't know. Was it against regs to send the woman with species dysphoria to the species dysphoria anomaly? Absolutely. Did anyone actually care? Not so much. The Coalition had an... understanding, about that sort of thing. And a trained PHYSICS operator who became a dragon would certainly be useful.

"Someone should probably look into how those portals attract latent dragons... But, right, scales. I've got a few options for you."

"Options?"

"Cures for what ails you."

"Ah." Her heart was pounding, like her veins were about to burst with each heartbeat.

"Option one is the traditional way. I give you a bit of my dragon side's biothaumic system, you transition into a draconic over about a year. You keep your current body, with some changes— eyes and heat insulation like me —and around the one-year mark you'll get a dragon form you can shift to. It'll be a near-duplicate of mine, though. Plus side is that we can bond in about a minute."

"Yes. Yes, please—"

"Hold on. Let me get through the list. Option two is thaumaturgy. We replicate the magic that makes shapeshifting work, apply it to your body, and give you a dragon form of your choice. Or multiple other forms. It'll take a few hours if I don't go get some tools, but you can pick the details."

"Uh. How many options are there?"

"Five total. Number three is you go sit in the pool, or you go through the portal and sit there for a few hours. You'll get the exact dragon form you want, but it won't make you able to shapeshift like me. And if you stop early... well, don't stop halfway through."

"Okay. Four?"

"Four is that you upload, and we print you a form like mine, shapeshifter with all the options you could want. Probably less tech in there, though. Uploading we can do in a few minutes, but I'd have to get some kit first, and printing a body takes a day or so."

"And five?"

"Five is you die without having an afterlife lined up. You blow your brains out, the Ocean yoinks your soul and spits you out as a dragon somewhere. We do a little bit of magic to find out where you went, send a ship to come pick you up, and portal you home. That's pretty much instant, but won't make you a shapeshifter."

"The Ocean? What's that?"

"The Shallow Ocean, the plane through the portal back there. Sort of a multiverse nexus plane, except it also turns you into a dragon. Well, if you weren't already one. No effect on us. It's also sort of a free backup afterlife. Whoever made it was feeling nice, I guess."

"Gods. Um—"

"Okay. One is transition, two is thaumaturgy, three is transform, four is upload, five is death. You can go back and do the other ones later, if—" Verdant suddenly paused.

"What?" Varriano asked. She held up a finger, as if she was listening to something.

"Do your guys have another group about two klicks in that direction?" Verdant pointed east.

"...I can't tell you that, but—"

"No," Levy answered, returning from his radio chat. "Why?"

"Then someone else does. Not sure what they're saying, but there's at least six different handsets."

"There goes opsec again," Morrison said. "This was supposed to be a quiet mission after Brussels."

"Do we need to leave? I don't really know... well, fuckin' anything, really," Verdant asked.

"No clue. Could just be hikers."

"They're not hikers," Fletcher said over the radio, "unless the Foundation's started selling parkas."

"Foundation? Who's that?" Verdant asked.

"How—" Levy started to ask.

"Radio gear and a computer in my skull. You're just doing frequency-hop and some encoding, not encryption. Oh, and I can hear your earbud from here. What's the Foundation?"

Levy just kind of stared at her. Morrison laughed.

Varriano sighed. If Levy wasn't going to explain, she would. "Jailers, basically. If it doesn't obey consensus reality, they "contain" it. Lock it up in a box and throw away the key. And, um. Then it inevitably gets out of the box and kills people. We just, uh, destroy it outright. If it's dangerous, that is."

"...is this world really that dangerous?" Verdant asked, "Stuff that doesn't obey consensus reality for me is like... some weird stellar and natural phenomena."

"We have contagious ideas that kill people, if that answers your question."

"Well. Good thing I'm an upload. Oh, hold on, just broke their radio encryption. Wait one." Verdant paused for a few moments. "Okay, I'm hearing 'MTF' some. I'm assuming that doesn't mean transgender."

Varriano made a choking noise. Levy gave her a brief glance before responding, "Mobile Task Force, Foundation tactical teams. Same deal as us."

"Any clue what they're here for?"

"The portal, probably. We're... frenemies, I guess."

"Hm. And what happens to me?"

"That depends entirely on you," Levy replied. "If you come with us, we'll do our best to get you out safe and sound. If you go with them, well, tossed in a box, probably. And if you go your own way... we'd rather you didn't do that."

Verdant raised an eyebrow. "I have a better idea. I'm gonna go chat with them."

"I really recommend you don't—" Levy cut off as she shifted again and spread her wings, an iridescent dragon seemingly unfolding out of empty space. "I'll come back for you, hatchling," she vibrated, and Varriano's heart lurched again. And then she was off, a massive blast of air from the downbeat of her wings rushing over them.

"I can see the hill, I think," Alvarez said. "Mountain? I don't fuckin' know, whatever it is."

"Thank fucking god, finally," Davis complained, "did they walk out here too? The snow's like three feet deep."

"I bet they apportated. ICSUT's like, two hours away, the ritual circle for it is probably someone's classwork."

"And we can't shell out the resonator time to avoid a three-hour drive in a shitty van?"

"I dunno, you wanna get teleported by some freshman thaumaturge?" Alvarez asked. "You'll get your asshole reversed with your face."

"I mean hey, at least in my case they'd be able to tell the difference. In your case, though..."

"Davis, you're lucky I like you."

"It's because of my flawless sense of style," he replied, then suddenly flinched. "Oh, shit. What was that?"

"Huh? You bugging out on me?"

"No, no—" Davis clicked on his radio, "Tau-8, be advised, just saw some sort of large flying object, low over the trees."

"Roger, 8-3. Hold there, we'll group up on you."

"Roger."

"If this is just 'cause you saw a bat, you owe me a beer," Alvarez teased.

"No, I saw— holy fuck," Davis grabbed at his rifle as a... fucking dragon swooped down through the trees. Just when it looked like its wings were going to smash into the trunks, it twisted, a pulse of inside-out space folding it up until it touched down on two legs.

"Evening, gentlemen."

Wow, Verdant thought, these guys have way worse kit. At least the GOC people had thermal cloaking and some sort of adaptive optical camo, but the Foundation apparently didn't pay for anything more than parkas and tactical gear. Not even good tactical gear. She'd had better back when she'd been in the infantry.

"Hands!" One was pointing a gun at her while the other was saying something into his radio. "Contact, humanoid anomaly."

"They're right here," Verdant said, putting them up for the second time that day. "Put me on with whoever's in charge."

"Uh." His gun didn't waver, even if his voice did.

"Look, I'm not hostile, I'm just from another universe. I assume you're here after the portal I came through?"

Another two soldiers came slinking through the snowy underbrush after half a minute of being held at gunpoint. Their radios were buzzing, and Verdant was once again glad she had held onto that decryptor suite.

"8-5, ready."

"8-6, ready."

"7, 8, ready."

"So I take it you three are Tau-8-1 through -3?"

That caused a storm on the radio, shortly followed by silence. These ones had actually trained for comms compromise. Neat.

"I'm 8-1," the larger of the two soldiers who had just walked up spoke, "who, and what, are you?"

"I'm Verdant. Last name Dawn. What I am requires more explanation than I'm willing to give at gunpoint. Who are you?"

"That's classified."

"Classified Foundation Mobile Task Force Tau-8?" To his credit, he didn't react to that. Damn. "Okay, look. You're here to go contain the portal, yeah?"

"...that's classified."

"So you came out here for an evening stroll, then?"

8-1 picked at his collar. "That's classified."

"Ah. Well—" something went thup and stung her on the waist. "Ow! What the hell—" Verdant plucked a dart out of her side where it had skidded off her subdermal weave and embedded itself practically sideways in her skin. "A fucking tranq dart? Really?"

8-1 looked mortified. Before he could presumably direct someone to shoot her with a real bullet, she put her hands back up. "Look. I'm not here to fight you, or to get taken prisoner. The GOC folks got here first and they were nicer than you. They earned this one."

"I'm under orders to secure and contain this site. They'll have to leave, and you'll need to come with us."

"...I'm not doing that, and you don't have the ability to make me. Bye. Don't come closer." She shifted again, letting them get a good look at her scales as they glittered in the moonlight, then took off in a blast of powdery snow.

Varriano felt her heart picking up again as Verdant landed at the top of the rocky hill. "How'd it go?"

She shifted again, skin replacing scales once more. And the swimsuit, incongruous at best and eye candy at worst. Not that Varriano minded, of course. "They tried to tranq me. Didn't get through my subdermal weave, but even if it did, probably wouldn't do anything."

"Subdermal weave?" Morrison asked. Of course he'd perk up the second anyone mentioned something that sounded like tactical gear.

"Biosynth aramids under my skin. Great for knives, okay for projectiles and blunt objects."

"You got any more of that sorta thing in there?"

"Yeah. This is a milspec biosynth body. Not a real warform, but it's as close as you can get while still having DNA. Normally I'd have a little more on than this, but... well, beach vacation."

"Can I ask what a warform is?"

"Morrison, can you save being a gear queer for like ten seconds?" Levy interjected.

"Hey, men always come second to guns." The big man smirked, "...close second."

Levy made an exasperated sound. "What did you tell the Foundation people?"

"I told them that we had it handled, they said they had orders to secure and contain the site, and for us to GTFO."

"We, now?"

"Look, I got you all into this mess, I at least owe you something. And I owe her a little more." She nodded towards Varriano.

"Hm." Levy replied. "Did you catch which MTF they were?"

"Yeah, Tau-8."

"Never heard of that one. One sec." Levy hit his radio, "Fletcher, can you confirm that?"

"I can see it on the unit patch. They're getting close to the base of the hill, by the way. Forest edge. Looks like eight skippers, regular rifles. No blues."

Levy spoke into the mic, "Command, 535. We've got an MTF Tau-8 out here trying to steal our site and our PTE."

There was a brief pause. "Uh, 535, let me make a phone call. Wait one."

It only took Morrison a minute of waiting to bring it back to weapons. "Warform, though?"

Verdant smiled. "Any full-synthetic combat form, from warship to biped. Though usually it refers to forms that are person-sized. Well, or dragon-sized. Vocabulary's confusing, dragons are people for us, obviously."

"How dangerous? Relative to us, that is."

"I... I have no clue, actually, I don't know how dangerous you are. How good's your AP ammo?"

The radio interrupted whatever his reply would have been, "535, Command. Foundation liaison just said they don't even have a Tau-8. Kill or capture, your call."

"Command, they have us outnumbered, so it's looking like the former."

"That's a roger, 535. Backup is half an hour out, hold on 'til then."

"Understood. 535 out."

"Is that common here?" Verdant asked.

Varriano scoffed. "Rogue MTF? Wouldn't be the first time. Foundation's sloppy as shit. It, uh, might also be another group entirely. It's not like their logo is secret. Chaos Insurgency, maybe?"

"What's their deal? How many fuckin' groups are there here?"

Morrison laughed, "If you find out, let us know. There's a new one every week, you get used to it."

"Right. What do you want me to do?"

"Sit tight. If they start shooting... well, use your judgement and watch your fire. We're not heat resistant."

"Roger." Verdant's form flowed again, a different iridescent dragon coming out this time. It was similar— clearly some sort of shared ancestor —but different, smaller, narrower, and lacking wings entirely. Varriano noticed the tail last, a whiplike appendage tipped with a heavy, angular blade. "Testing, testing. Gotta talk like this since half of you can't hear me without a mouth."

"We can hear you. Just stay off the line unless it's an emergency."

"Understood."

Verdant watched anxiously as Levy walked out to meet with his opposing number. He'd smartly decided to keep an open mic, in case it gave them a split second warning that the shooting was about to start. As it was, they were watching him through their scopes, and in Verdant's case, her eyeballs. It was almost claustrophobic to have eyeballs, surprisingly, which was not a feeling she'd expected. Feeling fragile and vulnerable, she'd expected. Feeling blinded because she didn't have a dozen different sensors, anticipated. Claustrophobic because she couldn't see behind her hadn't been on the list.

"Tau-8-1."

"You have me at a disadvantage, then," the big man in the white parka replied.

"Good. Why are you here?"

"Orders. Same as you."

"No. Foundation says you don't exist, there is no Tau-9, and they've rescinded any orders given to Tau-9, just in case you got wiped."

"We have orders specifically countermanding that."

"Of course you do. Look. There's enough of us that this is going to be bloody. It's not a dangerous anomaly. Just let it go."

"Here. Look at my orders. We have... A lot on the line." He withdrew a folded piece of paper from his parka.

"I'm not stupid, you look at it first."

"Sure." He unfolded it, flipped up his night vision, and read the paper. "Satisfied?"

"Sure. Let's see it."

He turned the paper around.

FATAL: NEURAL COMPUTATION ERROR. SELECTIVE ROLLBACK PERFORMED. ∆T=0.00131

Levy crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, and Varriano made a strangled noise from where she was hiding behind a rock.

"What the fuck was that!?"

There was no response.

"Hello? Anyone?"

A quick look around revealed why. The other three members of Assessment Team 535 had apparently been looking at the... whatever it was. They weren't moving. Verdant took another glance.

FATAL: NEURAL COMPUTATION ERROR. SELECTIVE ROLLBACK PERFORMED. ∆T=0.00127

It was some sort of fractal-looking thing. The shape vaguely reminded her of a parrot.

FATAL: NEURAL COMPUTATION ERROR. SELECTIVE ROLLBACK PERFORMED. ∆T=0.00124

How the fuck... Hel, they weren't kidding about this world being dangerous, Verdant thought. I've gotta have a module for this shit in here somewhere...

Ah, here we go.

LOAD: alwaysready-counterkill-0.9.1.inpm
RUN? (y/n): Y

Welcome to COUNTERKILL 0.9.1 by alwaysready!
Hooking... complete!
Loading neural translation matrix... complete!
Ready.
Please reproduce the effect.

Verdant took another glance at the paper as the soldier folded it back up.

FATAL: NEURAL COMPUTATION ERROR. SELECTIVE ROLLBACK PERFORMED. ∆T=0.00119
COUNTERKILL: Exception caught!
  analyzing...
  analysis complete!
  translating matrix...
  translation complete!
  generating neural mask (this may take a while!)..........
  neural mask generated!
  neural mask injected! 
  testing...
  tests successful!
  exiting COUNTERKILL...

Okay.

She hit the radio, "Command? You listening here?"

"535? What just happened? We lost vitals."

"Uh, this is Verdant. The PTE, I guess. I think everyone else just died. The MTF guy just showed them some fractal thing on a piece of paper."

"Shit. Did you look at it?"

"Yeah. Didn't work on me. They're moving up the hill now."

"Okay. Sit tight and try to hide, help's fifteen minutes out."

"Oh. I'm not, um, helpless. Is it okay if I kill these guys?"

The radio link was silent for a few moments. "As long as it's only those guys."

"Sure."

Verdant dialed her seaskimmer through the portal, and then the massive comms array at Windward through that.

There was a brief pause. <Go ahead, Verdant.>

<I've run into some trouble here. I'm wrapping that up, but I owe a few favors and my body's still in drydock. Can you get a frigate or someone to spool up their drive? It should only take a pair of jumps.>

<Sure, one moment.> Verdant stretched while she waited, almost as if she was an oversized cat. Gods, it's been a while since I did this.

<Okay, putting you on with [ID:USCS_TOMORROWS_YESTERDAY].>

<Thanks!> She switched the channel.

<Hi!> a new voice exclaimed. Verdant skimmed the bio. Oh, she's beautiful... USCS Tomorrow's Yesterday was one of the new-build Nomad-class heavy frigates, designed for aerodynamic flight and absolutely gorgeous as a result.

<Hey! I gotta pick some folks up in the Ocean that just got killed, want to go for a jaunt?>

<Absolutely. Spooling now. Should be about half an hour? Got coords?> She would know the time down to the millisecond, of course, but starting off with telemetry right away was a little personal.

Verdant figured she'd break that ice. <Not yet, need to do some {vengeance|cleanup|blood} here. I'll meet you at your berth.>

<{understood|excitement}.>

Now, time to deal with these idiots...

"Uugh, my head. Fuck." Varriano attempted to cradle her face with her hands and was treated to the sudden realization that she had claws and a snout.

"...what."

She opened her eyes and stood up— on four legs, the right way, almost shaking with joy. She was right, finally. Varriano practically pranced around, looking at her new self and splashing in the water, what had to have been thousands of pounds of muscle moving like it was as light as a feather.

And then she realized that she was very, very alone. She was standing, as a dragon, as exactly what she had wanted to be for a decade, in the middle of a shallow ocean that stretched on as far as the eye could see. And she could see, now. No contacts, no glasses, no optics... and she could pick out ripples in the water from miles away. There were no landmarks, nothing distinguishable from anything else, no visible horizon. Just endless ocean, a few feet deep.

Well, she thought, spreading her wings, I might as well test these out.

"Oh, fuck me. Fuck me! I can't believe I fucking fell for—"

What.

Levy stood up, slowly and carefully putting each... claw... under him. His first thought was shock. His second thought was panic. His third, which he would find much funnier in retrospect, was that it would be quite difficult for him to write an after-action report like this.

Morrison rolled over and gasped for breath.

"Hey, asshole, get off of— the fuck?" Fletcher said from underneath him.

"Sorry, I—" The two of them stared at each other, slitted eyes looking making contact with each other.

"...were your eyes always green?"

"Were you always a dragon?" she replied.

"Not like Varriano, no."

"Hm. I wonder if we can breathe fire?"

Verdant wiped the worst of the blood off of her tail-blade and trotted over to 535's corpses, shifting mid-stride. "Hey, Command? Still there?"

"Go ahead."

"MTF's mostly dead. I left you a pair of live ones in zipties. Didn't come loaded for dragon, I guess. I'm gonna go pick your folks up."

"...Can you elaborate on that?"

Verdant plucked a strand of hair from Levy's body. "Uh. They died, so unless you have some sort of way to prevent that, they're in the Shallow Ocean, which means I have to go get them. Unless you don't want them back?"

She was met with silence, during which she grabbed hairs from Varriano and Morrison.

"I guess that sounds kind of insane. Um. They're not gonna be zombies or anything, they're still, y'know, themselves. Mentally, anyway. Physically, they'll be a bit different, but nothing we can't fix for them."

An other blur of unfolding space and a quick flight over to where Fletcher had been rewarded her with the last bit she needed. "Alright, look, I'm gonna go deal with that. I'll re-open a comms portal in the other direction in about half an hour. If you need anything urgent just yell on this frequency around here, someone'll pick up."

Another quick flight, and she was hopping through the portal, her eyes adjusting to the bright afternoon light almost instantly. A mental command started up the seaskimmer's reactor, and she nestled herself into the cockpit before transferring to the machine itself. Biology was fun for basking in the sun, or lack thereof... but she would always be alloy and circuits on the inside.

<Yesterday? On my way. Or do you prefer Tomorrow?>

The other ship giggled, <Yesterday's good! I'll be spooled in about twenty minutes, what's your ETA?>

<Thanks! See you shortly.>

Varriano had spent the last half-hour spiraling through the air, her heart surging with joy. Now, she was just gently gliding, hoping she would find anything out here in the endless expanse.

There was a sound like tearing paper and static, and she looked to her side just in time to see a black-edged portal yawning wide. Something dark and pointed slammed out of it, the movement of the air displacing her even from this distance. The thing... the ship, she realized, as some sort of engine kicked on in the rear, was glossy black and aerodynamic, like some sort of oversized aircraft. It was almost impossible to tell how big anything was, really, she had no basis for scale with how much her vision and her own size had changed, and—

"Varriano? Hey!" And there was a dragon leaving the ship and flying up towards her. One she recognized.

"Verdant?" She spiraled down, savoring the feeling of wind in her wings as she did so, tilting her tail to make fine corrections.

"How are the scales?"

"They're perfect. I... I cried, when I looked at my reflection."

Verdant wasn't really capable of a human smile— neither of them were, she supposed —but she could feel the warmth coming off of her words when she replied. "I know how it feels. And look at you! You turned out so pretty!"

She's gonna make me cry again, Varriano thought. "What happened?"

"You looked at some weird fractal thing and died. Everyone, actually, you're just first on the list. Mostly because I wanted to see you the most."

"You mean we fell for a memetic kill— oh, Levy's going to be so pissed."

"He's next! Not too far, but we'll need to take the ship."

"Oh! The ship... is that you? The real you?"

"No, hatchling," a deeper, booming voice replied. Varriano realized it was coming from the ship. "She's much, much bigger. I'm USCS Tomorrow's Yesterday. Verdant Dawn is fifteen times my mass."

"Come on board," Verdant said, "we have a lot to talk about."