The Traitor, Part 5

Content warning: Brief discussions of sex, dragon sex, and medical kink. Transphobia, both transgender and transhuman; some homophobic slur use.

Cherry Memorial Research Hospital, Portsmouth, Jaega, Northern Union.
October 18th, 1765.
Fifteen days after landfall.

Vaya took her place opposite from Citra in the courtyard. There was a bit of a crowd, given how much the rumors had swirled around the two of them for the last week or so. Being from the 499th alone apparently made the two of them celebrities to the various support troops stationed here in Portsmouth, and going for a morning jog to try out some different leg configurations had certainly not helped with the rumors.

"So," Vaya thrummed, "same rules as always? No fire, no hits to the head, first one out of spares loses?" The act of using dragonspeech in human form was exotic enough to get some murmurs, and she was chomping at the bit to see what would happen when she really let loose.

"Nuh uh, I know you can beat me with a Bladewyrm, so one more rule: stay on two legs. And first one to fully shift loses."

"Fair enough. On three?"

"How about on zero?" Citra replied, already lunging towards her. Vaya shoulder-checked her, then pivoted around to slug her in the gut, only to find her knuckles painfully slamming into ceramic armor. Citra took advantage of her surprise to shift a Bladewyrm's claws and slash at Vaya's side, where she discovered the exact same armor waiting for her. There was a quiet whisper of "holy fuck" from one of the onlookers; the exchange had been lightning-fast, speed boosted by their access to engineered muscle fiber.

"Wait, can we even—" Vaya started, before Citra wrapped a clawed hand around her neck and swept her legs, and then her world started to tilt as she fell. Hitting the ground barely hurt, but Citra bulking up her forearm and crushing her windpipe with draconic muscle certainly did. That got a cheer from the crowd.

"You thought this through, huh?" Vaya thrummed as soon as she realized she couldn't speak.

"Maybe a bit. I think that counts as a kill, don't you?" Citra replied with a smile, standing and offering her a now-human hand.

"Nope," Vaya replied, taking her hand and yanking her to the ground as she yelped in surprise. It took her barely a full second to swap out human muscle for a superior equivalent and put Citra in an armbar.

"Wait, how are you not—" Citra winced as Vaya applied pressure, "—choking?"

"I don't need to breathe—"

"No, I mean— damnit, can you just break my arm?"

"Nope. Tap out."

"Girl, you know it doesn't hurt that much," Citra replied, additional muscle briefly bulking up her form as she started to stand up, taking Vaya with her. Before she could get on her feet, Vaya pulled, and Citra's elbow snapped backwards with a sickening crunch. Citra barely flinched, throwing her off and shifting the ruined joint back to functionality the moment Vaya had expended her leverage.

Citra held up a hand, "Okay, now that you got a little break out of your system, pause? How are you not choking?"

"I'm getting oxygen from my other bodies. Oxygen bladders have a lot of oxygen in them."

"I figured that, but you should have some sort of autonomic choking reaction from your windpipe collapsing."

Vaya took a moment to make sure she was entirely human. Physically, she was, or at least something close to— huh. Something was shifting inside of her, but not in the normal way. Rather than something exchanging, something was just frozen in place entirely. Exactly what that something was remained a bit of a mystery. Vaya suppressed it for a moment, and was suddenly hit with the desperate urge to gasp for air for a split second before she let her instincts run her body again.

"Oh, this is weird," she vibrated, "I can feel my... I don't know, desire to not choke forcing some sort of change. Like the response is just frozen in place so it can't reach my brain."

"Huh. Wanna keep going at it?"

"Until I run out of oxygen, yeah." Vaya took up a fighting stance again, "I won't replace my neck if I don't have to, just as an experiment."

"You probably won't," Citra replied, "You know how your fire recharges even when you're not using the body? Your oxygen bladder refills too. And with five bodies..."

"Fuck me, is breathing optional now?" Possibilities suddenly spiraled through Vaya's mind. How fast did she recover oxygen? Did it refill underwater? Where did the atoms come from, were they—

Citra interrupted her thoughts, "No clue. Now fight me!"

Vaya obliged, sliding out a facsimile of a Bladewyrm's tail and hurling the tip towards Citra's gut with a flick of her hips. It bounced off of armored scales, and before she could retract it, Citra grabbed her tail, shifting half of her body into some sort of Bladewyrm hybrid to do so. A bladed tail of her own flicked out, trying to sever Vaya's own. The attempt failed, Shatterscale armor saving Vaya from dismemberment. She retaliated by pressing in, plating her knuckles with more scales of thick carbide and piling muscle onto her arm, then slamming a fist into Citra's side.

Citra laughed, her own armored scales deflecting the blow. There was some impact there, enough to wind her, but she hadn't— oh.

"Yeah. I figured it out too," Citra thrummed. She kneed her in the ball— nope, she didn't, those were smart enough to swap out before impact, but the groin was never heavily armored even on Shatterscales, and it still hurt like a motherfucker until Vaya instinctively swapped it out with one that wasn't stinging, and then she was back at it. The pair traded a series of carbide-knuckled punches, literal jackhammer-strength blows strong enough to break bone, but they just didn't, armored scales and dragonbone taking each impact down from "crippling" to "bruising". Vaya finished the trade by landing a beautiful kick with a briefly-digitigrade leg to the side of Citra's knee, but Citra shifted something before it landed, and rather than breaking the joint, her kick simply pushed her away.

"Alright, hold on, timeout," Vaya interrupted, repairing her throat and banishing her scales, "What the fuck is going on?" It wasn't that she wasn't enjoying the activity, but there was some sense of frustration building up inside her, as if she was being denied the reward of her friend's gore.

"A good fucking fight," one of the onlookers shouted. Vaya glared at him and noticed a few bills in his hands... had they been taking bets on this?

Citra rippled, her scales receding to skin as she returned to her plain SIB, not even winded. "What's wrong?"

"How are we supposed to actually injure each other besides like..."

"Besides wrestling?" Vaya's smile came back, still feeling a little smug about the armbar.

"Can we... talk somewhere? This is a little crowded." Citra nodded, and Vaya turned to the small crowd. "Alright, show's over folks!" The two of them found a table in short order as the crowd began to disperse.

"Okay, hypothetical time," Vaya started. "How do I kill your body without touching your head or using my fire? Or how do you kill me?"

"Blades won't get through the scales, and we both shrugged off impacts... something out of my field of view, maybe? I don't think we react to things we can't notice."

Vaya shook her head. "Every time you weren't facing me, your back would flare up with scales."

"Hm. Mobility kill is possible, I guess? Just keep breaking joints until we're out of spares? We could test how long your oxygen lasts after..." Citra trailed off when she noticed one of the onlookers ambling their way. Vaya gave him a look over: an older man, balding, definitely in good shape. She wondered for a moment if his appearance was an affectation or his actual original body. Visibly old folks were getting rarer among transhumans, from what she knew. A new body couldn't fix your neurons aging out, but it could fix everything else.

"Privates Bhatavadekar and Kishori, I presume." Vaya and Citra glanced at each other before nodding. "Doc Franklin sent me to look after you while you beat the daylights out of each other, but it seems you've had some difficulty with that."

"You could say that, uh," Citra paused, realizing he hadn't said his name.

"Oh! Right, sorry. Doctor Max Ivor. I'm a combat physiologist. I've been briefed, don't worry about trying to explain it all again."

"Combat physiologist?" Citra asked.

"Ah, I focus on the function of the body in combat. How forms move and fight, how their protection works, that sort of thing."

Vaya shrugged, "Well, you got any ideas, Doc?"

"A few. Oh, is it alright if I surprise you two sometime? It will hurt a little bit, but it's very important for some tests."

"Uh... A surprise that hurts?"

"The test doesn't work if you know the exact nature, unfortunately."

"...sure, I guess?"

"Wonderful. And yes, ideas," he said, taking a seat opposite the two of them. "You're both trying to fight like you're Bladewyrms. You're not, you don't have the angles or strength to rip off scales. Or the tail strength to punch through them entirely, not with being able to get full-thickness scales on a human form. And I assume those punches with your makeshift brass knuckles aren't doing much either."

Vaya shook her head, "No, we just keep shifting dragonbone and armor before the impact. And then shift it away afterwards, so if it bruises we don't even notice."

"You're probably shifting the dermal aramid too, if I had to guess. That'd soften the blow even more. You're a lot more durable relative to your offensive power in these bodies, even if you could crush a baseline human skull like a grape." Vaya raised an eyebrow at that remark. She didn't feel that strong.

"So how should we fight, then?" Citra asked.

"If you want to keep going at each other like this? Get better at grappling, if you punch and kick and knife each other you'll be there all day. If you want to know how to actually fight a hostile amalgam? Use a gun, aim for the head, and don't miss the first time."

"Doc, that's the nicest thing anyone's said about me all day," Vaya replied with a fanged grin.

"It was very much a compliment. Believe it or not, you aren't the only transhuman alive with a preference for lethality." Ivor had a little grin at that, and Vaya got the distinct impression that he was at least a little bit like her. "Have you sparred with a full spread instead of limiting yourselves yet?"

Citra shook her head, "Vaya's got that on lock. We're only even on two legs."

"Hm. You may find that changing, now." Ivor glanced at Vaya, "Hopefully you won't mind your spot as apex predator being contested." He stood, "With that, I bid you both farewell. I'll have the reset chamber spun up for you both."

Vaya and Citra glanced at each other as Dr. Ivor walked off.

"Do you get the feeling that every doctor we meet is just saving up to monologue at us?" Vaya asked.

"I mean, I didn't, but now that you bring it up, I kinda—" There was an impact on her back, simultaneous with the distinct supersonic krakrakrak of an RG-63, then her scales were covering her again, shielding her from a second and third impact, and she was standing and shifting into twenty-seven hundred kilos of armored death as she turned around, and—

And Dr. Ivor flicked the rifle's safety back on, dropped the mag, and racked it to eject the last round. "Surprise," he said, apologetically.

"What the fuck do you think—" Citra fumed before Vaya cut her off, her maw already smoking with readied fire. "Citra, hold!" she interrupted, immediately understanding what had happened. "This was the surprise test. They can't test our instinctive reaction to getting shot if we expect it."

"Got it in one," the doctor replied. "Did that get through at all?"

Vaya slipped back into skin before responding, "First one did. Everything else hit scales. No broken ones, either, I think?"

"Vaya! He fucking shot you!"

"Okay, and? How many times did you get shot in training?"

"Uh... nine, I think?"

"And did it hurt?"

"...not much."

"Yeah. I got my arm blown off and barely flinched. One bullet's fucking nothing. Chill." She turned to the doctor, "At least, I assume your aim is good enough to not accidentally hit my head."

He nodded, "I was a sniper during the Spanish Civil War. There's a reason Franklin always puts me up to do this instead of someone else."

"Wait, always? You do this often?"

"It's a normal test for new forms. Actually, normally we'd do it a lot more often, but you're due back in the field soon. And it'd be rude to send you back damaged."

Citra scoffed, "You people are fucking crazy."

Dr. Ivor smiled earnestly, "You can't be good at this job if you aren't."

"So," Vaya asked, "What's the result? Did we pass? I didn't study, I'm a little worried about my grade."

He laughed, "You passed, don't worry. The question was more about your reaction time. Did you have any Bladewyrm in there when I shot you?"

"No, just plain SIB."

"Interesting, then. This rifle has a cyclic rate of one shot every seventy-five milliseconds. Your SIB's reaction time is good, but not less than a hundred. So you can't react to things you can't see, but you can react faster than your normal reaction time. Which is... surprising, honestly. I expected the second shot to go through."

"Wait, how can I react to something faster than I can process it?"

"No clue. We'll probably have to vivisect someone and figure it out. But that can wait until we've got someone who likes that sort of thing."

"Okay," Citra said, returning back to her SIB, "Hold on. You're the second doctor to mention voluntary vivisection. What the fuck are you all doing here?"

Dr. Ivor gave them a quizzical look, like they should have known what he was talking about, before it passed to a look of realization, "Ah, right, you're both new. Well, I assume you both know about the birds and the bees by this point, yes?" Vaya glanced at Citra and blushed. "I see," he said, "well, we make military forms attractive and infertile for a reason, soldiers."

"That's... intended?" Vaya said, trying to fight off embarrassment with curiosity.

"For a few reasons, yes. Liking your own body is important for your mental health, obviously. And the pesky remnants of the monkey brain you have in there are more likely to trust attractive people instinctively, so we make everyone attractive to zero out that bias. Casual sex is good for camraderie, so we build in all the stuff to make that fun, too. That and most bioengineers are shameless hedonists. We probably couldn't stop them if we tried."

Vaya wondered for a moment if the same was true for their dragon forms. She thought they were certainly attractive, but she wasn't quite sure if it was attractive in the way that a well-made machine was attractive, or if it was a sexual attraction, or if it was both. Not that the difference really mattered for others, she thought, memories of Citra stroking both of her draconic shafts at the same time appearing unbidden in her mind.

Dr. Ivor ignored Vaya's increasing levels of blush, "But, you are certainly aware that people have sexual interests that are far outside of the norm, yes? Whips and chains and such things." Vaya nodded sagely. Her interests might have angled more towards "living weapons" than BDSM, but she was certainly aware of the concept. "Well, there are kinks that are effectively impossible for cishumans to practice safely. Or for anyone to practice safely, pre-Hodgson. Vivisection is one of those."

"That's... mildly horrifying."

"Vaya, you literally get off on violence and threats," Citra remarked, "I've never seen you cum harder than that time you were doing the tail thing to Aaliya, I don't think you have room to talk."

"Hey! That's..." The memory of wrapping her tail around her squadmate's neck and pressing the bladed tip up against the underside of her jaw while she sucked her off flashed through her head. "Fuck. Yeah, okay."

The doctor raised an eyebrow the slightest bit before continuing, "Um, yes. Anyway, we take volunteers, give them a form we're trying to figure out, then... well, disassemble them on the operating table. With varying levels of anesthetic, depending on their preference. When we're both done, they shift out, good as new. We have a lot of questions about how amalgams work internally, so I suspect a number of folks will be having a very fun time in the near future."

"...we really are built different, huh?" Vaya mused.

"Indeed we are. And please, let me or Dr. Franklin know if there's anything else you need before you ship out."

"Actually," Citra said, "now that you mention it, can we get a phone?"

Vaya stared at the cell phone sitting on the table as if it was a particularly venomous snake. Or, not quite. There wasn't a snake on the planet that could actually cause her permanent harm. Even if it could get its fangs through her armored scales, even if her human body wasn't built to be immune to practically every known toxin, even if it bit her right in the jugular, nothing would harm her in a way that would matter.

Not to say that this was the normal state of affairs. For two thirds of the planet, a snakebite would have meant needing to immediately seek medical treatment. It could possibly be fatal even with treatment; some venoms killed fast. As a kid, she'd been obsessed with them, worrying her parents sick that their son (and she had been a son, at the time) would annoy a krait, or cobra, or viper just a little bit too much.

Of course, she'd joined the other third of the planet about six weeks ago, and fatal injury became more of a suggestion than inarguable fact. Shapeshifters cared little for individual forms after all, and Vaya cared less than normal. And now... even in a humanoid form, she could flash-shift armored scales meant to stop high-velocity rifle bullets. The natural world held no danger for her, and never would again.

"Vaya?" Citra asked, "you alright?"

She sighed, "Yeah. Just... thoughts, you know."

"Yeah, I know." They had a few hours until a VTOL would return them, along with a number of scientists and pallets of supplies, to central America. Dr. Ivor had procured the phone for them, something that Vaya had been quietly hoping the Army wouldn't allow. Not that her parents were committed fascists or anything... but it would be difficult. She had killed five of her countrymen without hesitation.

"Fuck it," Citra said, "I'll do it. But we both put it on speaker, yeah? I need someone to get me through it."

"What, and I don't? Sure, deal."

Citra grabbed the phone and dialed. The call would be monitored, but the conditions were pretty simple: don't say where you're going next, don't talk about schedules, don't talk about military equipment, and don't talk about the specifics of military forms. Vaya had been surprised that nobody had questioned their loyalty: her family lived in India, India was a founding member of ODI, ODI was at war with the PDT, the Union was a founding member of the PDT, and she was in the Union Army. Dr. Ivor had just laughed. They were shapeshifters now, and they'd both killed in service of remaining so. Nobody nobody had any question their loyalty; the only concern was the possibility that a hostile government would threaten their families.

Citra put the phone on speaker while it rang. "Kishori household," a woman's voice answered after

"Hi mom, it's Naresh."

There was a pause. "What?"

"Yeah. I'm alright. I, uh—"

"Who is this?"

"It's me, I know I don't sound—"

The call ended with a click. Citra cursed, her skin rippling with scales in a sympathetic reaction. One of the fascinating parts of being an amalgam, they'd discovered, was that they'd started shifting unconsciously. Not uncontrollably or especially inconveniently, but it made emotions harder to hide.

"Shit. Sorry—" Vaya started.

"No, it's not your fault. Or hers, I guess. I mean, it is, she's an essie, but they probably told her I died. I mean, the government probably thinks I died, it's not even a lie. And now someone with a different voice calls and claims to be her dead son? Yeah, I'd hang up too."

"Shit," Vaya said again.

"Yeah," Citra sighed. "Your turn. I'll try my backup after you go."

She picked up the phone, dialing one of the three numbers she had memorized before her emotions could stop her. The call went through obligingly, ringing through within a few seconds.

Someone picked up. "Saral Bhatavadekar."

Vaya resisted the urge to immediately greet her father. "Mr. Bhatavadekar? I wanted to call and tell you there's been an error. Your son Ravi is alive and well. He—"

There was a sharp intake of breath across the line, then a pause. "Who is this?"

How could I possibly prove... oh, I know. "Do you remember taking him to a zoo for his sixth birthday? He got obsessed with a green mamba and cried so hard that he threw up when you told him that he couldn't take it home." Citra suppressed a giggle across the table.

"...yeah, that's him alright. What happened? Does this mean he's not MIA anymore?" Ah. He thinks this is the government.

"Uh. It's complicated—"

"I have time, please."

Vaya sighed. Fuck it. "He almost died at Seattle. The Union fixed him up, and he realized that he wanted to make some other changes, too. He's a she, now."

The line didn't go dead, but her father didn't respond, either.

"It's me, Dad. Sorry. It's Vaya now, not Ravi."

Another pause. Eventually, she got a response. "That's... a lot," he said, guardedly. "Is it safe for you to talk to me on the phone?"

"Yeah."

His sigh was audible, "I'm— You're the real thing, aren't you? I can hear some Ravi in your voice."

"Yeah. Remember the kite incident?"

"Heh. Yeah. You are him. Or were. Sorry, it's—"

"It's okay. Vaya, yeah. New body, new voice box, I know I sound different."

"New body?"

"It's a lot easier than hormones."

"You could have just done HRT here and stayed with your family! We would have found some way to keep you out of the draft—"

She couldn't resist a scoff. "Chemical transition? Seriously? Besides, I didn't even know until I almost died." Nobody fucking chemically transitioned, not since the Hodgson papers. Why bother? Transhumans didn't need to bother with surgeries or hormone treatments, not when your biology could be whatever you wanted it to be.

"What's wrong with that? It's better than being a snake!"

"...are you for real right now? You take me being transgender in stride and get hung up on me being transhuman?"

"Tell me you're at least human, please, Rav- Vaya. Sorry. Shit, this is—"

Vaya could feel the heat of her anger building, and rather than try to crush it down, she just rolled with it. "I'm not pissed about the name when you've known it for fifteen seconds! I'm pissed about your reaction to everything else! And no, I'm not fucking human!" The fact that she could feel fangs in her mouth and claws replacing her fingernails was proof of that. They vanished with a thought, folding back up into nothingness as if embarrassed to have been noticed.

She received no response but the slight hiss of silence.

Vaya took a breath, "No. I'm not human anymore. I have a human body, but it's bioengineered, and I'm not giving up scales and wings just to make you happy."

"Have you thought about how you might not be you any more?"

"That's— that's not how it works! That's never been how conversion works! You know that!"

"There have been some new studies—"

"Studies done by an essentialist country at war with a transhuman one?"

"It's dangerous, R- Vaya!" A pause. "Can you go back? If you wanted to?"

Vaya noticed her fingers slowly shifting to a Bladewyrm's claws again. "Back to one body? Yes. Back to my original pure baseline? No. And I wouldn't, anyway. I'm not giving this up just to go back to the shitty chromosomes I didn't want."

"...you're not even related to me anymore, are you? By blood?"

"I don't know why that would matter when my kids would be able to pick their own DNA too, Dad." She sighed, somehow managing to suppress a frustrated scream. "I'm going to hang up the phone now. Tell Mom I'm alive and I love her." She tapped the phone to hang up and growled with frustration when her claw clicked uselessly on the glass. Her dad was saying something when she managed to get her skin back out to actually use the touch screen, finally disconnecting the call.

And then it was over.

"Holy fuck," Citra whispered.

"Yeah."

"Median voter moment."

Vaya couldn't resist a chuckle, and felt the stress bleed out of her just a bit. "I expected a lot of things, but not that. Fuck me."

"You need anything? Your skin was going wild that whole time, scales kept coming out every time he said something."

"Not until you take your turn."

"I was kinda hoping you'd forget."

"Not that easily. Who's your backup?"

"I have a little brother who manages to be somewhat less shit than the rest of the family. Probably should have started with him." Citra was already dialing, and Vaya could see bits of aerospace-gray scales creeping up the back of her arms.

"Relax, Citra. Not like they can take anything away from us."

"Huh?"

"You're doing the same thing I was, you've got scales coming on. Sprinter, I think? Trying to rush through or run away?"

Citra glared at her, "...I don't think I like how easy this makes it for you to psychoanalyze me," before hitting the dial button.

The phone rang six times before someone picked up. A young man, by the sound of it.

"Hello?"

"Asim, it's Citra." Vaya had the sudden realization that her own experience of figuring out that she was transgender scant hours before completing her transition was emphatically not the norm, and that it was entirely plausible for Citra's brother to have known her chosen name before her departure.

"Wh— what the fuck?"

"I lived, shitass!"

"They told us you were MIA! And your voice, did you... ohohoho, you sly bitch." None of Vaya's squadmates had a perfectly feminine voice, at least to her ears— a few too many years of having to use the wrong one did that to you —but a new set of vocal cords did wonders.

"Ohh, I thought they'd tell you I was dead. But you really thought I was gonna stay a conscript? I'm fighting for the other team now, little bro. "

"Shit... Citra, I—" Asim hesitated, his jubilant mood suddenly swinging in the opposite direction. "I just got my draft letter on Tuesday. I report next week."

The grin vanished off her face instantly. "Oh, fuck," Citra breathed. "Are you gonna skip?"

"How? I can't even leave the country. And you know how Mom and Dad are about the war."

"Shit, there's gotta be some way we can get you out of it—"

"Am I gonna have to shoot you?" Asim sounded like he was about to cry, and Vaya didn't blame him. Citra was clearly panicking, armored scales wrapping around skin, eyes darting back and forth as she tried and failed to formulate a response.

Vaya put a hand on Citra's wrist, shifting just enough dragon into her human form to thrum, "Citra, can I talk?" She nodded.

"Asim? This is Vaya, I'm your sister's friend. Take a deep breath and don't freak out, okay?"

"O... okay."

"No, take a deep breath. I can hear you over the phone." "And you too, Citra." She was rewarded with both parties actually following her instructions. "It's going to be alright. Here's what you're going to do. Listen carefully, okay?"

"I'm... hoooo, I'm listening. Sorry."

"You're probably going to get sent to Seattle or Downriver." She kept talking before he could interrupt, "If you get a chance, you drop your weapons and book it for the other side. If you get flashbanged, drop your gun. If you have to shoot, shoot over their heads or at their feet. Okay? Do everything you can to not be threatening, especially if you're going to be in close quarters."

"Does that... does that work?"

"Last guy who didn't try to shoot us, we took prisoner. It works." She decided it was better not to mention what had happened to that guy afterwards, though. "Citra, are you okay?" She nodded, some confidence coming back.

"Vaya's right, Asim. Don't get any dumb ideas about being brave, you'll be alright."

"Sure. Like you two weren't brave?"

Vaya laughed, earnestly. "I got blown up by artillery and converted in a field hospital so that I didn't die. Not much brave about that."

"And I tossed my gun and ran the first time my sergeant left me alone," Citra added. "I can be brave all I want now. You'll be alright."

"Just don't tell anyone your sister's a snake," Vaya said, "that might go poorly."

"Uh, isn't that a slur?"

"Pretty sure we're allowed to say that," Citra said, "we certainly have enough scales at this point."

That managed to get a chuckle out of Asim. "So... what are you like now, then?"

"Nothing too fancy, just military forms. And the right gender, for once. How are Mom and Dad taking it?"

"What, you going MIA? They still think you'll turn up eventually."

Citra snorted, "Yeah, just not the way they expect. Are they home?"

"Mom is. You want me to go put her on?"

"Yeah, let's get it over with."

"We're doing this again, huh?" The sounds of someone shuffling around became audible. "Mom! Phone call! You're on speaker."

"Who is it?"

"It's your daughter," Citra said. Vaya noticed that for once, her skin was staying skin, not reflexively shifting to armor.

"I don't have a daughter," she replied with a hard edge in her voice, "I have two sons."

"You can claim that all you want, but good luck getting anyone to believe it. Anyway, I'm calling to tell you that I'm alive and well out of sheer familial obligation. This time, I'm using my real name. It's Citra."

"Naresh, I will not entertain this delusion—"

Citra laughed, "It doesn't matter whether you do or not, because you no longer have any control in this situation. I changed my body. All that's left of the old me is up here in my mind."

"What have you done to my son?!"

"I slithered into his skin and ate him alive, and he liked it. Put Asim back on, will you?"

There was a brief pause, followed by her brother's voice, "Well, congrats, Mom's crying now."

"Well, she's responsible for my friends getting shot, so I'd say she deserves it. And me, actually. I've been shot like... ten or so times? You kinda lose count after the third or fourth."

"Oh, that 'congrats' was unironic. Decent chance she gets me shot too, I guess. And slick line, by the way."

Citra smiled, "I practiced. I'm gonna run, but I'll try to stay in touch, okay? Won't be from this number, but I figure you'll know it's me."

"Sure. Hey, can you send me a selfie? I have no clue what you look like now."

"Definitely, just delete it after you get a good look. Safety and all that."

"Kay. Love you."

"Love you too, kid. Stay safe." Citra hung up and exhaled, "Well, that wasn't too bad."

Vaya raised an eyebrow, "How were you more chill about your essie mom than your brother getting drafted?"

"Oh, I was ready to deal with her. Did you like the 'slithered into his skin' part?"

"Yeah, you make a pretty fucking hot supervillain."

She grinned, showing teeth far pointier than anything a human would have. "We both are, you know. Oh! Selfie. Can you put on some scales and make a face?"

A moment later, and a Bladewyrm was resting her head on Citra's shoulder. "How's this?"

"Come on, no face?"

"Look down."

Citra glanced down to see Vaya's tailblade hovering a centimeter away from her jugular and laughed, "...yeah, that's perfect."

Vaya and Citra stepped off the plane under the watchful eye of Sergeant First Class Kamau. The flight had been uneventful (Vaya didn't want to think about what an "eventful" flight involved), and blessedly short. Vaya had discovered that her problem with flying hadn't ever been the part where she was airborne, it was the part where she was trapped in a metal tube.

Well. Maybe the part where she was airborne had been the problem too. Wings tended to have an effect on one's fear of heights, after all.

"Bhatavadekar! They get you all fixed up?"

"Better than new, sergeant," she replied. Please, please ask what I mean by that, she thought.

"Kishori, you behave yourself around the civilized folk?"

"Of course, sergeant."

"Good. What the Hel was wrong with you in the first place? You get stuck halfway through a shift or something?"

Vaya grinned. It would have been a lie to say she hadn't been hyping up this moment in her mind for the last few days. "Well, I can do this now," she replied calmly, armored scales flickering out across her skin as she reshaped herself. She went further as Sergeant Kamau looked on in shock, displaying her Bladewyrm's horns and four-fingered claws. Wings had proven impossible, unfortunately— not that she couldn't force them and the required musculature onto a humanoid frame, but the result was too off-balance to actually fly. The tail, on the other hand... A thought, and a bladed whip of a tail extended off her tailbone.

She was immensely gratified by the look of total amazement on her platoon sergeant's face. Two weeks of having blasé doctors poking at her had really put a damper on being something impossible.

"Oh, and I can do dragonspeech in any form now," she thrummed before slowly adjusting her body back to something closer to human. She could see the gears in her platoon sergeant's brain turning... and she could also see the same glint she'd had in her eye every time the platoon had done CQC training.

"Oh!" Citra piped up, as if the fact that she and Vaya were something entirely new had simply slipped her mind, "I can do that too!" A layer of scales rippled over her as a demonstration before vanishing.

The sergeant took a moment to close her mouth, which had opened at some point and never quite closed, before composing herself to speak, "Privates, I have two questions, and I would like them answered immediately: How the fuck did you do that, how the fuck do I do that?"

A series of explanations later ("we're amalgams," and "you can just do the ritual as soon as the schemas get sent out") and the trio was headed back to the "front", as much as there was one. The pair of Marine brigades that had been sent to fight them had mostly either died, surrendered, or extracted, and only scattered pockets of holdouts remained, burrowed into the jungle ruins.

"How did we make out?" Vaya asked as they flew over the ruins, "I kinda missed... well, most of it I guess."

"Quite well. Charlie got hit the hardest, and you all didn't get hit that hard. Last count has our side down twenty-eight in the whole battalion."

"...anyone we know?" Citra asked, cautiously.

"From your squad? Sona and Aisha."

"Aisha?! But I thought we weren't even on the line while we were gone!"

"We weren't. Random shell got through the interceptor grid after you two got hauled out. Fucked up half the platoon. She bought it. Sorry, kid."

"And we made out well," Vaya replied dumbly.

"We did," Sergeant Kamau answered. "Less than five percent casualties. And don't sell your own contribution short, Private. You picked up six regs in your first ten minutes of fighting. And Private Kishori over there got another two after your little accident. Hel, your whole squad practically put up spec ops numbers, if I'm not careful they'll start poaching you out from under me."

"But..."

"Yeah. I know. You know how many soldiers I've had die under me, Vaya?" She blinked, unaware that she knew her first name.

"...no, Sergeant."

"Too fucking many. I've been in this fight for half a decade now, and I have seen too fucking many flag-draped coffins and twenty-one-gun salutes. As long as we still draw breath, as long as our fire still burns, we will keep making those fuckers pay for every life they've taken." She paused, then relaxed, her own speech having wound her up like a spring. "Understood, soldiers?"

"Yes, Sergeant," they replied in unintentional unison.

"Good. I assume we don't have to keep you secret?"

"I don't think so. The doctors said anyone who knows what to search for should be able to pull it up within a week or so once the next chamber update goes out, with probably some big announcement later."

"And they sent you back? You didn't want your name on it?"

"...I wanted to get back in the fight. I figure I'll do some interviews next time we're back... home, I guess?"

"Sweet, sweet Fort Bloodland. Alright. Well, since we've got some prisoners to sort through, I want at least one of you with me when I go shopping."

"Shopping, Sergeant?" Vaya asked.

"Shopping. Where do you think I got you?"

"We showed up on a train?"

"Yeah, that was mail order."

Citra laughed, the deep draconic chuff lost to the wind and carried over dragonspeech instead.

"I'll volunteer," Vaya answered, "what do you need me to do?"

"If she's volunteering, I'd rather not," Citra said. "Someone's gotta explain what happened to everyone else."

"Works for me. Your squad is north of that broken spire right now." Citra tipped her wings and spiraled downwards in response. "And you, Private... Well, you'll see."

Another half minute of flight and a quick landing later, and Vaya did see. They'd acquired what looked like a platoon or two of POWs, currently coralled in a loose group in a vaguely-large-enough ruined building. Sergeant Kamau motioned her out of line-of-sight from the prisoners before switching to her SIB.

"Sergeant?" Vaya ventured, joining her back on two legs.

"Shoot."

"I thought RIMC usually fought to the last man?"

Sergeant Kamau scoffed. "That's just propaganda. Lots of 'em do, sure, but not all, and why risk lives killing 'em all if they'll surrender? Cheaper to keep a prisoner alive than to train a new NUA reg."

"But doesn't Odie... you know?"

"Shoot us in the head if we get captured?"

"Yeah. That."

"Sure do. I don't blame 'em."

"Wait, what? Why?"

"You know what we do at melee distances. I wouldn't want to take us prisoner either, good way to get a tail-blade through my face. No, I blame them for being fascist bastards, not for the logistics of putting living weapons in cuffs."

"And we don't retaliate."

"It keeps the conscripts surrendering instead of fighting to the death. Easier on us. Anyway. These assholes," she said, gesturing widely, "are mostly wannabe hardasses who ran out of batteries. Probably a few headquarters guys too."

Vaya wasn't sure where she was headed with all this. "So what am I here for?"

"Normally they give these guys the whole spiel when they ship them off to a POW camp. But since I've got you here, I think you'll make for a pretty decent impromptu interrogator." Her grin was only mildly evil, "and lose your top, let's get you looking like you're something special."

Lance Corporal Sihota was having a rough week. A rough month, really. Two weeks in the most haunted jungle on the planet had been a bad start, but fortunately drone pilots were too valuable to waste on bushwhacking. The combat had been over fast. Contrary to what he'd been told in training, the snake pilots weren't really any better than their own. Sure, they had better jamming, but that was different from skill. Of course, that didn't matter much when the snakes finally dropped ten billion artillery rockets on their air defense, but it'd been a beautiful dance while it lasted.

Out of drones, they'd been told to grab a suit and hold the line. So he had, until his suit had run out of charge. Then Gunny had told them to grab their sidearms and set booby traps, before retreating on foot, and he'd done that too. Then the snakes caught up with them, and he'd watched Gunny put a beautiful, pointless shot from his pistol right between a Bladewyrm's eyes, just to have it ricochet off armored scales. Then he'd watched Gunny get decapitated with a single strike, and he'd decided then that he'd never particularly liked that gunnery sergeant, and that he had better things to do with his life than die for a battle that had already been lost.

So now he was here, sitting in a prison with no real walls to speak of, guarded by a single fireteam of snakes who were smart enough to keep their scales on whenever Sihota could see them. Really, the snakes weren't the problem. At this point they were a force of nature, they would do whatever they were going to do. The real problem was fucking Staff Sergeant Goyat, because he would not shut up about escaping, and Sihota didn't particularly feel like getting gruesomely killed. The snakes didn't like using ammo if they didn't have to, after all.

"Lance, look, all I'm saying is—"

"Staff, you're saying that we somehow kill four dragons with our bare hands without anyone raising the alarm, and then we somehow outrun our own mickvees on foot so we can get back before the boat leaves? If it's even still there?"

"There's almost fifty of us and four of them. There's plenty of big rocks. And we just have to get to a radio—"

"And then we get picked up by their SIGINT kit, and then we just have to outrun dragons on foot?"

"Lance, I've had it up to here with this doom and gloom shit. This is life or death, don't make me pull out the insubordination regs on you." And that was the real problem with Goyat. He wasn't wrong about the seriousness of the situation, Sihota liked his soul intact, thank you very much, but they weren't in a fucking movie. They were within earshot of the second-most dangerous creatures on the planet, and bereft of the technology that made them only the second most dangerous. Either Goyat would get them all killed, or Sihota would speak up one too many times and find himself smothered in his sleep.

So Sihota swallowed his pride, and got out a convincing, "You're right, Staff," before he noticed someone new walking up— multiple someones, in fact. Women, even. One was obviously African, but the other... certainly looked Indian. He motioned with his chin. Miraculously, Goyat took the hint.

Curiously, the quartet of Bladewyrms that were their keepers perked up when the pair approached. Sihota took a second look. The dark-skinned one was whatever the snakes called a gunnery sergeant, but the other didn't have a uniform top on, just the undershirt. Some sort of political commissar or interrogator, maybe?

"Alright," she said, "listen up. This is your first and last chance to change sides. You want to be able to do this—" her skin folded in on itself, iridescent scales replacing flesh, "—then now's your chance." And then she was back to normal, as if she had just done something normal. Lance Corporal Sihota stared. That was not in the bag of tricks that snakes were supposed to have. And her accent was flawless...

The realization hit him like a load of bricks: she'd turned traitor herself. The same realization must have hit Goyat a second later, because he was not nearly as quiet about it.

"Traitor! You fucking— you fucking traitor!" He was so mad that he could barely get the words out, his face turning bright red as he tried and failed to spit out any specific expletive instead of additional stammering.

The snake grinned, as if he'd paid her a compliment. "Come on Staff, if you conscript enough folks to throw in the meatgrinder, some of us don't like it."

So she'd been in the military. Calling a staff sergeant "Staff" was an affectation that a civilian wouldn't have. And if she'd been drafted, that meant she'd been in the Army, because the Corps only took volunteers. And only men got drafted...

Ah. So she was a fucking fag, then. He, he tried to correct himself, not quite buying it. She did only have a tank top on, and the snakes sure knew how to put a woman together, even if whatever was inside of that body wasn't a human being anymore. Goyat was yelling something in response, but Sihota only heard the snake's counter: "Sit down and shut up, or I'll make you," punctuated by the transformation of her hand into a dragon's bladed talons. Sihota was not ashamed to admit to himself that he was hoping the snake would use them on Goyat, because at least then he wouldn't have to deal with him.

Unfortunately, the commotion was amplified when someone stood up, only to be forced back down amid more shouts of "Traitor!", and Sihota shoved away his rage at another betrayal. Someone was about to get killed, and he was going to make sure it wasn't him. The snake was already lunging forwards, faster than he'd ever seen a person move— but she wasn't a person, of course. A person's legs didn't bend backwards like that, nor did their arms sprout scales and talons.

And then Goyat lunged at her as she dashed past, and Sihota did nothing to interfere. He wouldn't mind if a traitor died, after all. Equally, he wouldn't mind if Staff Sergeant Goyat died. No, Lance Corporal Sihota figured he'd had enough of sticking his neck out to last a lifetime, and he simply sat and watched.

The dumbass staff sergeant who had taken her bait must have had it out for her. A screaming full-body tackle was not what Vaya had expected the day to involve when she'd gotten up that morning, but she resigned herself to dealing with it as Kamau and the guards leaped into the fray ahead of her.

The man had a rock, she noticed belatedly. She resisted the urge to laugh, realized she was resisting the urge to laugh, and then laughed out loud. He looked on in rage and horror as armored scales coated her flesh, and brought the rock down on her skull. She blocked the descending strike with a single arm, let her instincts bulk up her other arm as much as she could, and punched straight into his chest with a scale-knuckled fist. Something went crunch, and he collapsed on top of her with a whimper.

Rather than untangle herself from the practically boneless fascist, Vaya simply shifted, shoving him off of her and rolling to her feet, now claws, in a single step. The others had disentangled the lynch mob, a process made quite trivial when one could put a knife-tail at someone's throat in a quarter of a second. Vaya padded over, making sure to control the lashing of her own tail. With this many bodies in close proximity... well, she didn't have enough rank to endure an accidental death here. A better idea was to return to something bipedal, which she did in a blink.

"You know," Vaya said, peering down at the marine with prismatic, slitted eyes, "I really hope you were trying to defect. 'Cause otherwise I just beat the shit out of your buddy for no reason."

He nodded meekly, and Vaya smiled. "So, good shopping trip?" she hummed at Sergeant Kamau.

"A little eventful, but all the best ones are," she replied, "Nice job. Your acting could use a little work, though."

"I'll attend an improv class as soon as we get back, Sergeant," she answered. Kamau chuffed in return. "Oh, right," Vaya said aloud, motioning towards a moaning lump, "I broke all of that guy's ribs. He probably needs medical attention."

Someone in the peanut gallery tossed out another "Traitor!". Vaya didn't even glance over, and just gave a fanged grin in response before offering a hand to her newfound defector.

"Welcome to the 499th, kid. Traitor's a compliment."