For the first time in so many months, I was finally able to relax. With the old Kizmet's cage built up around me, allowing me to recess deep into the ground, I felt secure and confident. My tendrils snaked out to claim the entire surrounding forest, and it all spoke of good news.

Though I had changed the climate, generating a fog of war throughout the surrounding jungle, some minor upgrades to all of the fauna and living creatures helped them to adapt. I let them go their own way, not bothering to consciously control that which didn't need to be. I simply let the new and strange lifeforms run free, only keeping an eye on them as they drank the water and breathed the air, bringing in my cells.

In the end, I encompassed no more than a hundred square miles. I hadn't quite made it to the sea, yet, but that was on the agenda. As far as I could tell, there was no reason to stop my spread at this point.

As I had completed the construction of my central nervous system, many things became increasingly apparent. My rational mind expanded, and with it, so did my ability to see through the world for what it really was. To better predict the future and know the different forces at work there. The next few moves by Seraph had become obvious, to that end. They weren't about to change their MO. That was for sure.

They wouldn't waste time, either. I knew it would all be coming along soon. Any minute now.

Somewhere deep underground, in the caverns of my dark flesh, I had kept the Conquistador's pet alive and breathing. Her mind was rudimentary; no more complicated than any of the mutated monkeys swinging through my trees. But I decided it was worth salvaging nonetheless. I would never pointlessly destroy something so spectacular.

Alejandro himself might have been fun to keep in stock, but it had not been feasible. In order to keep him unconscious, I fought by repeatedly destroying his cerebrum. When the healer finally let off, I didn't know until after it had been ruined for the last time. Thus, there was no way for me to copy him over by assimilating the information. The pattern of his spirit was lost to the ether, subsequently.

My Power could now remember any form that it had previously been in control over, meaning that even if I lost the structure of the Kizmet's mind now, I would be able to rebuild it. I was able to reproduce these forms quite effortlessly. Even my greatest adaptations and fighting designs were like well-known names on the tip of my tongue. I might have started constructing biologically engineered soldiers en mass, actually, had I not known it to be such a waste. We could save that for another time...

Deep in my own mind, it was like piloting a ship. So many systems at my command, reporting levels of energy, status, and potential maneuvers. All of it answering to my singular control. All of it, preparing and building up defenses for the inevitable.

Despite all my new intelligence, I was standing on shaky ground. There was no knowing what they had up their sleeves.

Already, I thought I heard Seraph approaching. Scattered through the forest, highly sensitive organs listened for the skies and the roar of jets. A sonic boom marked an incoming flyer, but it seemed wrong to my ears. No doubt, Seraph would not announce their presence so carelessly. They would be stealthy. Perhaps they were just that confident?

What I found was a small contingent of Supers. Their figures were barely visible, and I had to send out my long visual stringers in the wind to get a better look. I counted four people from that vantage, two flying and two being carried. All of them heading straight for my central mass.

That doesn't look right, I thought. There was no way that they would be this careless. Going over the facts, then, my mind quickly settled on a different explanation. Something unexpected.

As the flyers lowered themselves cautiously down into the smog, I kept my acid and neurotoxins held back. I wanted to see what it was that could possibly drive these people to come here. To the domain of endless abominations.

Damn, I loved being big.

Their feet touched down in the crater of the palace, now a desolate waste of scab-like mounds and sinew crawling over the rubble. Needing to get a better look, I ordered a nearby patch to tear off and begin growing.

Finally, I generated an avatar on the surface to face them with. Out of pride in my newfound detachment from humanity, I refused to appear like my old self. Instead, I was tall and insectoid, towering over them with stilted legs. My indulgence was the myriad patterns of bioluminescence that grew across my carapace. They flashed and danced in colors that reminded me of my visions; the images of nature. After all, who didn't like to feel pretty?

With my new eyes, I saw the four of them as they wandered around, looking and calling out. Their leader, an older man and one of the flying Supers, shouted, "Creep! We want to talk to you!"

I had risen silently from a pool of blood and as I announced myself, they turned rapidly to face me. "You really shouldn't be here," I told them. "It's not safe for you..." I harbored no ill will towards these people. If they wanted to survive the next thirty minutes, however, they needed to leave. "You should run."

To my consternation, the older man took a knee. Not in worship, but entreaty. "We have nowhere else to go, Powerful One. There is no one else who can help us."

Daniel was the second man of their group, I recognized, with the other two being women. He still glowed green, if much dimmer. While all of their faces were grim, his was the worse as he tried to explain to me. "The Conquistador is dead. Everybody else is running. But we won't last much longer without his Power to sustain us. That was the bargain each of us took from him. We believed he was immortal."

That hadn't worked out too well. I chuckled internally, and it vibrated up through the earth.

One of the women, just a teenager, spoke to me in perfect English. She was Asian by descent and wearing a heavy set of armor. "He gave us our Powers, Sir. But he did it by overwhelming us with so much energy that we were barely strong enough to keep our bodies from falling apart. He placed his hands on us and filled our bodies with the essence of the Crystal. But once that essence runs dry, we will all die as our strength falls below what is needed to survive the overdose."

"Ah," I chittered. "Well, that sounds like you have a serious problem, then. But I really don't think you want my help. It's not a bargain in your favor, honestly." Working for me was something that I personally would have considered worse than death. It would be the end of all individuality.

The last remaining member of their group, a sullen, middle-aged black woman, just shook her head. "We know what you did to Conquistador, so we know what you can do to us if you want to. Just coming here, we took that chance. But there were a lot of the others who wouldn't. They'll be dying tonight, burning from the inside out, organs melting out of their orifices... But not us. We're survivors. We do what's necessary. You understand that, don't you Creep...?"

I did understand their motivation. The resolve written across each of their faces was impressive. Even the youngest two were ready to face a horrific death if it meant a chance to keep on growing. That, I greatly respected.

"And what about you, Daniel? Do you remember me from your windowsill?" I asked. "You've seen me acting selfishly. You know I'm in this for myself. You would trust your soul to me? Everything you are?"

He looked to the old man for a moment, who simply shrugged and told him. "We've got a few minutes before the attack. Speak quickly."

Anxious to speed things along, but not wanting to refuse a direct question. Daniel replied. "You chased me through the streets, yeah. After I made it back to the palace, they told me you'd been captured. In hindsight, I just wonder why you were going after the Crystal in the first place, honestly. Looking at you now, I don't think it was necessary."

"You're a smart guy. You could have gotten educated, left the Favela, and made a decent life for yourself. In two or three generations, your kids would have been members of the elite. But you chose to go in with an unstable drug lord who ruled by fear? Surely you know what it's like to be in love with the riskier path," I said. There could be no bones about it. My hunger had been for conflict and death. But I wouldn't tell them that so explicitly. Instead, I asked them the really pressing question on my mind. "Now I wonder, what can I get in return from you all? If it even is possible for me to save you, I will need to upgrade your bodies. I can see already from the micro-organisms you've been breathing in, your DNA has permanently changed. You're producing small amounts of the Crystal. But without constant work to repair the damages it's doing to your internal organs, you'll die. The Conquistador was supplying you with extra boosts of Power to shore that up, but I can't do the same."

"Just try," Daniel said. "Whatever the consequences... You have to try." His eyes were glued to the sky. Death would be raining down any minute.

"I'll have to see if I can rig up life support for you all later," I lamented. It was a promising engineering challenge that would have to wait. "Hopefully, none of you take a hard stance against the question of whether quantum teleportation is a death sentence. I once wrote a paper on that, actually! So, you should be good. I'll explain it to you later." They had no idea what I was talking about, yet that was okay. They merely had to be warned. They were about to experience some minor invasion and discomfort. "Brace yourselves for downloading, children."

I was having far too much fun in this position.

Each of them had different responses as the gore began to grow up around their ankles. Everywhere the flesh touched, seeping in through their clothes, their cells began to break down. It was utterly painless, but I saw the distress flashing into their eyes. Resignation in the old man; fear in the younger girl; Daniel's defiance, and the older woman's despondency.

As it grew up around Daniel's face, he shouted at me. "Don't you dare die!"

"I'll try my best," I shrugged.

After the fastest absorption I could manage, their structures were completed reduced to join the bog beneath their feet. Almost immediately after that, I could make out the faintest sound of a whistle coming from the upper atmosphere.

Something was falling down to the earth. Not just one something, but an entire batch of somethings. Of all shapes and sizes! Like a rainbow of different killing machines, designed to account for every possible immunity.

I had punched into an aquafer even deeper into the earth. I had sent up fleshy balloons full of gases lighter than air to try and escape to the stratosphere. Even still, against the full might of Seraph, the greatest military weapons designers of all time, I had just an ounce of uncertainty about my chances.

These were not just nukes. Many of them had probably never even been tried before in the field.

"Everything but the kitchen sink," I mocked to myself. "I must have really made them nervous."

As the first few exploded into light more blinding than the sun, the entire jungle was wiped off the face of the earth. Hundreds of feet deep for thousands of square miles, trees, animals, and mountains were leveled.

The pressure from the explosion moved like a heatwave into my tunnels, liquifying all life.

Slowly, my mind went blank, and I hoped for the best.