A/N: I got back into Warframe after like thirteen years of not playing it or something, and well I guess I probably should have predicted this but wow there's a lot of cool new stuff! Neat game. I'm enjoying it. Anyway, enjoy the chapter!

"Amused regret! There is no need to be so harsh, oh newest council member! Here, you are loved!" Averter of Fortunes says.

"Sure, but is it the kind of love a narcissist has, or just the kind a garden-variety sociopath has? Because it's definitely not the normal kind," Emily answers. "Not that I'm one to talk. Alright, so you're torturing like, a whole bunch of people or whatever, that's… annoying. Let's check here… 'That doesn't sound like a problem to me.' Down. Wow, really? 'Free them immediately.' Up. Ha. Oh man, they are NOT gonna like this. Moderate options, moderate options… 'take me there to talk to them.' Even more down! Alright, okay, I can work with that, probably. …Excrement. Everyone just heard all of that, didn't they?"

"Amusement!" nearly all the Failure Angels, along with Blossom, say in unison.

"Our womb-bretheren who did not actually come out of the same womb as us is extremely super mega messed-up, and we might be bad family members," Peter notes.

"Yeah, I'm definitely picking up on some of that," I agree.

"It's not your fault, I was just born like this," Emily says. "Well, I guess I wasn't born with the blessing, but that's not your fault either. Up. Okay, what? Why did that make their deaths more likely? Okay, it would seem that it's directly imperative to your wellbeing for you to stop caring about mine, so get on that, would you? Up."

"Denial! There is no way I'm going to stop caring about you!" I insist. "You know better than to ask something like that."

"You're right!" Emily agrees. "I do know better than that! Unfortunately, it turns out that it's a little hard withholding information from people while I am incapable of withholding information from people. Whatever, it's not a huge shift. If you'd rather gamble the fate of the planet than just do the optimal thing all the time forever, then I can't stop you. I can just quietly judge you from over here. Out loud. But technically quietly. Because I'm like, judging you with stink or something. Anyway, about those humans. What's the deal?"

The answer to that question is conveyed to us in a near-wordless knowledge dump not dissimilar to how Blossom and I taught the Queen how to reconfigure the entirety of somebody's biology without making them go crazy. As it turns out, this particular incursion began much like all the others, with the alien forward forces slaughtering basically everybody they could get their blades on, because for whatever crazy reason that's just the default behavior for aliens when they come across an unknown mobile lifeform.

"Other colonies I've spoken to thought you were weird plants that moved around for the purpose of our forces' enrichment," Blossom interjects. "Chase! Danger! So very exciting. It's only after you started attacking back that most of us figured out you might not just be plants, and at that point you were attacking us, so war footing was the only available response. We are not very creative."

"Speak for yourselves," Desire Consumed Gleefully mocks. "For we determined quite quickly that because these new plants could act, they could fail!"

And so began a fate that, well, I guess we haven't yet determined whether it's worse than death or not. Honestly, it's probably not? Which places us in a very weird situation since this Failure colony may have technically performed the fewest crimes against humanity of all their land-bound brethren.

"Exactly! Truly, you have no grounds to condemn our actions," Averter of Fortunes says smugly.

"My Blessing Made it Quite Easy to Isolate Our New Toys," A Web of Squirming Hopes explains. "Curling Myself Around These Strange Artificial Dwellings, We Created a Most Excellent Garden in Which to Cultivate Our New Crops."

Oh, she's hollow. She's just thick enough that I never noticed. So if I fly up high enough, would I see she has a dome roof, or does everyone there at least get sunlight?

"There is No Covering on Top," the Queen answers. "Though if You Had Tried to Fly Up There, I Simply Would Not Have Let You."

"Begrudging agreement, begrudging agreement, you are very clever," Emily says, rolling her eyes. "Can you just teleport us over there so we can talk to them ourselves? I'm almost certainly going to be asking you all to release them, to be clear."

"We know," Deficiency Begets Wisdom says. "Unfortunately, you are heavily outvoted."

"Insincere attempt at jubilation," Emily grumbles.

"Also, I Cannot Teleport You There, Because I Can Only Teleport You to Places You Do Not Want to Go," A Web of Squirming Hopes says.

"That won't be an issue," Emily says. "I don't wanna do this at all."

"Let's just walk there," I say. "There must be a way to get in and out, because the members of this colony presumably keep tabs on the people they're keeping captive."

"You Could Try That," the Queen agrees, "But What if I Did Something Really Funny?"

"Well, we would murder you, and then we would go talk to the humans," I answer.

"Your new councilmember's sense of humor is a failure," Tenacity Reaps Ruin comments to Blossom.

"Irritation. I am aware," Blossom grumbles. "But also, I would like to help her kill you all, because I think that would be really funny."

"That's true though," Desire Consumed Gleefully says. "It would be."

"Disappointment. Betrayal. Will Not Even Her Own Council Defend Their Queen in Her Time of Need?" A Web of Squirming Hopes laments. "Very Well. Start Walking. Try To Become Distracted. I Will Shorten Your Journey as I Can."

"Fine," I answer, motioning to my friends and beginning to do just that.

"What do you think they're doing to them in there?" Anastasia asks.

"Man, I don't care. Can't say that though. Do I say something reassuring? Tiny up. Do I say something cynical? Also tiny up. I guess I should say nothing. …Wait. Excrement."

"I Really LIke Our New Council Member's Blessing," the Queen chimes in cheerfully.

"I like how stupid they are," Tenacity Reaps Ruin adds.

"I'm really sorry you ended up with these people, Emily," I commiserate with her.

"Eh," she shrugs. "I've had worse siblings. Like Max!"

I almost trip, the mental image of Max's mangled corpse hitting me almost as hard as the car crash did. What the fuck, Emily? Why would you say that?

"Because I'm a bad person, probably," she shrugs. "I am, after all, intentionally evoking a disgust response to try and push you away because the thought of having to be around a human who knows what I'm really thinking is way more terrifying than being alone with a bunch of monsters."

"God, mood," I mutter. "Too bad. You're stuck with us. You don't have a choice."

"A worshipper of Possibility, defying a member of our council's rightfully given free will? How far the Princesses of today have fallen," Averter of Fortunes laments.

"Fornicate with a rotting plant," Peter suggests. "Also yeah Emily, that was a little fucked up, but I say fucked-up things all the time. Besides, I don't really have any ground to stand on getting on your case about Max, since one look at him had my ass abandoning you all to die."

"I really want to argue with them about this, but staying with them makes me way more likely to survive, so I probably shouldn't," Emily thinks to herself. Well, not really to herself.

"I'll take it," I say. "So my sister might be a little bit of a sociopath. So what? I still love you. I'm probably a little bit of a sociopath too."

"You're not, you're just autistic," Emily grumbles.

"Why do people keep saying that!?" I complain.

"Oh, honey…" Maria says condescendingly. 

Christine, meanwhile, just busts out laughing.

"What's autistic?" Anastasia asks.

"It just means she thinks a little differently than other people, sweetie," Maria answers.

"Oh well yeah duh," Anastasia asserts.

I wonder if there's a nice hole nearby I could crawl into? Ugh, I just want somewhere I can be alone right now.

The next thing I know, everything around me has changed. I'm no longer walking with the others, but I'm certainly not alone, either. I'm outside, in a relatively open area, standing next to five human men, one of whom has a rifle and the others of whom all have various melee weapons, like a large knife, a baseball bat with a knife strapped to it, a custom-made spear, and an honest-to-god longsword.

"—stalking around near the greenhouse. So Mark and I…"

The man who was talking trails off the moment he notices me, the four others glancing my way one after the other, their eyes wide with abject confusion. I have to admit, my response isn't all that much more graceful. I'm so busy preventing my skin from changing color to the surrounding area out of surprise that I can't really register anything else going on in the split second before they get their wits back.

"Who're you?" the man with the gun asks. Then, his eyes go wider, and he aims the weapon at me. "What the fuck are you!?"

"Oh! Uh. I come in peace?" I say, holding my hands up in surrender and shifting all my non-human parts back to human standard.

It's uncomfortable, and worse, it doesn't seem to make them feel better at all. The rest of them also raise their weapons, and though none of them are threatening to me at all, I'd really rather this doesn't come to violence in the first place.

"I asked you a goddamn question!" Gun Guy shouts at me.

"Um, my name is Julietta, and I have superpowers," I answer succinctly. "I got teleported here by someone else."

The man opens his mouth to respond, but before he can, Emily suddenly appears in front of me. She glances at me, and then she glances at the men with the weapons, and then she groans.

"Of course," she complains. "Of course! So what, are they a lynch mob? Is this Lord of the Flies with adults?"

"It's an Angel!" one of the men hisses in terror. "It's a fucking Angel! Look at its face!"

"Wow, that's rude as hell," Emily accuses. "Is my face not holding together or something? Hey Julietta, is my face holding together?"

"Not… really?" I say.

"Eh," she says. "I'll get the hang of it later. Alright, bozos. Take me to your leader or whatever."

"It's a goddamn Angel!" the same guy says again, apparently quite caught up on that point.

"And what are you gonna do about it if I am, huh?" Emily asks, turning to them with a too-wide grin. "Newsflash: I don't die today. And certainly not to you idiots. Go ahead and shoot if you don't believe me, but by the looks of you, I'm gonna guess bullets are a pretty hot commodity nowadays? Maybe you should just rush me and fight up close instead. I'm sure that'll go great for you."

"Emily, cut it out," I say, reaching forward and putting a hand on her shoulder. "There's no point in antagonizing them. We're here to help."

"Yeah, crazy that they don't believe us about that," she drawls. "Tell me, is this dress you made me primarily human skin, or did you pick some random animal? Nonhuman animal, I mean."

A bang rings out and Emily's head snaps forward, having turned toward me and left her back open to the humans. She does not, predictably, fall. At no point am I ever particularly worried for her safety. The section of her body containing that particular part of her 'skull' simply detaches from the rest, held by a fleshy tendril, and shakes the bullet that got harmlessly lodged within it free. It clatters to the ground, and then that section of the back of her head pulls itself into place once more, the disguise all the worse for it.

"Right," Emily says, turning back around to face them. "Got that out of your system? Great. So, I'm the negotiator who's here to see if it's worth convincing the aliens to let you all free. I think we're all off to a great start on that front, insofar as my job will probably be pretty easy if this is any indication of your capacity to cooperate."

"Emily, you are intentionally antagonizing them!" I insist. "I am so sorry about her. She's just really excited about being immune to guns."

"Okay, but can you really blame me?" Emily asks.

"I am currently blaming you!" I say. "Really though, we're not here to hurt anyone, and ideally we'd like to help everyone. So to that end… who is everyone? How many people are here? Do you all need anything? I can heal people. Cure diseases, regrow limbs, things like that."

The five of them all back away, eyeing us with fear and suspicion.

"Like hell I'm believin' that," Gun Guy insists. "Y'all can just get the hell back where you came from."

"Wait, seriously?" Emily asks. "We're obviously not Angels. I mean, we're talking to you!"

"Angels talk," one of them says.

"Huh? I mean, sure, technically, but not in a way any of you can understand," Emily says.

"Don't think we don't know," Gun Guy growls. "Half the newcomers we 'happen' to run into are Angel spies."

"That's stupid," Emily says. "Wait, what do you mean it's not stupid?"

Huh? Oh, I should probably get back in the network. I regrow my tentacles.

"Confirmation: I figured out how to speak the human language quite a long time ago," Deficiency Begets Wisdom says. "Several of us have been periodically taking on humanoid forms to live among the natives and disrupt the functions of their colony. Currently, Manifestation of Past Regrets has taken up that role."

"Alarm!?" Blossom says. "Who is Manifestation of Past Regrets?"

"They are another relatively new council member. They arrived after you left us. They are listening, but we installed a physical override in their body to prevent them from accidentally speaking into the network because we anticipated your arrival."

"Wait, so you've understood the conversations we've spoken through sound since we got here?" I ask.

"Yes, oh Grand Queen candidate. We heard. But we knew beforehand, too," Deficiency Begets Wisdom answers.

"Failure has Called Upon Us to Test You," A Web of Squirming Hopes says.

"Well, am I supposed to pass this test or fail it?" I ask, a little irritated.

"What an Excellent Question. We Would be Delighted to Know What You Think the Answer Is."

"Suggestion: I am once again pointing out that we can simply kill them with overwhelming violence," Blossom says. "Violence is always the answer. There are zero problems that cannot be solved with enough of it, especially when dealing with Failure colonies!"

"It is certainly true that you could kill us," Tenacity Reaps Ruin agrees. "But not before we slaughter hundreds, if not thousands of humans. You are all very capable of protecting those within your domain, but though you have Princesses, none of you are yet a Queen. It would not be possible for you to stop us."

"If we fail, you fail more," Desire Consumed Gleefully agrees. "We are freely willing to enter your alliance. If you deny us this after being the ones to offer, and slaughter us after we granted you peace and hospitality, how do you suspect those yet to join your alliance to react? Will you be welcome at the next colony you visit? Will you be trusted to ferry the missing council members, whose voices their council cannot hear?"

"Counterpoint: you will die," Blossom says.

"A perfectly acceptable outcome," Deficiency Begets Wisdom answers. "We will accept your call to war, fight you with everything we have, and most likely lose. While we do so, our Queen will use her abilities to teleport the entire human population within our borders thousands of feet in the air. Or, perhaps, Manifestation of Past Regrets will systematically slaughter them in their homes… or in their home, since we could also relocate the humans there. The people you wish to save will be dead, and the alliance you wish to form will be dead as well."

"Or, you could keep your word. You could hold true to our alliance. You could leave these humans in our care, as the property we have rightfully earned," Averter of Fortunes says. "This, too, you would consider a failure, but we have no qualms with it. We have our new council member, we have our toys, and we have a delightful alliance to look forward to, one that will extend our lives along with the rest of the world. It is yet another outcome we would find perfectly satisfying."

God. What is wrong with these people? Rhetorical question, I know, but still. This is completely insane. Is this seriously a test for me? Because it seems to me they're just trying to have a laugh at our expense.

Whatever. That's not important. The people here are what's important. We need some way to help them or rescue them or… something. Right? God we're just here chatting with five armed men on an otherwise-empty sidewalk, I genuinely have no idea how their lives are going right now. We need to get a handle on the situation before we decide a course of action. Maybe it's possible to gather all the humans into one place, at which point we could protect them all. Speaking of…

"A Blossom of Wilted Chances, I am with Omen of Final Mistakes. Are you with all the others?" I ask.

"Affirmative," she says.

"Yep, we're here," Peter confirms.

"Are you okay?" Maria asks.

"We're fine. Blossom, stay with everyone else and keep them safe. Try not to let any of the others get separated, and come to us if you can.That is all."

"Understood," Blossom says, and I shut off my ability to speak into the network. Not hear it, just speaking. 

From here on out, everything I try to communicate is potentially compromised. I can't rely on anyone else for anything complicated enough that I'd have to explain it. But I guess, at the end of the day, that's fine by me. I almost prefer it, really.

No passing notes during the test.

"Look," I say, turning back to the humans, stepping in front of Emily. "I'm sorry. I'm not gonna try to argue that we're not dangerous weirdos. Trust me, I get it. But we're not the dangerous weirdos you've apparently been dealing with up until now, and we do want to help. I had no idea there were humans here at all until like, fifteen minutes ago."

"We don't need your help," Gun Guy snaps.

"Okay, is that true?" I ask. "Because if you're sure about that, I'm going to trust you, and I'm going to leave. But if you're not sure about that, I'm going to try to get you out of here and back to human civilization."

That seems to stop them short a bit, which is more or less my objective here. They're denying us because, I mean let's face it, we've made a terrible first impression, and they have every good reason not to trust us as a result. But if they're desperate? If they genuinely need help? They might take another moment to process whether or not a gamble on us is worth it if I give them the chance.

"…Does human civilization even exist anymore?" the guy with the spear asks.

Oh, these poor people.

"Yeah, they're hanging in there," I nod. "The war is still going on, but I think we have a way to stop it."

"We've got… what, nineteen states left? Eighteen?" Emily asks. "I assume they took Atlanta back after the Queen got wiped out by Danielle." 

"Probably, though I doubt people can safely live there yet," I admit.

That seems to surprise them.

"…Are you actually human?" one of them asks.

"I was born human," I answer. "I dunno if I still qualify anymore, though. I guess that's up to you."

Act worried about it. Show some vulnerability. Be something other than the scary monsters that appeared out of nowhere and tanked a bullet. Once we calm them down, we can start making progress.

"Well what the hell are you doing here?" Gun Guy demands.

"That is a very long story," I admit. "The short version is that I was a superhero for a bit, my powers helped me figure out how aliens talk, I started talking to aliens, and now I'm trying to negotiate an alliance between a bunch of aliens so we can start peace talks with humanity and end the war for good. You don't need to worry about that, though. As facetious as it was when Emily said it, if you have like a community leader of some sort, could you actually direct me to them?"

"I… hmm. What do you think?" Gun Guy asks one of his buddies.

"We're tryin' to hunt that Raptor. The safety of the greenhouses come first," the other guy says.

"Oh, I can get the Raptors to go away, easy peasy," Emily shrugs. "You won't need to worry about that."

"And I can keep Emily in line, so you won't need to worry about her either," I add, since I need to be seen as in control to be a proper voice of reason.

"…Fine," Emily pouts. "If it was anyone else, I'd be mad."

"Well… alright, then. But stay where we can see you!"

Sure, if it makes them feel better.

"Sure, if it makes you feel better," Emily says, rolling her eyes. 

Emily! You're not supposed to say that part out loud! I flash her an aggravated look, and she shrugs unrepentantly.

"You were thinking it," she says.

Wh—but I'm not even projecting into the network anymore! How would she… ugh!

"…Let's just go," I sigh.

The men direct us down the street, heading deeper into town toward what looks like an old community center. Unlike the buildings around it, it looks to be in pretty solid condition. A man and a woman stand guard and the doors, both of them also with guns. They regard us with instant suspicion, their hands tightening on their weapons… though they don't aim them at us, at least.

"Who're these people?" the woman guard barks.

"I have no idea," Gun Guy responds. "Angels, probably."

"Then why the fuck are you bringing them here?"

"Cuz I'd rather have them where I can see them!" he snaps back. "What else am I even supposed to do? I shot one in the head, and she sassed me."

"That's true, I did," Emily confirms.

"Will you cut it out?" I groan. "What's gotten into you?"

"Who knows? Maybe the network say-everything wires got crossed with my regular wires. Or maybe I'm happy to not be constantly one wrong step from death!"

"Look, I get that Emily, but this is serious. We need these people to trust us if we're going to be able to help them!"

"Well we don't have to get them to trust us in order to not die, so I don't care!" Emily says cheerfully. "…I know you do, though, so I guess I can try to tone it down."

"I would very much appreciate that!" I say, doing my best to hide my irritation and probably failing. 

"Alright, I was not expecting the Angel two-woman comedy act, I'll admit that's a new one," the male guard comments.

Wait… is Emily actually helping me? Is this working in our favor? Is she doing it on purpose? It doesn't feel like she is, most of what she's sending to the network is just general excitement. And honestly, I get it. I do. She might have the best-designed body out of everyone in the group! Except for me, obviously. It heals super fast, it's incredibly durable for such an extreme level of flexibility, and if she ever does get injured she has so many redundancies I'd be shocked if it mattered for long. Sure, the humans could maybe kill her if they managed to like, hold her down or trap her somewhere and either set her on fire or carefully tear her into a dozen pieces, but the problem with that strategy is that she'd also just rip their heads off if they tried. Her body is a full-on optimized warform, and I'm taking notes.

…In fact. Come to think of it. Somehow I'm starting to suspect that the Queen was a little better at reverent form design than she was trying to let on. Just a hunch, given that she's also been disguising her council as humans for potentially years now!

"It's news to me that talking Angels is not news to you," I admit. "What's going on with that? What have these Angels been doing?"

"Is this some kinda mindgame?" the woman asks. "Oh, wait. Of course it is."

"I am formerly human, I promise," I say. "I just have…"

I'm about to say 'shapeshifting powers' before I realize that might not be an endearing attribute for people worried about disguised monsters.

"…A long and complicated history with some really serious bullshit," I opt to summarize. "I just need to understand what's happening here so I can hopefully help out. I heard something about greenhouses? I'm a biokinetic, so—"

Every human in sight goes stiff, immediately more ready for combat than before.

"You will stay the hell away from our greenhouses if you know what's good for you," someone says.

"Understood," I say, raising my hands placatingly again. "I will stay away. Can I ask why?"

They glance at each other, but the male guard decides to answer my question.

"They're the only renewable source of food we have," he says. "No farmland here. No way to raise livestock. Occasionally we'll have birds fly in, but that's not reliable unless the geese are migrating. We've been building as many as we can, but no one has enough and the other groups are always trying to steal food from us."

Okay, see, now we're getting somewhere. Food shortage. Multiple groups. This is good information. Well, I mean, it's bad actually, it all sounds very bad. The food for obvious reasons, the multiple groups because it'll be near-impossible to get everyone in one place to protect them.

Of course, I have an absurd amount of biomass. I could make them all the food they'll need for quite some time. They'll need to trust me first, though, and that's… going to be tricky.

"Okay, I can help with that, but I should probably talk to whoever's in charge," I say.

"I don't see any reason why we should let you near her," the female guard responds.

"Oooh, I've got one!" Emily grins.

"Emily, no," I hiss.

"It's simple!" Emily continues regardless. "You can't stop us anyway!"

"Emilyyy," I groan.

"Julietta here," Emily says, wrapping her arm around my shoulders, "is one of the most powerful superheroes to ever exist! She has multiple solo wing rips to her name, and with the help of our friends she could plausibly kill literally all of the aliens here. Have I mentioned we have friends nearby? It probably slipped my mind. Anyway, I just want to make sure everyone is perfectly clear with the situation here. We are asking to meet with the person in charge because Julietta is nice. But there is nothing else stopping us from walking past you, and nothing else stopping us from walking through you. So how about we all just get along while we're still offering, huh?"

Predictably, this doesn't get any of the humans to relax at all! 

"Stop! Freaking out! The humans!" I snap at her. "You just said you were going to tone this down!"

"Well what I meant was that I was going to start trying harder to help," Emily says, "and I'm doing that. I don't need to worry about dying today, but they all certainly do. And the less they fuck around trying to act like they have any power over you, the more likely they are to survive. Many such cases, I'm sure."

I want to snap at her some more, but if she's… no, since she's being honest, I should shut up and look around, first. 

The humans here aren't happy about what she's saying, but they're not dismissing it, either. They are, after all, people used to dealing with Angels that are clearly still alive. They know they can't fight us. They're used to dealing with monsters that can talk to them. They might even be used to those monsters making demands. We don't really know what their exact relationship is with their captors, but the way they've been acting so far is telling. As soon as Emily gave him a clean shot, the armed man went for it. As soon as it failed, he gave up and cooperated. That doesn't read to me as panic. They've been in situations like this before.

Maybe the Failure colony has also come bearing claims of friendship. Maybe the well has been intentionally poisoned in advance. That… will be very hard to deal with.

"Alright, come on in," the male guard says. "I'll escort them. You guys get back to that Raptor hunt."

"Scream if you're dying," the female guard says.

"I'll try," is the man's response, and he turns to open up the doors for us.

The interior isn't anything special. It's an old building, maintained well by the standards of people who have had to scramble for used materials. A few others are inside the lobby area, chatting with each other on old couches, near which a television replays a DVD movie I suspect has been shown a hundred times given how uninterested everyone is in it, even the one kid—about Ana's age—hanging around the area. People barely look up as we enter… though they certainly do a double-take when they get a closer look at us.

 We ignore them, though, heading up some stairs to a small hallway and, afterwards, a small meeting room. It seems someone has set the room off as a sort of office, given that at the head of the meeting table a woman sits surrounded by various personal items—photographs, a few books, and so on. She's tapping away at a laptop, and doesn't bother looking up for the better part of a minute after we enter. The guard keeps glancing awkwardly at us during that time, as if not wanting to interrupt her but also not wanting to keep us waiting any more than needed.

The woman herself is relatively old, probably at least fifty. She doesn't have a domain, best I can tell, and I've gotten better at seeing through the old trick Emily used to hide hers. Her mostly-gray hair looks like it used to be blonde, and her square-rimmed glasses have a slight crack in one of the frames. A scan of her body indicates a lot of wear and tear on her fingers. Someone who worked with her hands?

Eventually, she looks up. Her eyebrows raise only slightly at the sight of us.

"…Thank you for waiting," she says. "You are… not the sort of guests I expected today. They're sending two of you now?"

"We haven't been sent by anyone other than ourselves," I say. "My name is Julietta Monroe, I'm a former superhero for the U.S. Army. Codename Seraphim. I'm here to hopefully help you out, if there's any way I can do that. The situation is a little complicated, but I'd like to do what I can."

"Former superhero. So you're not sent here by the government?" she asks.

"No, ma'am," I respond.

"They still around?" she asks.

"Yes ma'am. The humans are holding out alright. Not great, but alright."

"You say that like you're not one of us," the woman points out.

"Well," I say, "I have tentacles growing out of my head, ma'am."

"I did happen to notice that," she agrees. "But some people get powers that change them, from what I've heard. It doesn't make them less human."

"Well, I appreciate hearing that, ma'am," I say honestly. "A lot of people back home didn't seem to disagree. That's not why I'm here, though. It's my understanding that you've been in contact with the alien colony keeping you trapped here?"

G"If you can call it 'contact,' sure," she agrees. "Sometimes they'll come around, not even trying to hide, making absurd demands. Sometimes someone will vanish for a day, and come back rather obviously not the same person. Only lately have they been trying to be… personable. It's another new tactic, I suppose. They've known things they shouldn't know, too."

"Like what?" I ask.

"Things from my past I've never spoken to anyone else about," she answers. "They're getting into our heads, nowadays. We're all quite tired of them, but there's little we can do about it."

 "I'm sorry, they're…" 

I hesitate, trying to figure out how to summarize 'they are fanatics that worship a literal god of Failure' in a way that would make actual sense.

"…They like messing with people," I decide on. "They aren't very sympathetic. Not all aliens are like that, but… yeah. You've got some pretty bad ones."

"Well, except for the fact that we kept all of you alive, sure," Emily chimes in. "Which actually, so far as I'm aware, makes our colony the number one best at human satisfaction and cooperation. You're welcome."

"Wh—Emily!" I snap. What's all this 'we' stuff?

"Just saying it like it is," she shrugs. "I can't let you diss my council just because you feel like, it, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate. They're like a new family to me, right? That's what you promised! Amusement, amusement, amusement!"

"Agreement!" A Web of Squirming Hopes chimes in. "One of Us, Without Restraint!"

"I love you, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate, as much as someone like me can," Emily continues. "Wow, did I just say that? Gross. Regardless, I'll probably side with you if you try to kill my colony. But until then? I'm their advocate to you. That's the path I feel like I should be taking. Down, down."

I sigh. Alright, if that's the case, then… I'll trust her.

"What's your situation, then?" the woman in charge asks Emily.

"Much less complicated," she shrugs. "I'm a new Angel. You haven't met me before. I'm with the jerks. That's all."

"I see," she hums, frowning to herself.

"I'm sorry," I say, "I've totally forgotten to ask your name."

"Me?" she says. "Name's Sammantha. You can just call me Sam."

"We were taken here when we asked to speak with the person in charge. What do you do, exactly?" I ask. "What's the current situation like for the people here?"

"What do I do?" she asks, huffing. "I'm just a damn gardener. I shouldn't be in charge in the first place, but I know how to make and maintain most of the things that keep us alive, so for some reason that made everyone think I'm qualified to solve their disputes for them."

"…She's more than just 'a gardener,' she has a PhD in agricultural science," the guard who escorted us here clarifies.

"I'm a gardener with a fancy piece of paper," Sam grumbles. "To answer the important part of your question: it's not ideal, but we're surviving. We stripped enough solar panels from roofs to keep the essentials charged, and we have a few working wells. Keeping everything clean can be hard sometimes, but we have systems in place. The hard thing is getting the materials to grow enough food."

"I offered this earlier, but I'm a biokinetic. I can manipulate just about any organic matter. Grass into apples, for example," I say.

"That sounds damn useful, if we can trust you," Sam says. "I might take you up on that later. If we can get enough food to bring the other groups into the fold, we can stop in-fighting and potentially make some major progress around here. But I think you can already guess what we really want."

"To return to human civilization?" I guess.

"If you're telling the truth about it still being around? Absolutely," Sam nods. "Is that why you're here?"

"…Honestly?" I say. "It's not. I didn't even know you were here until earlier today. I'd like to help you leave, but I'm not entirely confident about how feasible that is."

"But it's not impossible," Sam presses.

"…It's not," I concede. "But even if I took out the entire alien colony, it would be difficult for me to do it while also protecting all of you."

"That's quite the humble boast you just made," Sam hums. 

"It's true, she could kill us," Emily agrees. "But she can't be everywhere at once. All of you, meanwhile, are in our Queen's domain. We're already everywhere at once."

"But you don't want to just kill us all," Sam says. "Or else you would have by now."

"Exactly!" Emily confirms happily. "We like having you here. You're fun. We don't want to kill you, you're just convenient negotiation chips with her."

That's one way of putting it. The zealots want me to fail at something. They want to force me to accept that, to take failure on the chin. But if that's supposed to be some kind of lesson, it's not one that I need. In the grand scheme of things, Failure is inevitable, unavoidable. But the idea that these people, specifically, could force me into suffering it? It rankles a bit. Not just because all these people would suffer as a result, though that's certainly part of it. But also because of just how hypocritical it is.

That's not how these people worship Failure. Or, well, it is, but that's the issue. They venerate their god by forcing failure onto others. By passing around suffering like goddamn communion wafers. And if Failure is testing me, why should the answer on my test be anything but the one I learned here? If I can venerate Failure by making others fail, why shouldn't I?

Well. There is one reason. At the end of the day, it's not just my failure I'm trying to defy.

"I could do it," I say. "I think. It would be a gamble, and it wouldn't be safe, but I could get you out of here. But it's not my call on whether or not I should take that risk. It's yours, and your people. If you don't think it's worth gunning for, I don't blame you. You don't know me, you have no reason to trust me. If you want me to just make you all a bunch of food and leave, I'll do that. If you want me to just fuck off, I'll do that, too. But if you want me to fight for you, then I plan to win."

Sam stares at me carefully, judging me and my words.

"Can you give us some time to consider it?" she asks.

"Three days," Emily answers before I can. "No more. Make your decision by then."

"Really?" Sam asks. "Just like that? She's making plans to go against you right in front of your face. Assuming any of you are telling the truth."

"Of course she is," Emily says. "We didn't invite her here thinking she'd do anything less."

From the way her too-wide smile hangs on her face, and even from the way her emotions flow through the network, I genuinely can't tell if she's speaking on behalf of her new colony or purely on behalf of herself.