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Vantablitz Remnants     Rita has been to this place before. There's no need to go over it in extra detail. However, this time she is greeted by a trail of brand new itty bitty lotus flowers in the dim light beyond the many tree markings that must have, in retrospect, been left by the 'lowland people' fearing it a cursed or perhaps divine place. It leads her through a few odd turns, further up the river, and then through a kind of narrowly winding 'red carpet' of diverse vantablack gardening through the woods full of what Lotus called 'the imposters'. Thus, unless she decides to be a disobedient blueberry on purpose, she can arrive without a fight.

    Ahn apparently also really doesn't want her arriving through the ceiling (again) and damaging the flowers (again) though. 'Camilia' is wisely not designed to let anyone in through any other entrance but the west, but brand new spraypainted markings guide Rita around Aperture Science style through an under-floor route into central that only requires a mere two instances of superhuman strength to haul big metal plates away (and put them back; be considerate).

    Given more time to wander the east wing, Rita can appreciate the relative orderliness of it. The few and far between flamethrower marks, the minor damage of age, since well-cared for, without the waves and the salt and storm of the ocean. No monstrous foes roam this region, and no signs of battle are apparent. No doubt Ahn has since removed all the frightful reminders that once existed, judging by portions of wall and floor once scrubbed too-enthusiastically a long time ago, and rooms where tables have been pushed aside and the floors are now blank, but what went down here was simply Different, and quite certainly Last. Though 'verdant thinking' could possibly be blamed for the teacups, empty trays, and random clutter lying around on various surfaces, it could also be imagined to be the same branch of feeling as seeing the hanging plants everywhere, or the strange wall murals and paint-drawings.

    Rita can read a map though, and that takes her to-- well, the hospital was in the north, so it's actually the warm-lit rectangular private staff clinic, with oodles of reclaimed equipment mismatchingly transported and added to the existing contents for minor emergencies and sickness. Pretty much all of the bed space has been since cannibalized by orphaned MRIs and centrifuges, leaving just . . . three? Weird.

    Ahn receives Rita in an absolutely stereotypical white coat. There is no reason for her to be wearing one, and it seems she may actually have just taken it from the biological clean room further away for the sole purpose of appearing more 'doctorly' and thus trustworthy. Lotus, in humanoid form, is boredly occupying one of the beds in what might as well be a sidelong gravure pose, head propped up on her fist, while playing two portable game consoles at the same time via tentacles.
Rita Ma      Over the river and through the woods, to the postapocalyptic bunker Rita goes. The first time she runs into one of those little new flowers, she bends down to stroke its petals affectionately. "Ms. Lotus said you were one of her kids! I don't know if you can understand me, but thank you for being here. You're doing a really important job!"

     Of course, if she stopped to do that with every flower, she'd never get there on time. I hope that one can pass the word along!

     As she dutifully follows that line through the quiet concrete halls, her nervous tension builds. It's nothing to do with her surroundings, and everything to do with her destination. A white coat. Big whirring machines she must lie very still for. Needles, probably, that take more force to go in than they ought.

"Eh? Why cure her, when she's perfect?"
"I should never have come to see you. If it weren't for you...!"


     ... No. I trust Ms. Ahn. It's awful of me to be thinking of things like that, like she'd ever be the same. ... So why is it scary anyway?

     Rita opens the final door, gasps a little in pleasant surprise when Ahn and Lotus are both on the other side, and waves enthusiastically. Most- but not all- of that anxiety flash-boils off her in an instant. "Ms. Lotus! Ms. Ahn!! Sorry I'm early, I just didn't want to be late..."

     Hugs first: one for Ahn definitely, the smaller girl throwing her arms around her newfound friend and not letting go for several long seconds; then one offered to Lotus, no less warmly but a little less sure. How do hugs work with a body like that?

     Once those are concluded, she rummages in her satchel and pulls out a plastic food container. Inside are opened crab shells, still full of the meat and dripping with some kind of sauce. "Is it okay to eat in here, Ms. Ahn? I made some gejang so you don't have to work on an empty stomach! There's enough for Ms. Lotus, too!"

     It is, functionally, raw crab marinated in enough salt to keep it for a week, chilled, and then slathered in spices. The texture is delicate, but the salty-hot flavor is quite strong.
Vantablitz Remnants     Rita worries about being early. Lotus makes a noise that is probably trying to evince a 'pfeh' but just kind of becomes a Combine trooper radio sound, but girl. "Pfft~ Ahn ran to get that silly coat two hours ago and she's just been rehearsing since~" Lotus rolls over while the videogames stay gyroscopically fixed in space. Ahn is too busy squeezing Rita a little too hard in her arms to have a retort ready.

    "Oh, of course! This isn't a real hospital or anything, ahaha. Just don't get it on the equipment!" It takes her a second to realize it's a gift. "Wait, for *me*? Ahh . . . Oh that's . . . But you shouldn't have! This shelter was originally supposed to supply three thousand people for ten years, so there's--" Lotus interjects "That stuff will be around forever, and Rita's food will only be around for a little while before it goes bad, so you're *obligated* to have some~" She decides to handle being hugged by hoisting Rita up and using her actual arms, though they are followed by a warm tendril that splits into 'fingers' to pat her head and rub her scalp. The videogames keep playing in the background, but Ahn says "Don't worry about her; the original consoles wore down and broke, so I had to get her some new ones so she could finish her save files from years ago."

    As Ahn sits the box down on the nearest counter, cleared of its frankly decorative tongue depressors, and sets herself on a stool, one of Lotus' tendrils snakes across, poises like a snake ready to strike, and Ahn says "Eat it properly Lotus. Rita worked hard on those.", causing the tendril to flinch then gently jab a piece, reel it back, and drop it into Lotus' fingertips, gripped like a robot manipulator transporting an egg. There's a sound like a joint cracking, and the seemingly seamless 'mask' that is Lotus' face splits near its bottom region, pulling back like a proper chin and jaw and allowing her to pop it into a mouth full of needlessly sharp teeth. "You're so thoughtful, little Rita~" she vibrates while chewing. Ahn is too busy holding her face and making exaggerated Japanese TV hostess noises at something home-'cooked', and cannot speak and eat at the same time.

    She rolls out a cushy stool and pats it to indicate Rita should sit down, and finally asks "So . . . If it's okay to ask, Rita, why exactly do you want a checkup? Or I guess, what are you hoping for? I'm sure there are all kinds of doctors if you just wanted to be poked and prodded or have your measurements taken. Maybe even one with some kind of Star Voyage scanner that could read all your vitals, right?"
Rita Ma      Rita watches Lotus's tendril fork into fingers with wide eyes and open mouth, but she relaxes into the contact and emits a Sunny Imouto Noise as soon as the patting starts. Whatever hypocritical reservations she might have about someone else's grasping tendrils, they don't survive a doting touch.

     "Thank you, Ms. Lotus! And you remembered my name this time!" she responds after pulling back. A little mischievously: "But didn't Ms. Ahn ever teach you not to talk with your mouth full?"

     For a few moments it seems like she might be captivated by Lotus's video games- nothing should stop her from getting a handheld or two now that she's living with Liza, but the idea simply hadn't occurred to her. She watches in soft amazement in true "younger sibling" fashion.

     Ahn patting the stool tears her attention away from that. Obediently, she trots over and plops down on it, hands folded in front of her and eyes earnestly holding Ahn's gaze.

     "... Why exactly do you want a checkup? Or I guess, what are you hoping for?" Rita seems to abruptly remember her anxiety. Her eyes drop from Ahn's face to her own lap; her thumbs fidget restlessly on top of interlaced fingers. "Oh. Right. Um. ... The last time I went to see a doctor, it was really, really bad. If it was someone I didn't know already, I don't think I'd feel safe." Even now, she's a little scared, though she makes her best (poor) attempt to hide it.

     "You did a lot of research on people turning into monsters, didn't you, Ms. Ahn? All this only happened to me- ... a year or two ago. I don't know if I'm getting better or worse. If it's getting worse, I don't know how much time I have. I've been really scared to find out, but it's... it's irresponsible of me not to find out." Her little hands are balled up by now, gripping little handfuls of her skirt- but not too tight.

     She manages to pry her gaze back up, looking into Ahn's face again. There's a plucky bravery forced behind her eyes that she really doesn't feel in her heart. "That's why I'm here. Between those two things, I'm not brave enough to hear it from anybody but you."
Vantablitz Remnants     Lotus stares at Rita for a couple of seconds after the 'mouth full' comment. Her eye glows shift sidewards to Ahn. Ahn glances back. "You know, that never actually occurred to me." she sheepishly admits, now touching two fingertips together. Lotus resumes chewing, and then finally swallows when there's nothing left to savour-- and then sneaks another tendril back. She appears to be simultaneously invested in a story-heavy RPG she never got to finish and some brutally hard action platformer at which she is on the penultimate world, which may be a matter of honour at this point.

    Ahn waits patiently with a warm smile for Rita, clearly glad to just luxuriate in the company of another human being in this room, without the good sense to feel an appropriate level of tension. She blushes just slightly at Rita admitting that part of the reason is that she trusts her(!) and can't deal with strangers. However 'you did a lot of research' makes her flinch as if having narrowly dodged a slap to the face. She is utterly atrocious at hiding any kind of reaction.

    ". . . Yeah. You could . . . say that." Lotus interrupts over soft chiptune music with "You did. Way too much, actually. Is Einstein not a physicist because he couldn't figure out how to break conservation of energy? We've been oooover this Ahhhhn." Ahn makes a face. "I literally taught you how to talk and you're still acting like my life coach huh? Bossy." "Bottom~" Ahn huffs, then folds her arms, stares up at the ceiling, releases a held breath, and glances back down at Rita.

    "I can definitely promise to do my best. And I can promise to tell you the truth. And if the answer is bad, I can even promise to help as much as I can, too. So, if you're really sure about it, that's what I'm going to do." A thoughtful pause, probably about Rita's experience with doctors; it's too brief for her to blather her thoughts out loud. "It might be a little uncomfortable, or hurt a bit, and might be a little embarrassing, if I have to check so many things at once. But if you let Lotus help, and trust her too, it'll be much easier. Is that okay with you?" She sounds very serious.
Rita Ma      Rita grimaces a little too when Ahn flinches. Was that a bad thing to say? I didn't think it was, but now that I know, I can see it. I'm sorry, Ms. Ahn... When the other woman recovers, though, she does too. "I think you know more about it than anybody else I know," she says firmly.

     Then, in devastating innocence: "Bottom? Oh, like Mr. Candy?"

     When the consequences of that carelessly-uttered sentence have passed, Rita reaches out to squeeze one of Ahn's hands for comfort. She swallows anxiously, then looks up and nods earnestly, her eyes slightly watery with moisture that feels like it was suddenly stolen from her dry throat.

     "Thank you so much, Ms. Ahn. You've already helped me a lot just by going to my world. It feels selfish to ask for more. But... I know it'd be even more selfish to live in the dark, just because I'm scared of the answer. Anything I can do to help you back... I want to do it."

     That serious, earnest look warms over with a little smile as she looks back over her shoulder at the vantablack blob on the bed. "Of course that's okay with me. Even if it's uncomfortable, I'll be brave. ... And I trust Ms. Lotus, too."

     Even before I knew her. Those thumping footsteps back then were terrifying... but somehow, I felt like it'd all be okay.
Vantablitz Remnants     Ahn chokes at Rita's 'innocent question', thankfully having at least finished her crab and merely having to exhale water from a glass. Lotus begins cackling in her fuzzy-crackly menacing ara ara way, though coloured with such sudden and genuine humour that she sounds like a full on villain. "D-did he say that to you?!" "Ahahaha~! That's 'workplace harassment right'? That has to be!" "R-Rita, you shouldn't repeat that so easily! That's--!" "Naughty~" "Shhh!" "I noticed she didn't say 'like Candy says I am'~" "SHHHH!!!"

    Once *they've* recovered, Ahn melts a little bit at Rit's raw earnestness, making a noise of quiet, guilty adoration, and then putting her hands on Rita's shoulders, says "Don't worry about helping me. You deserve all the support I want to give you, and this kind of thing . . . it's something you have a right to know. Okay? So don't go feeling indebted or anything." With a serious nod, she lifts herself up out of her seat, and goes about drawing out a syringe, ampoule set, rubber tourniqet, cotton pads, and tape, even going so far as to turn around with syringe in hand, pause for a weirdly long few seconds, and then think better of it, putting it back down.

    Instead, Lotus ambles up behind her, vidogames paused for the second, and loosely wraps her humanoid arms around Rita's waist as if she were the girl's legal guardian taking her to Doctor Ahn's. Ahn begins explaining "First, I'm going to have to take a bit of blood and some tiny bits of tissue. I have to put those through some machines that will separate them into parts and let me look at them clearly. Then I'll take your measurements, and do some things like listening to your heartbeat and looking through your eyes, and those won't require anything to go inside you. Then I'm going to take a bunch of pictures with a special camera that can see through you, and hang them up to study. And last I'm going to have you lie down in that big sliding bed and be very still, and a lot of special cameras at once will make a little model of your body I can look at and turn around like you can't with pictures. Does that all sound fine?"

    In true parental mindgames fashion, the object is that Lotus accomplishes step one by the time it's all fully described. A velvety soft, body warm 'pad' of biomass massages Rita's neck where her head is pulled against Lotus' chest, and by secret mental conference, teeny tiny filaments the thickness of hairs are carefully pushed as precisely 'between the nerves' as Lotus can figure out, and pull out sample quantities like a few hundred mosquitoes all working together at once; mostly while Lotus somewhat possessively strokes Rita's hair, giving the sense that it isn't her first time.

    Provided her slightly childish ploy works, Ahn then gets to clap her hands together, and say "Oh, and by the way, Lotus already finished number one~"" Whereupon the two share a slightly cheeky fistbump and Lotus disgorges a handful of thin rubbery black cylinders, which Ahn busies herself shooting up and exracting from instead of Rita. However, either way, Lotus vibrates near Rita's ear: "You know little Rita, this is going to be really tough unless you're completely honest with us."
Rita Ma      THEN: Rita, for her part, looks just as mortified as Ahn. She holds out both her hands in a panic, as if to physically fend off Lotus's laughter. "I- I don't know what it means?! I'm sure *I'm* not one! I just overheard him talking to someone else! Please forgive me!!"

     NOW: Rita's eyes follow the shiny point of that syringe with rapt alarm. She nods, but a palpable shiver runs through her from head to toe just in time for Lotus to embrace her and soothe it away. Rita leans back into her with just a little trepidation, but soon finds being held extremely agreeable, releasing her body's tension with a tiny sigh. Her hands have stopped anxiously fidgeting.

     Predictably, the thing that elicits the biggest eye-widening response from her is the mention of blood and tissue samples, but in second place is- weirdly- 'lying down in a big sliding bed and being very still'. Even so, she steels herself and gives a brave little nod. "I can do that, Ms. Ahn. If it's you, I know I'll be okay."

     Of course Lotus figures out Rita's secret: her mosquito-needles pass through skin not once, but three times as they pierce in. Being inside Rita's body isn't unsafe in any real sense, but there is some distant sense of losing teeny-tiny bits of something across an osmotic barrier.

                         -1
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     "Already finished...?!" Rita's eyes widen in shock. She puts a hand to the back of her neck, then pats down the rest of herself in rapid succession, as if to reassure herself that all her parts are still attached. She lets out a little sigh of relief at realizing the answer is 'yes'. "Did you really? You're so gentle, Ms. Lotus! I was really scared for a second..."

     The goomonster purring in her ear makes her eyes open wide again for just a moment, before her gaze guilty falls back to the floor. Have I been dishonest? "... You're right." She doesn't even protest that it wasn't a lie. "I'm sorry. I always hate this part, but I have to be brave for this too. Just..."

     "Please remember this Rita as the real one, okay? It's the person I want to be, to everyone else. I don't wear it for no reason. It's everything else that's fake."

     The unveiling itself is quiet. There are no special effects. Rita freezes for a second, and then unceremoniously unravels like the wrappings of a mummy. Underneath is the girl with the blue eye and blue 'dress', her expression downcast. The tentacles reflexively turn invisible as they unravel, but after a moment's thought, she reveals them in their natural coloration.

     Rather than draping across the floor or swaying aimlessly, they curl in around her, intertwining with her limbs or hugging around her body to self-soothe. The human ability to judge volume is poor, but they look like they must be at least half her total mass.

     "I'm sorry," she says softly. "I know it's... it's gotten really bad."
Vantablitz Remnants     Rita swearing she isn't a bottom only causes Lotus to howl louder and Ahn to hide her face in embarrassment. While she isn't looking, Lotus, like a shithead, leans in and whisper-whisper explains the concept to Rita up close, unbeknownst to her partner.

    Lotus also has her laugh at Rita's shock, but confirms "Ahn told me once, about how a doctor tricked her when she was scared of needles by saying he'd do it on the count of five, but actually doing it after the first count. I guess she was telling the truth, ahaha~ It actually works~!" Her neck massaging and surprisingly warm, if loose, hug continues.

    "But you're a hungry little host aren't you? Or . . . perhaps it's you who is the invader? The body of a monster, paralyzed, colonized, and taken over by a human conscience. Like a mushroom~"

    Ahn, oblivious to the majority of this private exchange, only nods patiently with Rita's out-loud response after she returns from extracting and transporting sample cargo to medical ampoules designed to actually be used by the machinery. "I'm not totally sure I get it, but also, my mental image is pretty set! I think a doctor can't go thinking of people differently every time they see a weird result. After all, people are supposed to come and see doctors when something is wrong, not when they're completely normal, right?"

    Though these are brave words, Ahn can't help it when her breath catches in her throat, her hand rises to her chest, and her body leans back to rest against the desktop. She's too honest. She couldn't hide that shocked stare if she tried; after all, what occasion would she ever have had to hide expressions from someone who can read them? However, most of what Rita can read in Ahn's eyes isn't fear, nor even particularly revulsion, but deep concern. It's the look someone would have when the doctor tells them that their husband has cancer.

    "O-oh my . . . That's . . . much further progressed than I thought . . ." she says, though it isn't clear if Ahn is 'admitting' it or now stunned into talking out loud again. "Pretty~" Lotus purrs. "Not really my style, but as far as these things go, it's still a 'high-tier' aesthetic~" "Ah-! Don't be so flippant, Lotus! This is serious! Rita is very troubled by this! You should be more sensitive!" "Ehhh?" "Even if you're just loitering in my office--" "'Office'." "--you're still part of her experience here! Can you think of a single time you ever saw a doctor say someone's results were pretty?" "Only the evil ones, I guess." "Exactly! So behave!" "What's wrong with that though? Humans are supposed to enjoy honest compliments when they're stressed, right?" "It's . . . You know how attached humans are to having 'the right body' don't you? Try to remember." "Mmmm, so this is about Rita having a body that fits her brain, right? So even if this body is nice, it's still uncomfortable?" "Yes, a lot like that. But it's like an injury too." "How complicated."

    Done with her entire micro-conference with Lotus, Ahn returns to Rita with significantly less tension (one might wonder if that might have been the point of all that), and says "There's no need to apologize. You didn't have anyone you could trust, right? That it's this bad just tells me how scary it was for you; I don't think you're irresponsible or anything at all. Let's just get to it, okay?"
Vantablitz Remnants     From there, a lengthy but non-strenuous battery of tests all memorized straight from medical textbooks of all kinds. Height, weight, physical dimensions, including tentacle lengths and masses. All kinds of up-close pictures of strange growths, and squeezing to find veins. Inconsequential pressure for the sake of chronic pain, organ swelling, and reflex tests all haphazardly lumped together. The eye tests, via moving pen light and gently murmured instruction, then turned to a dental inspection, all while the centrifuge, and some other big, buzzing block of a machine, run. Body temperature and laser scans eventually give way to Rita being told to stand on a specific spot amidst a number of rotating sensor arms, that spin around slowly and move up and down a tall spinal aperture without touching her. And then when it comes time to go through the MRI, bright and shiny as it is, Lotus leaves Rita with a little squishy black ball to hold on to, replete with a white flower growing from it like a stuffed toy, nefariously the opposite of encouraging 'holding on with much tension and stress'.

    The entire time, Ahn keeps up a constant soothing babble about what she's doing, how it works, and what she thinks she's going to find out. Lotus is now unwilling to return to her videogames, and spends the entire time shuffling tools around Ahn in well-practiced ryhthm, meddlesomely adjusting various dials and buttons when she gets the chance, and petting Rita like her cherished cat at the vet until Ahn chases her away, only to repeat the entire process again. When Rita comes out of the MRI tube, it seems Ahn has fully absorbed herself in something involving a powerful microscope, a laser, several slides of goop ranging from dark red to blue-black (of which she appears to be on the last), and at one point, flicking her own hand back further than the joint should allow, which bloodlessly splits the skin where her middle antebrachial vein should be and extrudes a cluster of thin geometric black rods into the slide, which briefly emit flickers of light, a sizzling sound, and the smell of ozone, before she snaps them right back into her arm.

    Picking up a sheaf of freshly printed glossies, Ahn turns around, and says "Oh! You were already done? I lost track a little bit. How do you feel? Do you want to break for lunch? You brought something for me to eat, but I don't know if you've had a chance to eat yourself."
Rita Ma      When Lotus whispers to her, Rita covers the lower half of her face with her hands, eyes wide in freshly-mortified embarrassment. She doesn't, however, hasten to reclasify herself.

     "Perhaps it's you who's the invader?" Those words don't upset her, but they do fluster her just as she's recovering from the previous. Rita's hands knead her dress in her lap; her leg bounces restlessly; she makes a soft sort of whine. "I- I'm sure that isn't right, Ms. Lotus!!" But the more she thinks about it, Lotus can tell, the less sure she is. Would that be a nicer way to think about it? And with what I did to the other sea monsters...

     Rita's expression is stoic- maybe dissociated- albeit tinged by guilt, while Ahn shows her concern and gently scolds Lotus. After all, isn't this the moment she steeled herself for? But as that conversation winds down, she curls a few of her larger tentacles back around Lotus and hugs her in return. A smile, bittersweet but leaning on sweet, crosses her face. "Thank you for explaining, Ms. Ahn. I don't want to be comfortable with it," she says quietly. "But Ms. Lotus being here makes me feel a lot better anyway, so it's alright."

     Somehow, it's being forgiven that breaks her composure the most- or maybe just having the struggle affirmed. "That it's this bad just tells me how scary it was for you." Her eyes scrunch shut for a moment, and the left one glitters with moisture as she looks back down at her lap. A little sniffle escapes her. Her tentacles cling to Ahn a little bit tighter. She nods, and then manages to say after a little pause:

     "Thanks, Ms. Ahn. I'll... yeah. Let's go do the tests."
Rita Ma      Gross physical exam paints a few interesting findings. Rita's cruciform pupil responds to light by constricting into tighter lines or its absence by relaxing and approaching a diamond; something inside it shines like a tapetum lucidum. Two-thirds of her teeth are human, but a random scattering are thicker, alien, and carnivorously sharp; it's like someone in the process of losing their baby teeth, only with the new ones coming in too quick to leave any gaps.

     Her heartbeat is abnormally slow, like a whale's- only forty beats per minute. It is steady, but its rhythm isn't human.

     The more detailed analyses find stranger things.
Rita Ma      Rita was only colloquially human on the day she was born. There's not a strand of DNA in her body that hasn't been methodically spliced with exotic material, as if- though not conclusively- by some kind of sophisticated retrovirus, and even her oldest, never-replaced-in-a-lifetime cells were built according to that foreign design. Any biologist would salivate over the chance to classify her as a new species, even apart from her "monstrous" transformations.

     It goes downhill from there.

     On two separate occasions, massive quantities of foreign pluripotent cells were introduced to Rita's body and thoroughly colonized it. These cells already shared identical "retroviral" DNA with Rita, resulting in none of the three recognizing the other two as foreign. If she hadn't been "primed" since birth, the aftereffects of such an infusion would have been gruesome and likely fatal. The other, non-retroviral DNA of the two foreign cell lines looks like an attempt to sequence a krab stick: if it lives in the ocean, it's in there, along with a distressing amount of human genetic material to boot.

     The first infusion of foreign cells compromised her entire circulatory system and spread out from there into the tissues. Rather than forming discrete masses, it insinuated itself throughout her body to form a distributed, spongy-veiny lattice; it's impossible to find somewhere it hasn't permeated. It looks like a rapid conversion attempt frozen in time, an aggressive process prematurely aborted. Her endocrine system and cerebellum were noticeably affected by this strain.

     The second strain's distribution can only be explained by deliberate and repeated intramuscular injection. Someone who knew exactly what they were doing repeatedly pumped her full of infective pluripotent cells over a relatively long span of time. Despite this, its spread was much less aggressive than the first strain's, potentially because the presence of an existing infection "tricked" these newer cells into believing no further conversion was necessary. Their greatest manifestation is primarily external: the enormous profusion of foreign tissues on her upper back that comprise her tentacles, anchored inextricably to her spinal cord.

     Human organs have been modified into alternative structures in situ: her heart-that-isn't-quite-a-heart is still beneath her sternum; her lungs-that-might-be-internal-gills still branch off her windpipe. That makes it easier to spot the wholly novel against the merely renovated.

     A dozen small crystalline structures, each no larger than a thumbnail, have calcified throughout her body at seemingly arbitrary yet symmetrical points. They are denser than bone on an X-ray, are connected to her two largest ("feeding") tentacles and each other via thin 'conducting' channels, and are each surrounded by small pockets of dormant pluripotent cells, specialized for extremely rapid division at high energy cost. Everywhere else, the pluripotent cells needed for further wildfire-like conversion are spent; if Rita is fading further, it can mercifully only happen on a timescale of years.

     It's brushing up against several of these microscopic channels that gave Lotus that feeling of being 'drained'. One lies directly at the root of the tentacles on her upper back. If pressed, Rita will admit that she willed herself into growing the tentacles, and was then horrified she couldn't change back.

     In composition, these crystals are organic, incredibly energy-dense, and comprised of a smorgasbord of exotic microscopic biocomponents that don't match any Rita's body produces naturally. Some of them match the human-flesh-forest outside, with which Ahn would be deeply familiar. The one used to grow her tentacles isn't any more depleted than the others, implying the purposes of the tentacle-entangled channels is to replenish them- in other words, Rita's tentacles drain the "bio-essence" out of living things to charge her own stores.
Rita Ma      But obviously, these crystals don't contain every part of a devoured monster. What is actually drained through the tentacles is very specific and esoteric. It could be referred to as the "soul", or at least the biological seat of it.

     A few of the crystals are interwoven with her central nervous system. The neurons connected to them don't receive, but only send; the crystals are agitated as if they were being used to transmit radio waves. Technologically, no signal is apparent, but if she concentrates in synchrony with the neural scan, Lotus might be able to pick up on a faint psychic 'buzz' that ebbs and wanes in time with the activity- not conscious by Rita, but impinging just slightly as if it were the next radio station over.

     The purpose of something that selectively broadcasts, but never receives, can only be to give orders. Something that gives orders and takes none can only be a queen.
Rita Ma      Rita is still holding that cute little beflowered "anti-stress ball" in both hands when she emerges and catches Ahn by surprise. Her tentacles autonomously try to curl around Lotus again for comfort; her hand comes up to wipe at her wet left eye. "Oh, um- thank you, Ms. Ahn! I ate before I came here, but..."

     Her stomach grumbles with comedic timing. Rita grimaces slightly.

     "... Maybe that would be nice anyway. You mentioned there were rations, right? There's not any raw meat in them, is there?" She sounds hopeful, which is not a tone one normally adopts on the subject of uncooked flesh.
Vantablitz Remnants     Whilst Rita protests her eccentric hypothesis, and then admits that Lotus makes her more comfortable, the aforementioned spends much of the remaining time simply wordlessly smugging about it. Ahn is engaged with something else; first with a look of heartwrenching pathos to Rita's reaction to her irresponsibly hipfired compassion, and then with growing fascination from watching Rita's blue eye onwards.

    Trying to gauge what she thinks from the process is difficult. There are times where she breathes sharply through her teeth, and times where she makes soft sighs of amazement, times where she mutters feverishly too quietly to make out, and times where she just blurts out coos of astonishment. At no point is she able to maintain a professional facade whatsoever. Her bedside manner is atrocious. She did say she learned to do all this stuff on her own with professional material and 'a lot' of time, but now it finally feels apparent.

    Eventually, as Rita escapes gay baby magnet jail with comedic tummyrumble timing, Ahn half-distractedly replies, "In the stockpiles? Aha, no way; it'd all have rotted to dust by now. But being on that ship made me want to go fishing again, so I guess we have some catches still in the cooler from earlier." She gives Rita directions to what is obviously a walk-in freezer, still appear piteously empty despite the fact that it's definitely Lotus' fault that there are way more fish (all different kinds, non-matching) than any one person would need to pull out of a river. She also gives Rita directions to the staff kitchen, naively expecting Rita wants to make more fancy raw seafood dishes for herself.

    When Rita returns, Ahn has apparently reviewed all the initial data she realistically could by this point in time, and has settled on something of a stoic neutral with slightly strained positivity on top. It lasts exactly until Lotus swears at her platformer and Ahn has to tell her not to use curse words around Rita. Again, one might wonder if it were intentional on Lotus' part, inscrutable as she is equally canny and blithely irresponsible.

    "W-well, I have good news, mostly, I think." Ahn begins, now perfectly flustered off her rehearsed game. "What happened to you-- Well, at first, it looks somewhat familiar. It looks as if you were originally exposed to an organic retrofit recombination process-- Ah, that is rather than like a disease, where the invading organism enters your body in a tiny amount, and then multiplies by itself and gradually siphons what it wants out of you like . . . a swarm of bugs let's say, It looks as if something was injecting bespoke mass into your body over time, and manually breaking down and rebuilding or replacing your cells, like . . . a team of workers. It also looks as if it failed, or maybe was aborted; I've seen partial COVEN recombinations when the invasive organism was too weak, or was attacked, but usually the host simply dies from being scrambled around inside. It seems like this process would have been one that kept you alive and conscious for as long as possible, though. And um . . . Well, I'm going to say your very rare 'birth abnormality' meant your body didn't have a rejection reaction to it-- that is, when a doctor transplants an organ into a patient's body, or even transfuses blood, if the two aren't compatible, your body will try to destroy it, and yours didn't."

    "So, I guess the bad news is that I don't think your body is going to gradually get rid of it on its own, but that might have been hazardous, even fatal, anyways. The good news is that . . . without the construction workers, they can't build anything new. I don't think it's likely that those changes will spread outside the systems they've already infected; cells set into a specific purpose aren't likely to suddenly diversify into a totally different tissue. But, um . . ."
Vantablitz Remnants     Ahn folds her hands into her lap, twiddling her thumbs nervously, suddenly looking very serious. "I don't know how to tell you this but . . . I think you were right to not trust your previous doctor. It looks like . . . The original recombination process happened at once, and failed, but there's evidence of a second one, that happened in short, set periods, on a repetitive schedule over a long period of time. It seems like an artificial attempt to induce the same thing, with small quantities of manually injected recombination agents. I think someone . . . I'm sorry Rita, but I think someone tried to make it worse. It's still . . . Well, it's still the same thing; without more injections, I don't see much changing, so there's really just one thing to be careful of."

    Ahn trails off again, trying to remember how she was originally going to phrase things. "There's still a 'construction team' in your body. They 'built' those . . . can I just call them tentacles? Is that rude? That's where they came from, later, even after the artificial retrofit stopped. Those cells are still capable of making more changes, and building new tissues. Any tissue, probably. As far as I can tell, they're wired up to your brain; they're what activates when you use your abilities. These don't appear to be spreading, but they are regenerating through some process. It might be from intaking intact cells from other organisms-- that is, obviously, not cooked or rotten. I don't . . . think that they present a colonization risk but . . . I think that if you 'told them to', they could. That there's a risk that if you used them to 'tear down and rebuild' instead of simply 'build', it might be very difficult to undo, if not impossible."

    She begins tapping and tracing the composite images from the pile. "There are also these; I thought they were csysts at first, but they appear to be connected to the surrounding tissue rather than enclosed. They're sort of like teeny tiny 'sub-brains', and are probably what helps handle all those new, non-human parts, relaying commands from your brain. However, they don't appear to be able to go in reverse; they're entirely subservient. If you're feeling compulsions or sensations you believe are unusual, they're definitely coming from the original process having gotten into your endocrine-- from it changing the chemicals your body mixes up to tell the brain what it wants and needs. Even though you can see a lot of structures in the brain there, it doesn't seem as if it's altered the neuron film layer itself. The organ there is responsible for things like balance and motor control. You haven't had any kind of memory loss or hallucinations, right? I think I can happily say that the 'Rita' in your head isn't going anywhere; it's just that she has to deal with her body telling her it wants different things."
Vantablitz Remnants     Finally Ahn seems to get a grip of where she was going with all of this, and begins absentmindedly ubuttoning the coat, driven by some internal sense of finality to her long and difficult talk. "Though this appears to be of obviously oceanic origin and a protein-base cellular recombinator base, there are a couple of commonalities I'm familiar with. Whoever did that, they have an understanding of a paradigm of living 'technology' that I didn't expect existed in your world."

    "Your body wasn't just redesigned to be a new member of the parasite species, or to optimally spread it further like a disease. It's been purposefully rebuilt --halfway-- to become compatible with very advanced molecule-scale biological processes that have created those extremely advanced 'sub-brain' computers, and with a kind of energy storage and use that I had to train for a long time to be able to access. The energy demands are far beyond what your body is actually producing naturally, so they seemed to be designed to drain it from elsewhere. And there's an evolutionarily convergent facsimile to the ansible organ-- um, there's a very special organ specifically for broadcasting commands outside of your body. Theoretically to other things using the same biological technology paradigm. Like we do with computers and remotes."

    "Someone thought you were very special, Rita. And I think you are too. But . . . if it's alright with you, I'd like to preserve and store some of your 'birth cells' here. I'm not sure I can help you like this; it'd be very difficult for me to do much with so many different processes having woven themselves in so tightly. But what I can do, at least, is keep 'the original Rita' on record, and potentially clone emergency replacements. So, just in case you give a 'wrong order' to that 'construction team' and you get a big webby-finned arm, in an emergency it could be surgically replaced with a copy of your normal arm. Does that make sense? Unfortunately there don't seem to be any original hormone glands left, but I can think of something eventually, I'm sure."

    "Until then . . . well, if anything really bad happens, or if you're really worried, I can get Lotus to help. She can't cure you, but if necessary, she can be like a 'good guy' virus. Someone who can fight the bad mutations and replace them with good ones, like an immune system. That's the best I can promise until I have much more time."
Rita Ma      Rita does not in fact avail herself of the kitchen. Several fish, totaling about forty pounds of flesh and bone, disappear from the walk-in freezer; she tries to choose the ones that look the least special or appetizing. The flavor barely matters, after all. Whatever it is, this body will tell me it's delicious...

     She returns having thoroughly washed her face and hands from the offscreen bloodbath, and gives Ahn an enthusiastic- if obviously anxious- wave. Instinctively, despite the promise of the phrase "good news, mostly", she knows she'll want to be sitting down for this, and dutifully plops herself back down in the same stool as before.

     Her expression waxes and wanes through a wide spectrum of emotions as Ahn gives her detailed explanation. Anxious, cautious optimism at first; then quiet queasy revulsion; then marveling at the abstract scientific wonder; then something brave and pluckily stoic; then nodding along in quiet assent; then anxious, cautious optimism again. The first time she speaks up is in response to "birth abnormality".

     "The Fish Disease," she says softly. "You saw it on the Santiago, didn't you? My mother, Narisa, was dying of it when she had my brother and me. Your body's supposed to be too weak at that point, but..." She trails off, shakes her head sadly, and resumes: "I don't look like I have it, because there's nothing to fight itself, but I do. The 'cracks' on those people, that's me all the way through."
Rita Ma      The fact that she'll never get better on her own makes her flinch just a little, her eyes darting down to the floor. Of course that was always something to silly to hope for. I can't ask to be set free from this body; not while I still have so much to repay. But the hope that I might not even have to make that choice; that someday I'd get to be normal again without having to ask... having that yanked away still hurts.

     "I think you were right not to trust your previous doctor." Rita grimaces openly; her hands curl up into little fists in her lap. "Dr. Foid," she says, her tone bitter. "I know. He's... he's imprisoned now. For a lot of reasons. He thought I should be the start of a new humanity, but..." A grim pause. It takes her a moment to un-clench her hands. She finally looks up with a bittersweet little smile: "I never wanted anything like that, Ms. Ahn. The ocean's so lonely. I like the old humanity better."

     The first thing that really seems to take her by surprise are the 'cysts'. Her eyes widen as she leans in to get a closer look at the printed scans. "Balance and motor control," she repeats almost absentmindedly, still staring at the scan. Her hand finds its way to where one of the crystals is indicated, as if she's expecting to be able to feel it. "Sometimes I let it move for me. I can put on the brakes whenever I need to, but it's... better at some things."

     "Memory loss?" She shakes her head. Hsllucinations? A slight pause, but then another shake. Then: "... the 'Rita' in your head isn't going anywhere; it's just that she has to deal with her body telling her it wants different things."

     Rita's been bravely keeping it together until now. She understands that showing strong emotion will only make Ahn feel bad. That reassurance breaks her composure completely. Her eyes go wide as she processes it- so casually spoken, peppered in with those medical details, that it almost doesn't feel real- and then the left fills up with tears.

     She stands up and wraps Ahn up in a hug, her arms sliding beneath the unbuttoned labcoat and her tentacles instinctively curling to join in the embrace too. For anyone else that might feel creepy, but Ahn's no doubt extreemly used to the sensation. There's no sobbing, but Rita's body shakes with intense emotion. She takes a couple of sniffles to clear her airway and turns her head to the side before speaking again.

     "I was so scared," she says in a soft, rough voice. "That someday I'd... forget who I was. And become dangerous to everyone who trusted me." A tight little squeeze, with arms and tentacles both. "... That they'd get hurt, again, because of me." It doesn't really need to be elaborated on any further. She holds the hug for a few more long, long moments before finally exhaling and letting go. "... Thank you, Ms. Ahn. Thank you so much," she finishes, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
Rita Ma      Eventually Rita recomposes herself enough to listen to the rest of Ahn's analysis. She seems emotionally drained, but in a positive, cathartic way; the worry that pervaded her before has visibly lifted. Her participations in the back-and-forth take on a more wondering and helpful tone.

     "-to drain it from elsewhere." "Right. The tentacles can sort of... eat things? Living things. But I'm not sure how it works." ""-I had to train for a long time to be able to access-" "Really?! You too? That's so amazing, Ms. Ahn! I can't imagine being able to learn this with a human body. You're really smart!" And then: "-for broadcasting commands outside of your body."

     Rita's eyes go wide again. That's hit on something. "Is that really how...? Um, I should explain." A little breath in, then out. "If I eat a kind of monster, other ones like it start to obey me. I did it for part of the meat-forest outside. That's why I can't go back to my own world."

     Her face goes oddly even; for such an openly emotional girl, she's become suddenly matter-of-fact. "One kingdom, one queen. It's the same with bees, isn't it? Anywhere I go... the Leviathans will try to destroy me, to keep me from seizing control. Anywhere I could stay would be ruined."

     The idea of her being 'special' makes her smile a little- though perhaps there's a rueful note in it- and reach out to hold Ahn's hand in two of hers, squeezing it gently. "The 'original Rita'... even if you can't make me any more human, that would make me feel so much safer, Ms. Ahn. Knowing that you can keep me safe if it gets any worse."

     "Whatever cells you need to take, I'm okay with that." A little laugh, and then: "Unless Ms. Lotus already did it again?"

     The idea of having Lotus inside her makes her cover her mouth and look back at Lotus with her eyes wide in surprise. "She can do that?? I mean, I saw those little black tubes coming out of you, but I didn't know it was like that..." But in the end, she nods. "If you think it'd help, I'd be okay with that too. I trust Ms. Lotus, after all!"

     With all that concluded, Rita heaves a deep, deep sigh of relaxed finality. Her tiny frame droops, too worn out to keep up its tension and deprived of any reason to keep it up besides. Her eyes are a little bleary and her smile a little ragged, but it is a smile nonetheless.

     "I'm really, really tired. But... I didn't know how badly I needed to hear all this. I didn't know how heavy it was on me until you lifted it. Thank you so much, Ms. Ahn." She turns around in her seat to wave, and lifting her voice slightly: "And you too, Ms. Lotus! ... Are you sure there's nothing I can do for you back? I know you said I deserve to find out these things, but..."

     "... I'm indebted to too many people already. It'd make me really happy if there's some way I can help you two back."
Vantablitz Remnants     When Rita explains (some details of) Doctor Foid to Ahn, she remains patiently silent, but her hands curl up into fists in her lap, scrunching up balls of white coat. "Yeah." she replies, turning into the very edge of a croak. "New versions of humanity aren't . . . what they're cracked up to be. I'm sorry. That someone would do that to you on purpose."

    And yet when Rita throws herself into hugging her, Ahn doesn't seem shocked or taken aback at the slightest. Instead, she squeezes Rita's shuddering frame against her with all the guilty intensity of someone who has been wanting to hug Rita this entire time. Even wearing just a crop top and compression shorts, again, under that fancy medical coat, she doesn't prickle at all from the multi-limbed contact. She just holds her breath for a few seconds, and lets out "I'm glad too, Rita. I really worried that the first person I met after all this time, would be so wonderful, and just taken away again. I won't let that happen, Rita."

    Ahn actually excuses herself for a moment to 'get some water' right after, coming back in under a minute, and seating herself with a bit steadier of a look to complete the rest.

    "Aha, well, I don't think I deserve that much credit. I mean, it was hard, sure, but most people couldn't do it at all, and it wasn't-- it wouldn't be their fault. Even then, I kind of doubt I could do whatever this is for, ha . . ."

    "It stands to reason. If all this advanced 'technology' is built into your body, then the rest that goes with it is probably part of other living things, right? Still, that'd be a kind of 'universal protocol' wouldn't it? Being able to create a remote for any device you access. A master switch. I'm not sure I'd call that . . . the queen of a hive, on your part. But what kind of administrator would tolerate someone else having the same level of access to the system? What if they took it over and shut them out? What if they did something terrible, according to them?"

    "Ah, no no! Not even Lotus would do that before I even asked!" "Last time was . . . what do you call it again? 'Implicit consent'?" "Please stop saying 'consent' so creepy." "I say it exactly like you do."

    And finally, "O-oh, you saw?" Ahn flinches just a little. "W-well that's not . . . it's not *quite* the same." Ahn thinks bout it for a moment, then curls down her ring finger and flicks her hand the same way, extending a slightly thicker, hexagonal manipulator, which she then taps on her glass, making a dull, hard, clinking sound. "I mean, Lotus sort of helped in a way, but, well, I did a lot of things to my own body back then, to try and turn things back to normal, or at least stop them from getting back. And I can't take those things back. But what I did, eventually, was at least make them better."
Vantablitz Remnants     She rummages around slightly, and then pulls out a penetrating scan of her last self-checkup. In addition to an odd, bright cluster of something adjacent to her brain, which branches out into countless thin and swirling 'roots' throughout her body, whorling together in denser spots around certain points in her throat, spine, solar plexus, amongst others, there's a whole lego instruction booklet of places where materials reflect or block radiation where soft tissue should be dull grey near black, mostly following the lines of her skeleton and attached to her main musculature, though some fill 'any spare space' in her ventral cavities. "Originally it was . . . pretty bad. I got . . . desperate." She runs a finger over one of the most faded scars, beneath her ribs. "But Lotus was able to help me make them better."

    "Contrary to my appearance, being that of an empress who should be freely given all things under heaven, I actually enjoy making things." Lotus faux-imperiously (probably) intones. "But we're not doing *that*. Think of it like the flowers outside that you love so much~ When that imposter-forest gets really bad, they keep it in check, yes? I promise to not do anything *untoward*~" "That just made it sound really suspicious! You shouldn't have promised out loud at all!"

    "Rita, I mean it. You don't have to--" "Sundays. You have to help me beat Ahn's score." "That's not fair!"