Are You Even Human

58. An Overwhelming Aura of Smugness

Peter must Never.I'm not teaching you English unless you promise not to tell him. I'll never live this down.

Blossom's fingers trace one of my scales as she schadenfreude, delighting at my discomfort as I swim towards the surface as fast as I can. I'm in my chosen angelic form, which cuts through the water with exceptional ease, but since her body is no longer particularly good at swimming, she is, indeed, riding me. I have subtly shifted away some of the eyes I'd normally have maximizing my omnidirectional vision just so I don't have to look at her thighs squishing against me for the entire goddamn trip.

Blossom hums.

Well, not all humans are completely incapable of handling their attraction to others, but the short answer is that we wear clothes so no one needs to worry about it in the first place. …Mostly.

Again, Blossom, we weren't designed by anything! Do I need to dump the entire theory of evolution directly into your brain?

Ugh, fine. I start explaining that to her as we swim, keeping track of the various fish around me as they dart away and doing my best to keep track of where we are relative to everything else. We intersected another Queen's domain earlier on our way out, though Blossom reported that we were simply on an out-of-territory mission unrelated to their colony and directed me around them. It's good that aliens aren't infighting often.

Blossom says.

Well, those were a long time ago. The only war we've fought in my lifetime is against all of

I mean, you've fought me.

…Bah. I will never not be human, you know, no matter how much of your culture I adopt. The first eighteen years of my life aren't just going to suddenly go away.

Blossom says.

You are incorrigible.

Heh. You know what, we're almost at the surface, so let's start with that.

I breach the waves and enter open air, Blossom unexpectedly shrieking with delight as I manage a jump out of the water a dolphin would be proud of. Back at the surface, I skim along the top of the water, giving her time to hack the seawater out of her lungs and take her first breaths of air.

I tell her.A Blossom of Wilted Chances."

Blossom."

She then proceeds to make a noise more akin to blowing a raspberry than actually saying a word. I can't help but chuckle a little.

I tell her.

Do aliens seriously not have music? That's I guess their brains aren't structured to appreciate the patterns in the same way human brains are. Blossom's brain has been modified to at least mimic of the human instinct structure, though, so maybe… hmm. Gosh, for the first-ever song for her to listen to, this is a choice, but I guess it'll have to do.

Blossom wiggles.

I tell her, then take a breath to start the song. "A, B, C, D, E, F, G…"

It takes several hours for us to hit dry land, though the time passes quickly between Blossom's endless excitement for learning new things and her endless complaints about basically everything she learns. By the time we hit landfall, she can say 'Blossom' and basically nothing else.

"Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom!"

She likes doing it.

Would you like to maybe learn how to say something else?

"Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom Blossom!"

Okay, cool, whatever. I ignore her as she wobbles back and forth on my back, shifting out of my angelic form and into the body of a mostly normal horse as the water gets shallow enough to walk in. I optimize and tweak a little bit as I walk, and of course I make sure to add in the ability to communicate with Blossom, but everywhere from here to human territory there's a chance the military—or anyone, really—will spot us. A naked girl riding a horse is definitely going to raise some eyebrows, but it won't necessarily scream 'Angel.'

…It might at least 'Angel,' admittedly, because it's still super fucking weird, but horses are pretty damn optimized for overland travel and we have to get where we're going somehow. We'll adopt a stealthier approach as we get closer, but for now we just need to get there.

But that's slow.

…Right. Yeah. Blossom is here as backup, but we're still getting to where we need to go without being noticed.

How do you say what? Oh!

"Road trip," I say out loud.

"Row tip!" Blossom attempts, so I send her my impressions of how she got that wrong. "Row-duh terrrrrip?"

Closer. Stick the sounds together. She squeezes my back in frustration, her awkward fingers twitching independently from each other like a dying bug.

"Rowed trep."

One more try, you got this. She takes a deep breath.

"Road trip!"

Yep.

"Road trip road trip Blossom Blossom road trip!"

…Yep. That is, somehow, the plan. Now hold on tightly as I transform. Your body has some impressive hidden weaponry, but it doesn't seem all that more durable than a normal human body.

That might be, but most humans have a different relationship with pain than most aliens. If you just hop off my back and fall on your face, it's going to hurt.

Blossom insists, hopping off my back and immediately landing on her face.

But then, suddenly, she's on her feet, no worse for wear. Even the sand of the shore is no longer sticking to her. She… clearly did that on purpose, entirely out of curiosity. And here I thought she could trust anything I say, now that I'm 'speaking properly.'

Blossom assures me.

She stumbles a little just by standing there, twitching back upright in a blink. I suppose I can't avoid looking at her when she needs my feedback to figure out her own legs. And… yeah, okay, she's beautiful, if in somewhat of an eerie way. Her dark skin and black hair match Lia's, though rather than keep that girl's unfair blemishless perfection, Blossom has opted to match some of Maria's freckles, at least for now. It works well enough, though I'm not sure how to feel about the rest of the combination. It's mostly Lia-like, though a bit taller and a bit more plump, the extra fat distributed pretty evenly around her whole body. It's almost like someone took Lia's figure and stretched out the sides a little bit in photoshop.

And at the end of the day, it's a mix between my girlfriend's body and the body of the hottest person I know. It does, inevitably, look good. All the extra additions—hidden blades, chromatophores, amphibious lungs, and so much more—are secret exciting additions that only the two of us know about. To the alien parts of me, the real attraction, so I can't even entirely escape the feelings by using an alien brain.

Blossom, of course, can hear my entire internal monologue, to which she responds with such an overwhelming aura of smugness and self-satisfaction that I can't help but wrinkle my nose. I don't know why she's so insistent on teasing me in this particular way. If she was human, I might have to wonder if she's flirting with me.

Yeah, I'm not dignifying that with a response. I roll my eyes, shift into a humanoid form, and give Blossom a literal crash course in walking for a few minutes. She thankfully picks it up fairly quickly, and then she's back on my back for most of the rest of the trip.

There were a few options for exactly which route to take from our council's territory to where I left Maria, but this is the best one, as far as I'm concerned. We're currently somewhere on the coast of North Carolina, or possibly Virginia, and we need to make it back to Atlanta, Georgia. It's possible to avoid human territory all the way to Georgia by swimming most of the way and only getting on dry land to cross through what used to be Florida, ultimately approaching Atlanta from the south. But that's roundabout, so it's much faster to get on dry land ASAP and make the trip in as straight a line as possible. With a vehicle, we'll be able to go a bit faster than my cruising speed in the water, too. It's riskier, and it crosses through mainly human territory, but I don't it'll be too difficult to get to where we're going without getting caught.

The coastlines are officially alien territory, but it's not like there's a military cordon lining the entire perimeter of North America. Aquatic aliens head onto dry land, and sometimes they do, but mostly they just mind their own business unless someone sails through their territory. Aliens as a whole don't tend to run raids, so there are only major defensive lines around the exceptions and the relatively new Queens that might end up being exceptions.

Blossom and I spend the time teaching her a bit more English. It's easier once she has the basics of phonetics down, and generally understands how to get her body to make the sounds I'm making. …We end up getting pretty distracted with her just having fun saying nonsense words: putting random sounds together, asking me what word they are, and laughing uproariously if I ever inform her that she did, in fact, construct a word by accident.

I think it's just a coincidence. I guess I'm not really sure, but we can look it up if we get internet access somewhere.

Thanks, I guess. Our network isn't quite as effective a communication method as yours, though. It's much longer-reach overall, but people can still lie using it and there are a lot of people who seem to believe doing so is inherently funny.

You are having altogether too much fun.

Blossom laughs, kicking her feet and nearly falling off my back before suddenly teleporting back upright.

As opposed to the girl who used to worship Failure, who knows so very much?

Blossom insists.

I correct.

Blossom counters.

I ask.

Hey, what's that supposed to mean? It's not like I've never been happy before, it's just… well, whatever.

Ugh. Look, I refuse to accept my life was worse than whatever you experienced working under a literal Queen of Failure. I've seen how Failure treats its blessed, I can only imagine how it treats its powerless workers. An entire of Emilys calling the shots sounds like actual hell.

Blossom says,

If anything, I think your mind is a little relaxed.

and

I'm not looking.

Nope. Not happening. I'm not going to stare at some naked woman while on a mission to That kind of thing is a pretty big deal in my culture. It's very firmly a one-at-a-time sort of situation.

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That's not the same! You're not her!

Yes! Well, sometimes. They can recombine. It's different.

Opinions are mixed on how entertaining it happens to be. Some people love it, some people couldn't care less.

I am sure you do.

Hmm. You think so? I wish I could say I find that flattering, but I don't. I doubt Failure and I would get along well, ideologically speaking.

Blossom disagrees.

I think that has less to do with any particular creativity on my part and more to do with a lack of investment. I don't really care how any of these gods are worshipped, and I don't really care what their domains do and don't encompass, so I'm happy to use whatever interpretation benefits me most at the time.

Well, I don't find the idea of gods existing to be appealing, so that's probably part of it. I think people have a responsibility to each other to do what they can to help those around them. Logically, the more power you have, the more people you'd reasonably be able to help. Gods, therefore, have the responsibility to do good for others, but they very obviously don't do that.

…It could be argued as either, but let's call it an ethical rule for now. You have a responsibility to use your power to assist those less fortunate than yourself.

Because the world will be better if we do, obviously. But yes, I get that's once again only by my standards, blah blah blah moral relativism blah. What are you getting at, exactly?

Yeah. I am. Of course I am. I'd argue you and the other council members do the same thing.

Even counting the direct communion some of you have with Possibility, the best you can do is form your own personal interpretation of Possibility's will. You and Chaos argue regularly over what Possibility really wants, don't you? You're placing your interpretation of its will over its actual will because that's

Blossom hums.

There's no reason Possibility should intrinsically matter more than anyone else just because it's more powerful than anyone else. That's stupid. It's the same thing as saying the king of a country is intrinsically more important than his subjects and it's morally right for them to die for him. I can't stand that shit. What does it matter, anyway? Possibility doesn't seem to mind my views on it, so why should you?

I thought we were done with the nicknames.

Well, at least try to focus. We're getting close to human territory, so we're going to have to move a bit more carefully. I'll be leaving you behind to go grab disguises for us, alright? Which is to say clothing. I'll try not to be long, but you absolutely can't walk into town naked.

Wh—I'm not a…! My powers just make it optimal to keep my body unrestricted! And how did you figure out how to convey the concept of a 'nudist' so quickly in a language of people who have no concept of clothes!?

Well in that case, we need a better way to communicate my species than just calling them 'natives.'

Yeah, it's… we don't have to talk about it right now. Just keep an eye out for somewhere you can hide for a couple hours.

It's not too hard to find a thick patch of trees to stuff Blossom into, letting me make the rest of the journey as a far less conspicuous bird. I do my best to identify military watch posts while I fly, looking for a spot with enough foliage to cover our way in on the ground. …Fortunately, this is North Carolina, so I'm honestly spoiled for choice. We could even take one of the rivers in if we wanted, but Blossom is right about needing to practice walking a little.

For now, I just land somewhere out of sight in the closest city, shifting into a human-looking form complete with faux clothing. We'll need a few things for our trip, and while I'm dead broke there's a pretty easy way to fix that: crime. I find a nice, big chain store and head inside, walking by the cash registers as I pass through and growing small collections of flesh around their interiors to swallow the money inside the unmanned registers whole. I have been able to just pop them into my domain space directly, but I'm a little worried that would end up destroying the bills. Generally speaking, I put stuff in my storage by either swallowing it or it, and I'd rather not take any chances. After pulling the money inside of me, I make it all immediately reappear inside my 'pockets' before any enzymes manage to get to them.

Heading through the store, I grab a few of the largest tupperware containers I can find before nabbing some clothes for myself and Blossom (she's my size, because of course she is) and pay for it all at one of the registers I didn't steal from. While I could have stolen the clothes as easily as the money, there cameras in the store and I don't want to leave any evidence. The clothing racks are all monitored. The inside of unused cash registers? Not so much. With luck, no one will even notice until the store closes and they count everything up. Even then, supervillain activity probably won't be the first assumption, and I didn't accomplish it using any aspect of my powers the military is actually familiar with.

Putting the clothes inside the tupperware to hopefully not destroy them too badly on the flight back, I return to where I left Blossom to find her… making silly noises while she pokes at various parts of her own body.

I ask, pulling the tupperware out of my own belly to extract the clothing.

I sigh, pulling out the clothes that are intended for me and putting them on to show Blossom how as I toss her clothing her way. You can't start poking yourself all over when we're in public, it will draw attention to us. And those areas of your body are never to be touched in public. Okay?

…Partly. Underwear is ostensibly for comfort, as those parts of the body tend to be more sensitive and have unique needs that the rest of the body doesn't. However, yes, it's to further obscure them from sight and ensure tighter clothing doesn't contour them too well.

Blossom laughs.

"I guess that's not a bad idea," I admit, shrugging my shirt on. "Do you need help with any of that?"

Blossom insists stubbornly, struggling with her bra. I shrug, content to just let that play out for now. There's not much else we can do until we get to a library.

"There's not much we can do until we get to a library," I repeat.

"Lie… bray… ree…" Blossom hums. "Library.

"I definitely respect the effort to keep information freely accessible, yeah. It's basically a repository of written knowledge that exists to be lent out to people whenever they want it."

"Just put your clothes on so we can get going," I sigh. "Humans are not that bad, you know."

Blossom says.

"…Again, humans don't have specialized body plans, so they're all designed to be able to survive as much as possible in the broad sense, even if it's never something an individual human could be expected to encounter."

"There are various theories. The main one is that armor would reduce both speed and endurance, which were both things we needed to consistently hunt the food required to maintain our intelligence. Brains are energy-costly."

"…So glad you approve," I sigh.

she cheers, leaping to her feet. "Soh glaad ew approo…"

This is going to be a very long trip, isn't it?

"This is going to be a very, long trip, isn't it?" I groan.

"Hehehohohoo," Blossom warbles. "

…Right. At least she's finished putting on her clothes. I got us both relatively simple outfits, just jeans, tennis shoes, and short-sleeved white t-shirts with some kind of brand logo I couldn't care less about. I'm wearing a slightly different shirt so we don't immediately look like we're matching. And… honestly, yeah, she did a pretty good job putting everything on for the first time. I step forward to adjust her shirt a bit, pull up her jeans so her underwear isn't showing, and tug down on the back of her bra strap since I can tell it's a bit uncomfortable for her. Blossom squirms and squeaks a bit as I prod at her, but once I'm done she lets out a pleased trill of thanks.

Hmm… yeah. She looks a lot better now. I should have thought to bring a brush for her hair, though. She looks like she just got out of the ocean, which… well, she did, but we don't want her to look that way. She grins as I adjust her hair a bit with my fingers, leaning into the touch and seeming quite pleased with herself for whatever reason. Hmm… that's probably as good as we're going to get. We'd better get a move on.

We resume our language lessons on the trip over. Quietly, of course, but overall there's not much risk in getting heard out here in the wilderness. Even if someone find us, we finally look enough like two regular humans that we can probably pass as teenagers fucking around where they shouldn't, which is an entirely normal and very human thing for teenagers to do. They won't suspect a thing.

Blossom reports.

"What kind of pain?" I ask.

"How bad is it? Scale of one to ten."

"Practice your numbers," I cut her off.

"…T…two?" she hesitantly pronounces.

"Good," I say. "And that doesn't sound too bad. Some amount of pain present in the body at any given time is relatively normal."

"For the same reason you blame everything else on," I say. "Human bodies are not well-made."

Blossom points out,

"…So in all possible realities, you get a stomach ache around the same time?" I ask.

"Yes," she says out loud. Ooh, good pronunciation that time. She preens at my compliment.

"Okay. Uh… you're probably just hungry then," I tell her. "We'll get you some food when we get to town."

"Human bodies treat fat storage as emergency food and don't dip into them except when necessary. It's normal to eat three times a day."

"I won't disagree, honestly," I shrug. "Welcome to being human."

So we do. I have to admit, Blossom wasn't kidding when she said she was good at memorization… though she wasn't kidding when she drastically underestimated how much she'd need to memorize. Aliens are born already knowing how to speak through the network, so the mere concept of learning how to speak an is pretty foreign to them. It makes for a unique challenge… though it's more than offset by the sheer amount of information we can share over the network directly.

Every single word I teach her comes pre-packaged with all its possible denotations and connotations, and every single mistake she makes is instantly corrected by nothing more than my own flash of instinct that it I don't need to say a word more than once: while she struggles for a while to get it correct, she can use my own reactions as guidance to work out her mistakes all on her own. All I need to do is listen, and give her the next lesson when she inevitably finishes digesting the prior one.

She isn't anywhere close to being able to hold a conversation in English as we near the end of the woods, but she's so much farther ahead than a human could be with this little practice that it's a bit frightening.

Oh right. I forgot.

"Can you say 'Julietta?'" I ask.

"Joo-lee-eh-tah," Blossom tries. "Joolyettuh. Juuliehta? Julietta. Julietta! Blossom Blossom good good win!"

"…Yep, that's right," I confirm. "That's my name in my language. I… would love for you to use it."

It's important to me, and it has been a long time since I've been able to use it openly. I've been hiding my real identity, after all, and I arguably still am, but… I don't have to hide my Despite being back in hiding, I don't have to be Lia Morgan anymore. I can be Julietta. I can be

Blossom, of course, can sense how important this is to me, so she foregoes her usual jabs and gives me a nod.

"Yes, Julietta," she nods.

"'Okay' would probably be more appropriate in that context," I smile at her.

"Okay, Julietta."

"Thank you. Now let's get you something to eat. This time, curious to find out if you're going to love it or complain about it incessantly," I say. "So… welcome to human territory."

We push ourselves out of the forest and onto a nearby road, the town I grabbed our clothes from less than a mile ahead of us. Blossom makes several amusingly strangled noises as she stares at it, reaching her hands out and grasping at the air as if trying to touch it.

she asks.

"I guess it's different seeing it in person compared to just hearing my thoughts about it," I smile.

she sends, while also saying "Yes!"

"Wait until we actually go there," I say. "You've hardly seen anything yet."

Blossom considers.

"I'm glad you've found something else to approve of," I tell her honestly.

At Blossom's urging, we actually start jogging all the way to town, and though she stumbles repeatedly she doesn't seem at all discouraged. The pace is pretty slow and it takes us at least twenty minutes to make it there, but Blossom is at least a lot more used to running by the end of it.

"Amazement," I translate for her quietly.

"Ah mayze mant!" she cheers loudly, causing a few people nearby to look our way. Because we're in the city now, and the significant number of humans nearby is one of many things she's now extremely excited about.

"Amazement," she corrects herself more quietly.

"That's a laundromat. It's where some people get their clothes cleaned," I explain.

"Yes! The high-gene!" Blossom exclaims.

"That's not how that works, and not how that's pronounced," I say. "And you know that."

Blossom insists.

"…Silly," I sigh.

"Silly silly Julietta silly Julietta silly!" Blossom chirps, stumbling around and thankfully catching her balance in normal ways rather than using her powers. "Eeehehehe! What that?"

"…That's a car wash," I say.

"Yes! Blossom win. High-gene!" she cheers, flipping me off.

"It… if you let things get dirty, they don't work as well," I insist.

"What that?" she asks, pointing elsewhere and completely ignoring my reasonable protest.

"That's… a diner," I tell her. "We could get food there."

"Food! Food food food food Blossom food win," she declares, rapidly stamping her feet with anticipation.

"Okay, I guess we'll get food there," I sigh. "Make sure you're quieter in the building, okay? You can't be loud in public spaces. It's rude."

"Fuck!" Blossom says brightly, flipping me off again. I suspect she may be denying my authority. Still, I have to try.

"…Don't say that either, please," I groan.

"Food food food," Blossom ignores me, marching towards the diner. I follow her with another sigh, fishing out the money I have left. Should be more than enough for a meal for two, even considering my appetite. I'll need a lot more, though. The diner looks like it's a local place, not a chain, so I'd rather steal from someplace else. I can handle it later.

"I mean it, Blossom. Don't forget we don't want to bring too much attention to ourselves," I warn her as I watch her excitedly learn about the concept of doors.

"Yes, yes, yes," she dismisses, tapping on the door. "English?"

"It says 'pull,'" I inform her. She nods, grasps the door handle, and successfully opens it. Hmm. Better than some humans I know. Literate ones. I follow her inside and request a table for two, though once we're sat down Blossom immediately relocates her chair to be beside me instead of across from me. So much for keeping a low profile, but whatever. It helps me guide her through the menu, sending various impressions of the foods on offer.

she asks.

"I… don't really like food in general," I admit. "My feelings on the matter might not reflect your own. It's different for different people."

she says, pointing to the menu at random.

I think I need to just train myself to not rise to her bait even inside my own mind. That's the only solution to this.

…It's the only solution. Anyway, our orders get taken, and soon enough we get our food. I get chicken tenders—they're bland and monolithic in flavor, especially without sauce, which makes them a lot more palatable. Blossom ends up getting a massive burger, towered high with so many ingredients I'd probably have to completely numb my own mouth or puke. She grasps it with excited anticipation, lifts it up to her mouth, and takes an enormous bite. Hesitantly, slowly, she chews, only wincing a couple times when she accidentally bites her own tongue. Then, she swallows, her face and hands completely covered with mayonnaise.

she concludes.

I pause, staring at her in mild shock. There's… well, there's only one thing I can say to that, I suppose.

"I know, right!? I am so glad someone finally gets it."

I can't believe all it took to be understood was to defect from my species entirely. If I'd known that, I would have done it sooner.