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Worlds of Living Matter by AshOfTheBurningWorld

X-overs & Worm Xover Rated: T, English, OC, Behemoth, Simurgh, Leviathan, Words: 18k+, Favs: 214, Follows: 283, Published: Dec 8, 2024 Updated: May 24

29Chapter 6: Making Friends (Behemoth and Gaia)

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Chapter 6: Making Friends (B and G)

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Behemoth requested a new form. Specifically, he wanted a form closer to that of a human, which could replicate the energy pathways found in the local human population that allowed them to manipulate fire as they did.

That was a bit harder. When I changed his original body to include those pathways, they degraded with use at a rapid pace, so I first had to figure out why that happened. For that reason, Behemoth and I shifted our route a bit and headed straight for the humans that were lighting plants on fire. They were held in the air by air balloons, raining fire down on the life that existed between my brother and I and the still evacuating city of humans.

Just to spite them, I took control of the dying plant life and caused it to erupt in growth, rising fifty meters in the ground and twisting together in a large tree. The many branches pierced through one of the balloons, causing the pilots of the other two air balloons to use their pyrokinesis to reverse quickly and run away.

[Fun]

I hugged my brother's rocky head with a grin. "I'm glad you think so, brother. I'll try and figure this out quickly so you can handle the next group, okay?" Behemoth nodded, making me smile.

I jumped down from his shoulder, shifting the tree to move the deflated air balloon closer to me. I looked down at the seven men and women who were hanging in the basket, scanning their biology and comparing it to Earth Bet's human population to see if there was any difference that might have allowed for their energy channels.

They were stronger, I noticed. The average person in this world seemed to be physically more robust and capable than the average person on Earth Bet, which seemed to have no biological reason. Obviously, I assumed that the energy I felt, apart from my bio-sense, was responsible, which made some sense. My planet-wide scan showed that this energy circulated through every living thing, so it having some way of bolstering biological existences would make sense.

Now, if I could figure out how I could sense this energy, that might give me a few extra hints as to what the energy actually is. If it was just something that was changed during the Intervention, I might just write it off as something I might never understand, but I could sense the energy with two distinct senses. One of them might have been caused by the changes made to me during the Intervention, but the other one was my sense and power over dimensions.

I frowned a bit, looking over the seven humans. Three of them had just conjured fire again and launched it towards my face. I twisted my body's biology, gaining a level of heat resistance that I had learned from a host species thirteen Cycles ago, and glared down at the humans who tried attacking me.

"That's not very nice," I stated, smirking as I felt one of the humans faint. I made a decision then, looking over them all. "You're mine now. My brother wants to learn your form of pyrokinesis, so I'll figure it out for him." Then I looked upwards a bit, thinking and ignoring the shouts of the small. "Now, what else do I need? A control group?" I turned my attention back to the humans, who amusingly shut up when I did. "Not every human can manipulate fire like you can, correct?"

I could just study their brains and find the answers, but that would be a waste of effort. For all that I now have infinite energy thanks to my sister and my new powers, studying and analysing individual brains, and then working to assemble the results into something understandable for an observer would be an irritatingly slow process, even for me. Much easier to just ask.

"N-no," one of the… uniformed people? Some kind of soldiers? stuttered, proving my point. "Only ab-bout a quarter of the Fire Nation are-"

"Corporal Tai! You will shut your mouth!" One of the other men roared. "Give any more information to the enemy, and I will have you court- ghkl!"

There were gasps and screams as I directed a branch to spear the man's neck, making him gurgle his next words. I rolled my eyes, but trained my senses on the dying man. "I just said that you're mine," I said, keeping the man conscious enough to understand, even as his body fails. "I'm not above breaking my toys if I get something out of it, you know? You can help me figure out if that energy in you remains after death."

Blood pooled in the basket of the balloon, making the others back away as best they could in an enclosed space. The dying man fell unconscious, falling limp while being held up only by the branch in his neck, and I watched. The energy inside him slowed as his heartbeat did, then slowed further when he stopped breathing. Finally it stopped entirely as the man passed, before seeming to simply seep out of him.

I hummed. "So that's a no then," I mused. "Energy dissipates on death, seemingly connected to the being's health. Corporal… Tai, was it? You were saying?"

The man, Tai, stood still, staring at the corpse of the one who I assumed was his superior of some kind. He didn't move, seeming not to acknowledge what I said, but that didn't mean I didn't get an answer.

"The fire bender population across the Fire Nation is about a quarter!" one of the women said quickly. "There are some earth and water benders in the colonies on the mainland as well, but they're rarer. Most earth benders and water benders are prisoners of the war, and kept in specialised prisons."

[Request]

I mentally sighed, preparing a broadcast. {Yes, I'll try to figure out how these other 'bending' types work as well, but I'll be experimenting with fire first, since that's what we have right now.}

[Acceptance]

Seriously, I'm glad Behemoth has taken interest in something, but he could do to learn some patience next. Maybe I'll send him the timestamped reports of some research Shards to look through for him to gain an understanding of average research time until a breakthrough is made. (Usually, that's about one Cycle due to how the Entities consolidated data. I bet I can beat a few hundred years.)

"Next," I said aloud. "Do you have a term for the energy you use to 'bend' fire?" I asked. It would be easier than just calling it 'energy'.

"Chi," was the answer I got. "All benders use chi to bend, but chi is life energy." Then the woman paused, seeming to remember something. "Er, the Fire Sages would know more about chi itself," she told me. "Most people don't know much about it, since it's not needed."

I hummed, nodding. "Thank you-"

"Hua," she cut me off. I blinked, not expecting the boldness, but then it clicked.

Don't want to die to a branch in the neck? Help the giant plant controlling scary lady. Also make sure she knows who you are to try and associate you with 'useful'.

I snorted, before turning my attention back to Tai, and another man that had his hand on Tai's shoulder. When I did, the man stood in front of the still recovering Tai. My bio-scans gave me what I needed.

"You two are family, yes?" I noted. "Cousins of some kind? Close enough for it to be notable that you are both benders, anyway. Do you have any other benders in your family?"

Though most humans went pale at the realisation that I could and might very well target families, and Tai was shocked back to present, Tai's cousin stood tall. "You will not go near them," he declared, his fist lighting on fire.

I smirked and tested something. While the pathways for this 'chi' were not solely biological, they did flow over and cross at certain nerve points of the human body. I applied biokinetic pressure to a nerve point on the man's arm, watching with glee as the flames suddenly shut off.

A sword was immediately drawn, to the man's credit. He was much unlike his easily shocked cousin. I didn't much care, using my control over time and space to trace back the man's genetic lines, looking through ancestor after ancestor, branching out when I found groups of fire benders.

"In the last one thousand years, your family has been 78.93% made of fire benders," I counted. "Your immediate fire bending family consists of you and your cousin, your mother, father, uncle, sister, and your son. Non-fire bending family consists of; your aunt, married into the family; your wife, married into the family; your grandfather on your mother's side, and your other cousin, sister to Tai. There seems to be genetic component to bending. Interesting."

At the base of the tree I was using to hold up the air balloon, I twisted the wood and bark into flesh and bone. It was a perfect replication of several members of the listed family, both benders and non-benders, including their chi pathways, that I then took direct control of, using the tree to hide their presence.

They did not bend, even as I replicated the motions. Sure, I spawned some non-benders in the mix as a control group, but none of them conjured or controlled fire under my control. I influenced their brains a bit and sent a broadcast to Behemoth.

{See if you can replicate bending with these}, I told him, sending with it the control frequencies for the antennae I placed in them, not unlike a Shard-Host connection.

It took a few moments, but Behemoth started influencing one of the clones, making it walk properly and move its arms in motions similar to what the soldiers were doing when they attacked me. Flickers of flame were produced at first, far weaker than Behemoth's bending or the bending of the soldiers, but not much more, even if a Behemoth-controlled body produced fire more consistently over time.

Still, there does seem to be a genetic component the bending, which I tore through the clones' DNA to find. If the clones weren't capable of bending at all, I'd have to use the originals. Since the current method I was employing was to change each nucleotide, one by one, until I found the right one, the originals likely would not survive the mess I mas making with the clones' genetic structure. That would be irritating to fix, so destructive testing is only for the clones for now.

All of this happened within minutes, so I temporarily shut down the minds of my six humans. They didn't need to know anything was going on, so when I turned them back on, so to speak, they just blinked and continued like no time had passed.

"Hua." The woman stood straighter. "You mentioned sages," I lead. She nodded.

"The fire sages on Crescent Island keep most of the Nation's spiritual knowledge," Hua elaborated. "They have guarded the temple of the Avatar since their disappearance, hundred years ago."

"The Avatar?" There were several things I wanted to investigate in that explanation, but I'd start with one. It wasn't like I didn't have the time to collect all the answers I wanted.

"The most powerful bender in the world," another woman stated, looking up at me with enthusiasm. "The Avatar supposedly acts as the bridge between this world and the spirits, born over and over again to the four elements and capable of calling on their past lives for advice and assistance. They can bend all four elements at once!" She was looked at by everyone else, and shrugged shamelessly. "What? I loved those stories as a kid."

And I suspected that someone else would like those stories too.

[Request]

I laughed at my brother's newfound enthusiasm.

#=#

Behemoth wasn't quite sure what about this 'bending' ability had sparked his interest. It may have been the sensation of feeling, which he had never experienced before. It may have been the new perspective through which he had been looking towards this world's sun while his sister spoke with her new toyspetspossessions.

Though, personally, Behemoth suspected it was neither of those reasons, but instead the feeling of wrongness that filled him as the pathways his sister forged crumbled. They deteriorated as he conjured fire from, not nothing, but definitely nothing physical, and left behind the sensation that something about them was wrong.

The humans did not suffer that feeling, it seemed. They had manipulated roaring flames as they burned the nearby plant life to ash. Even the clones his sister had sculpted for him to control via electronic signals and radio waves did not suffer that feeling, pitiful as their flames had been under Behemoth's control.

No, there was something different about him, about the pathways that his sister had forged in his puppet body, that made him incompatible with this new energy, this chi. It may just be the fact that this world was not his, and so he had not been exposed to chi until recently, but that didn't seem right.

Behemoth was now confident that there was something else. Something… not physical. It was why he couldn't study chi properly (though he had now become able to sense it, at least), as it was not physical, did not follow physical laws, and seemingly did not allow itself to be manipulated by Behemoth's many energy control systems.

Behemoth could not use his standard systems, so he returned to trying to feel. Unfortunately, he could not feel as he did before, since the pathways in his body degraded so during and after their use. And he would not ask his sister to replace them. The feeling of wrongness that he knew would follow the warmth was not worth it.

Not yet. Not until he and his sister had greater knowledge of how to progress their studies.

For now, he would turn his gaze to the sun, and remember how warm it felt through his chi.

Chapter 490 - 2