The Xenomorph Goddess

0Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Final Chapter. Xenomorphic is wrapped up with this one, and it's on to the others. It's been a fun ride, but it's not over yet.

On to the final stretch…

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or AVP

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The bottom of Asteria's feet slammed into Cain's chest, and the larger hybrid took two steps back before countering with his clubbed tail. Asteria ducked, a spike barely missing the top of her head. Her own tail whipped up, and, with precise targeting that from her superior eyes and reflexes, severed the club at the muscle. The club sailed into a tree, shattered through it, and imbedded in a rock. Acid jetted from Cain's severed tail, the Predator hybrid roaring, not in pain, but in exhilaration.

He bull-rushed, and Asteria leapt over him, flicking her tail again, but Cain used his own to parry, and the bladed tail stabbed into the ground. Asteria lighted, tried to retract her tail, but had it grabbed instead, and suddenly she was being slung through tree after tree, splintering the bark of organisms that had been alive for decades. Then she was firmly planted into the ground with enough force to rattle her bones.

Her super-enhanced bones.

Then she was yanked forward by her tail on a collision course with Cain's wrist blades. When she got close enough, her arms snapped out, her hands going around Cain's wrist, and her feet planted on his pectorals. She intended to snap his arm off, but Cain reacted to her counter by hauling his arm up, supporting her entire weight, and then slung his limb. The force was too much for Asteria, and she was thrown away. Midair, she was struck by twin bolts of energy that smarted terribly and shot her back faster into a rock with enough momentum to crack the ball of minerals.

While hurting, the pain was ignored in favor of darting away into the woods. A frontal assault was not the answer to this battle, as Cain was too physically superior, but he was not mentally superior. As Asteria darted through the trees, changing her tactics, she felt Cain thundering after her, firing bolts of energy, lighting the forest on fire. She dodged each shot, and when Cain got close enough, his longer legs and more powerful muscles propelling him further and faster, she snapped out with her tail again.

Cain's reflexes were superb, and he caught the blade in his hand, but then winces and roared when there were ten sharp impacts across his front. Asteria's claws, embedded deep in his body. The tail was ripped from his hand, the blade biting through his skin and spreading his acidic blood across the forest floor.

Cain looked up and saw a fist that smashed his face in, sending him sailing through a tree. He didn't get a chance to run into something else before he was hit again, sailing in a new direction. And then he was hit again, and again, and again, being pinballed through the burning trees until there was a jarring impact to his lower jaw that sent him up, and then another jarring impact, this one much more powerful than the former, that put him four feet into the ground in an eruption of dirt.

He rolled out of his crater just in time, but he still caught several punches to the face and head, before a well-timed block created an opening that allowed him to rake his wrist blades across Asteria's sternum, to which he received five deep gashes across his chest, and he responded with an upward slash that took an eye out, and the reciprocation was twin sets of claws buried knuckle-deep in abdomen. Cain ended by stabbing Asteria.

Locked, she hissed, he clicked, and the flames burned around them. Then Asteria spewed acid in Cain's face, ripped out her claws, clapped her hands on his ears, and got kicked in the chest, slammed into a tree, ducked under a couple of plasma blasts, grabbed the toppling tree, and slapped Cain three hundred feet in the air with said tree. Asteria dropped her tree, extended her dorsal tubes with a snap, and willed the energy that made her wings into existence. Like a bullet from a gun, she was up and in Cain's descending face, grabbing him and slinging him up higher.

And now she had the advantage. Up here, Cain had no control; he was in freefall, tumbling over himself, unable to aim properly with his cannons, unable to get a good trajectory for his tail, the club having grown back. Unable to do anything but swipe and take hits as Asteria flew in from every angle there was on a three-dimensional plane. Her claws and tail raked across his body, tearing deep gashes, spilling pints of his blood. Still, for all her damage dealt, Cain recovered from all, his healing factor just as great as her own.

But he was wearing down. His bones could only generate so much blood so fast before needing more substance to melt down to make more acid, make more life fluid. And currently, in the air and falling fast, there was only one source of food.

The next time Asteria came in for an attack, Cain was ready, eyeing her. She was coming for his jugular this time, and all it took was a well-placed tilt of the head, and SNAP.

Asteria went flying past, missing her left arm up to the elbow. A low hiss, and the cells were already undergoing hyper mitosis. In less than two seconds, her entire arm was back, and Cain had just a little bit more blood in him. But he was almost to the ground, and Asteria wouldn't be fast enough to play hot potato again. She let him crash with a monstrous cloud of dust rising amidst the toppling of trees.

Recognizing what would have become a land-to-air fight, Asteria also went to the ground, right into the middle of the dust cloud. While vision was obscured, she could smell Cain, see the pheromones around him, feel the electricity in his body, and hear his heart beating furiously to get blood throughout his body. There was another thing that was debilitating Cain, and it had to do with his brain power.

Asteria knew that the spines on his head weren't just for show, they were generators for his cannons, generating excess bioelectricity that could be discharged at his leisure. Which he had been doing a lot during this fight, and his generators were starting to sputter, and even though they produced excess bioelectricity, they still produced energy that was used by his body.

In summary, Cain was running low on blood and energy. He was tired, fatigued, and running on empty. Asteria's wear-down tactic was working. And then the bigger hybrid went tearing through the forest in a direction that Asteria sensed a body of water in. She went sprinting after him on all fours to give herself the boost in speed.

When she was a child, she could reach speeds exceeding 300 miles per hour on all fours. Now, as a maturing adult, years later, years of gaining muscle later, she reached speeds exceeding 700 miles per hour. With a loud boom, Asteria went supersonic and overtook Cain, flattening him like a pancake, no doubt breaking some bones after running into him at Mach 1.

The problem with running that fast was slowing down, and Asteria usually accomplished slowing down with friction, and large objects. She promptly ran through a series of trees. Amid a pile of splinters, Asteria got up with stars dancing around her head. She shook rapidly from side to side, and approached Cain. He seemed to be knocked out. His brain activity was low, his heart was steady, and he wasn't moving.

She had won.

So why didn't she feel victorious?

Asteria poked Cain with her tail, and when he didn't stir, she stabbed him in the solar plexus. He shuddered, but didn't wake. She dug her blade in, twisting it, and got closer, ready to take his head. Claws splayed, crouching over him, she hissed.

And then his pure black eyes opened.

She tried to retreat and gain distance, but she had lodged her tail in too deep—it was stuck—and she was too slow and Cain too fast. His large hand clasped around her throat, and he popped up to his feet, and then he slammed her into a tree, over and over again until the tree's trunk cracked, splintered, and then toppled. Cain put the dazed and sore Asteria to the ground, her tail still embedded in his chest. He raised an arm, his wrist blades extending with a fwip.

Asteria shrieked and shoved her tail all the way through Cain's body and wrapped it around his arm. With another shriek, she snapped Cain's arm. The Predator hybrid roared in pain, both at the tail running him through, and at the angle in which his arm was bent and bleeding. With a loud grunt, he took his free arm, formed a fist, and brought it down. Asteria intercepted his fist with both her palms, struggling to hold it away. With another fwip, she was impaled beneath her collar bones. She hissed in pain, her eyes closing.

Around the hybrids, the forest burned and the ground smoldered as the acid ate through it.

"Submit~," Asteria rasped aloud.

"No~," Cain growled. Rough, guttural, and deep.

"YES!"

And she went with her ultimate weapon: her mind.

Cain had no experience with telepathy, none at all. Asteria attached, and it was vicious. She had no mercy and no abandon. Everything and the kitchen sink was thrown. She peeled into his mind and wreaked damage of all kinds. In her fervor, she almost destroyed him. She almost eradicated every sentient thought from his head. She almost rendered him as something even worse than a vegetable.

But she realized that she had won, well and truly. He had no defense against her telepathic assault, his fatigue overcoming his mental defense capability. He was at her mercy. His life was in her hands. The role he had to play in her life was hers to decide. His role in the Hive was hers to choose. A Drone, a Warrior, an outcast, a Praetorian, a King, a servant...even something more.

In this moment of peace, Asteria became aware of her own body, the heat between her legs, the desire, and the fact that this was going to happen many times in the future, and there wasn't a god alive that she wanted for any purpose. There was only one person that could keep up with her, one person that could satisfy her.

Besides, she had three rowdy little girls to raise. She might need some help.

She imparted all this to Cain, what she wanted to do with him, what she expected of him. It was more than just a telepathic message, it was also a chemical one. The pheromones interacted with his biology, writing in a new code, a new set of chemicals to be sent and new messages to be read. Cain growled, his mandibles twitching as the titular click came from him.

It was decided.

They disengaged, untangling themselves, removing their limbs from each other's bodies. Asteria's tail uncoiled from Cain's broken arm, and slid out of his chest, while Cain pulled his wrist blades free from Asteria's torso. Slowly, their wounds healed, but it was slow. They were both tired.

Getting to their feet, they eyed one another. They were painted in fluctuating red light due to the dancing flames of the forest, and smoke curled above them. The only reason emergency teams hadn't arrived yet was because every response division close enough to get here in a timely manner was dead.

While not necessarily peaceful, it was square one again, only, with a different avenue. Cain could smell Asteria's puberty, and Asteria could smell him. They were both enticing to each other; she was literally dripping, expelling moles of unseen chemicals, and Cain was standing in the middle of ground zero. The only thing keeping him from taking her where she stood was the fact that he had beaten him, and he wasn't the dominant here.

But all that went out the window when Asteria made a simple gesture.

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"Well, I'm not watching this," Perseus said. "I'm going to check out the rest of this rock, maybe find something fun to do."

"There are a couple of deities and entities still roaming about on Earth. I'll handle those." Shin'en vanished in a swirl of vapor.

"Pussies," Lucy accused. "What? Can't handle some sex?"

Words appeared in front her: Not when the people having sex have my exact face.

-Shin'en

"Fine, that makes sense. More for me then."

Lucy unzipped her pants.

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There was nothing fancy about their first union. Their hands roamed in places, they tasted each other's mouths, they kissed, they bit, and they experienced pleasures they didn't know existed. They also learned things.

Yes, the lobster-shell like covering on Cain's front did indeed protect his penis. The shell would slide up, and his length would, for lack of a better word, flop out. It was constantly erect, but only when the shell was up was he actually aroused. Satisfactorily long, and satisfactorily wide. It also came with its own lubrication, which had its own appealing scent and taste. The color was also just as black as both of their skins.

They also discovered that Asteria could control how tight she was. She could expand her vaginal muscles to make herself so loose that Cain couldn't tell if he was inside or not, or she could make herself so tight that Cain nearly crushed her hips in his hands because of the amount of pressure engulfing his reproductive organ. On a strange biology note, Cain's testicles were tucked safely inside his body, arranged in the same way the female reproductive system was.

The final thing they discovered, worthy of note, was that they both had the strangest pleasure spots: their dorsal tubes. They were sensitive, and came with pleasure receptors that neither of them knew about. Anyway, sucking and licking each other's tubes was something that brought them both to climax multiple times.

Of course, they went with a classic vanilla technique. Cain sat against a tree, and Asteria lowered herself on top of him, and then a rhythm was set between her rising and lowering, and Cain bucking. Eventually, past her cervix and deep in her uterus, Cain let out a mighty roar, and their child was conceived in time with a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder.

The burning forest had created the right temperatures for a storm, and the powers of the Stormbringer's children.

When they no longer had the energy to keep going, Asteria curled into her mate's arms as the rain fell.

And so it was decided. Cain was not her brother, nor her son, nor her enemy, nor a threat. He was her lover, her husband, and the father of her children, both biological and adopted. Hmm, explaining this whole thing to Annabeth, Ariel, and Amelia would be an experience but one that have to be put off for a later time. For now, the young Empress was content to enjoy the arms of her lover.

But the carnage was far from over.

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Pregnant though she might have been, the cells were only just fertilized and yet to develop into something even resembling anything more than a ball of genetic material. And her body was not fully human, as had been stated heavily before, and her period was just as nonhuman. The simplest way to put this, was that even though she was pregnant, and the eggs that had been wrapped up and ready to enter her chest cavity were now all fertilized, but only making a single child, she still had eggs to go through, people to harvest, and a city to reach.

Only now she had a companion that would loyally serve her, and terrible cravings.

She needed to eat, and with Cain's sharper hunter instincts, eat she did.

But she didn't get to a city or a town before encountering something in a cave in the side of a mountain.

"Mom?" Annabeth said hesitantly. The pure black eyes and the expanded rib cage and the bared teeth were all things that would give anyone pause. Amelia was there, only she was hiding behind Ariel, who was standing next to Annabeth.

Asteria stared at them unblinkingly. This felt anticlimactic to her, what was about to happen felt anticlimactic, but she knew what was going to be done, and there was no point in prolonging it. Inside her, the genetic vehicle that transported her eggs began working her eggs back into the central cluster, and working its own way up her throat.

The girls all trembled and screamed when a mass of thick, black liquid erupted from their mother's mouth and engulfed them all, expanding and stretching to cover every inch of their bodies. And then, like so many years ago, tendrils of the black material shot out and latched onto the walls and ceiling, and began to reel the cocoons up to suspend them in the air.

Cain stepped next to Asteria. 'Our daughters?'

'Yes. Stay here and guard them. Protect them at all costs. When they are reborn, you'll officially be a daddy.'

Cain's entire body went white as snow, their equivalent of color draining from their faces, and it made Asteria snicker.

'Don't be nervous. They'll love you.'

His response was a series of clicks.

Cain would wait for six days before the cocoons greyed and dried out one by one. Annabeth was reborn first, and she was just like her mother. Her hair was straight and made of tendrils, her grey eyes remained, the pupils slit, her sclera black, and her skin was just as dark. She had dorsal tubes, the bladed tail, the claws, the black gums and translucent teeth. The whole package.

She and Cain would lock eyes before Amelia and Ariel made it out, and she would sniff the air, smell her mother, smell her mother on Cain, and smell his own scent, and would smell just what it meant. She would walk to him, both standing, her being a whole two feet shorter, and she would press her head into his stomach, her new tail wrapping around them.

'Dad.'

Amelia and Ariel, looking like their now-biological sister, their DNA being warped and twisted exactly like their mother, would follow in Annabeth's footsteps, only they called Cain "daddy" instead of "dad." And that was how the Predator hybrid became a father.

Meanwhile, Asteria continued her rampage, tearing a silent, bloody swath across the continent, until the seventh day after her period started, and the hormones stopped doing their thing. She made it all the way to the outskirts of New Jersey before it ended. After seven days, she had an underground force of over 200,000 assorted Xenomorphs, and she made that many not just with animals, but small children as well.

Annihilation and propagation. If it couldn't be used as breeding material, it was slaughtered. Infants, toddlers, small children...when Asteria couldn't find animals, she resorted to those because there wasn't enough meat to satisfactorily grow a Xenomorph.

Life was cruel.

Now no longer on a killing spree, yet not regretting it all, yet also feeling slightly empty because of what she did, what she intended to do, and what she going to continue to do, and because she couldn't do that command, Asteria spread her wings and flew to Olympus.

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'Are you fucking serious?'

She was seething in the throne room, not at all happy with the fact that the loved ones and friends she had arranged to be brought here so that their lives might be spared for a couple of years, were actually all dead. By this guy's hand.

Asteria rounded on Shin'en. 'I wanted them out of my way so I wouldn't kill them, only, you seemingly kill them for me. My dad, my sisters, and my friends.'

"Would you rather have killed them yourself and live the rest of your life with the guilt of killing your own family?"

'I don't feel guilt, for anything.'

"Would you rather have killed them yourself and live the rest of your life with the devastating memories of you being the one to have killed them? At least I made it painless, you would have harvested them and watched as a litter of monsters ripped out of their chest in an eruption of blood and guts. Small favors, Asteria, small favors."

She bared her teeth, but didn't press any further. She looked at the floor of corpses. 'I want them buried. Properly.'

"Done."

Asteria said nothing for a long time, before her eyes fluttered shut and fluttered open. She sighed. 'I feel strange. Everyone I've known and loved is dead, and I only feel the smallest bits of emptiness. Instead, feel...empty completeness? Complete emptiness? I'm not sure how to describe it.'

"I'd imagine what you're feeling is the same thing a person feels after they finish a television show, or a book. A feeling of completion, yet they feel empty because they don't know where to go from there."

'Hm. That makes sense. So, it's going to be another month before my next period, my friends and family are all dead, and my daughters are still mutating. My Hive is staying dormant and underground in the cities and towns from here to Colorado...what do I do now?'

Shin'en was silent, before he shrugged. "Well, in the short term…" He looked at a corner of the throne room, and he hydrokinetically brought the Ophiotaurus' little water habitat over. "You're going to need what this thing has to offer."

"Moo?"

'Why?'

"Because there's more out there. Not all the gods are dead, nor are all the monsters, and there are still many entities stronger than you. You'll need this edge if you want to survive everything that's coming, if you want your Hive, and your mate, and your children to survive."

'If I asked you for specifics, would I get them?'

"No."

Asteria looked at the Ophiotaurus, looked at Shin'en's serious face, then back at the Ophiotaurus. 'Get me some fire.'

"MOO!" Bessie protested.

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"Feel any different?"

'No, but I know it's there. The power to destroy Olympus, the power to destroy the stronghold of hundreds of gods. Now what?'

The doors were thrown open, and in strolled the Leviathan. "So~," he drew out, "you're Asteria. The Us with the pussy."

Asteria's slid over to Shin'en. 'Another alternate version of us?'

"Mm-hm."

"The way I understand it," Perseus' mismatched eyes gleamed, "my wife in this dimension is your little girl. Makes me feel weird, but I guess that's the Multiverse for you. Anyway, how hard can you punch?"

Asteria slugged him across the face. His head snapped to the side, but she grunted when she felt her knuckles crack.

"Hm, not bad, felt a lot worse, felt a lot better, but try putting some of that juice into it this time."

And so she did. She drew on the power, felt it course through her, and hit him with the opposite fist. This time, he went flying through the wall and beyond. Asteria eyed her fist. Shin'en eyed the hole in the wall and the trench in the ground.

Then Lucy simply popped in. "I see you sacrificed the cow. Neat, so did I, about 3600 hundred years ago."

'Lucy. You tried to rape me.'

"Oh, you remember that now?"

'Yes.'

"Are you going to do something about it?"

"Perhaps not her," Shin'en said. "Think you can take me?"

"No," Lucy said simply. "I actually have to try to destroy a planet. You can do it almost on command."

"Then get out of here," the Abyss said coldly. "You have no more purpose in this dimension, not that you had any in the first place. Leave, or I'll erase you from here."

The witch chuckled, before she faded from sight. Her chuckle echoed about the throne room.

Shin'en looked at Asteria. "She won't bother you anymore. That I promise."

'I'll take your word for it. That still doesn't answer what's to happen now.'

Silence fell between them, before Shin'en broke it. "What do you want to do?"

Asteria looked at the ground, pondering. Then, 'How much traveling about the Multiverse can you do?'

"In the current circumstance? Virtually unlimited."

'Then here's what I want to do…'

The Leviathan came back through the hole. "I actually felt that one. So, what's the situation?"

"Dimensional hijinks. Interested?"

"Not really. Everything pertaining to this dimension is boring."

"Suit yourself."

The Leviathan vanished in a flash of light.

Shin'en locked eyes with Asteria. "Ready?"

'As ready as you are.'

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October 10, 2004

Death Valley, eight miles due North of the Badwater Basin

"DIE!" Ari roared, and he pulled the trigger of his gun.

Thunder cracked, and white-hot lead streaked through the air, right for his own father's forehead. Jeb froze, had been frozen for a while, but he was supremely shocked when he was knocked to the side by his surrogate daughter, Max. There was screaming, but no blood. No death.

The Flock's eyes traveled to the front, and their jaws dropped.

The bullet clattered to the ground when Asteria dropped it.

"S...S...Sub—Subject 3?" Angel stuttered.

'Subject 3,' a nostalgic, beautiful, feminine voice reverberated in the minds of the Erasers and Flock. 'Why, I haven't been called that in years. I had forgotten what it sounded like, even.' Asteria turned around and looked at the four-year-old telepath. 'Angel, if we had the time, I'd put you over my knee and spank you for trying to be a martyr. Alas, there are more important things to worry about now, escape being the top priority.'

"This is...impossible…!" Ari cried. "You're...bigger...older…! You're supposed to be in Antarctica!"

The Eraser had his head lopped off, as did the other Erasers, in a black twitch of the air. Blood erupted into the air and the bodies collapsed, repainting the floor in crimson.

Asteria turned around to face the first people she had ever called family, a very happy smile on her face. If you knew her well enough, you would see Asteria was trying very hard not to cry.

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Over the roaring wind due to the speeding jeep that was being driven by Jeb, Nudge was screaming, "How are you here!? Why are you so much bigger!? Why do you look like you're older than all of us!? Why aren't you Subject 3 anymore!? How are you not in Antarctica!? Why are—"

Motormouth Nudge continued to rattle off questions, and all Asteria did was smile through all of them. Fang, ever the mistrustful and cautious one, was eyeing her suspiciously, and Max kept glancing at her from the rear-view mirror. Their mistrust was understandable: years of living in this place, constantly being tricked and mislead, had created overwhelming paranoia in all of them. They suspected this to be a trick, they suspected her of being a clone, or some other experiment. They didn't trust her.

But at the same time, they were relieved to see her.

Finally, after another three minutes of Nudge asking questions, Asteria said telepathically, 'It's complicated. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Just know that the nightmare's over, and your lives are your own.'

Nobody looked particularly satisfied by that cryptic answer, but when Angel crawled into Asteria's lap and got comfortable before dozing off, opinions changed. The littlest Flock member had excellent judgement skills, being a telepath, and so if she was comfortable enough getting into this older Subject 3's lap, then there shouldn't have been anymore cause for concern.

But paranoia was still paranoia.

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At the end of the tunnel was the airfield, and a whirring helicopter, and some more people. Mostly corpses, but there were four live ones. Someone in a black cloak and a wide-brimmed straw hat, holding a black pole, Marian Janssen herself, hogtied, gagged, and unconscious, H.G. Groves in the same state, and finally, a very familiar face.

"Subject 3!" was the unanimous cry of the Flock and Jeb.

A smile broke across the eleven-year old's face as she ran to them, engaging all in a group hug. The cloaked individual strolled past them and stood next to Asteria.

'Was there any trouble?'

"No."

'Was she difficult?'

Asteria received a full sideways glance. She shrugged in response.

Meanwhile, Subject 3 was being bombarded by questions, but she mentally cut them off. 'Please, stop calling me Subject 3. Call me Estelle.' She received blank looks. 'It was my grandmother's name. I thought it sounded nice.'

A pause. Then…

"So, what was Antarctica like, Estelle?" Max asked.

'Brisk. And lots of penguins.'

"You can all catch up later," the cloaked one broke in. "That thing's burning gas, and the bomb's still counting down. Unless you all want to be vaporized, Jeb, get in the chair and get to the house in Colorado."

"There's a bomb?" Iggy and Gazzy said in tandem, their pyromania showing itself.

"Get. Moving."

"Come on, guys," said Max. "Everyone in."

As they began to board the helicopter, Estelle stayed out, looking at her older self.

'Treasure the time you have with them.' Asteria's eyes were almost misty. 'It will come to an end one day, and a new chapter will begin.'

Estelle nodded. 'The gods...I'll be ready. I'll fight them. I'll fight to protect them.' She was referring to the Flock.

Asteria hugged the child, and she was hugged back. 'If I could, I would spend the rest of my days teaching you. Tell them I love them.'

'I will.'

The two hybrids separated, one scampering for the helicopter, one staying put. The doors were shut, and the unconscious bodies were left on the ground. The helicopter lifted, and flew away into an uncertain future.

Inside the cabin…

"They're not coming with us?" Fang asked.

Estelle shook her head. 'They can't. Their path is different than ours. Max, she wants you to know that it was good to see you one more time. Fang, she doesn't forgive you for taking a free whiff of her crotch.'

The gothic avian flushed at the memory.

'Iggy, she says to keep listening. Nudge, don't ever stop asking questions. Gazzy, warn everyone next time. And Angel...yeah, just don't play with everyone's head.'

The Flock sat there, digesting what they were told.

"...who was she?" Max asked quietly. "Who were they?"

'Our saviors.'

Back on the ground…

'I'm jealous.'

"I know."

'She'll get to the live the life I always wanted, with the people I loved first.'

"Indeed."

'Yet I wonder about the future. The Greeks will come because the Fates will make it happen, and what then? Will the Flock be dragged into the chaos? What will be the same? What will be different? Ah, things I'll never know.'

"On the contrary, you're more or less a goddess now, but beyond that, you are like me, a Planeswalker. Who says you can't come back, or at least watch through a dream?"

Asteria smiled as the bomb went off and erased the School. The blast wave hit them and they vanished in a flash of light. Marian and Groves were turned into smears, and then vaporized.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

'Are you sure you want to do this?'

"You're asking me that?"

'I know how much this...means to you.'

Shin'en exhaled heavily. "I failed them once, and now I have the opportunity to fix that. The Multiverse has done its thing and recreated what was destroyed."

The Abyss stared at the door before him, wistful, nostalgic, and determined. He opened the door and entered the light. Asteria followed and shut the door behind her. Upon the door was the plaque with the dimension's name:

Xenophobic

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Annabeth and Asteria both shot wide awake in the latter's massive bed when they heard the sounds of battle going on all around them. The last thing they could remember was a bottle of vodka, and both their heads were smarting terribly. And Asteria's crotch area felt weird, like it was wrapped in something soft and snug.

She threw off the covers and saw that she and Annabeth were both naked, their breasts hanging free, but their modesty was protected by a pair of pull-ups.

"The hell did we do last night?" Asteria said, then she squeaked when her door was barreled down by a body, one that went flying out her window. Shin'en entered in all his cloaked glory, blood splattered across his form. If he cared about their naked states, he didn't show it. Granted, he didn't show a lot of things.

"Both of you get dressed. It's time to leave...don't look at each other. Put some clothes on and let's go. Showing your diapers is annoying."

That was enough to galvanize Annabeth. "They're not diapers!"

"Mm-hm, sure."

There was more gunfire, but it was cut off in tandem with a scream. Thumping feet grew louder, and Shin'en exuded a flash of light, and the thumping became rolling that stopped.

"I'll explain as you two get dressed."

They sprang from the bed, and, in light of the hecticness of the situation, didn't bother to remove their current underwear and instead endeavored to fervently throw on the nearest articles of clothing, all while Shin'en gave exposition among the sounds of violence.

"In light of almost graduating, you two decided to get wasted, and wasted you got. You both put on diapers—" "Not diapers!" "—and tried to seduce me, but I knocked both of you out. While I was asleep, I discovered why I'm here with you two."

They both paused.

"And that would be?" Asteria prompted.

Shin'en was dead serious. "Help you start your new lives immediately."

Annabeth gasped. "You mean…? It's happening…? Right now…?"

"Right now."

The lovers shared a look, before Annabeth tackled Asteria in a hug, borderline sobbing. Asteria herself was shocked to silence, but her eyes were misting over. Finally, after so long, after so much planning, after so many trials, tribulations, road bumps, and hardships...it was happening.

An explosion rattled the mansion, and the chandelier trembled, before coming undone and falling. There wasn't time to scream, but Shin'en was fast.

"Here's a tip: celebrate later, get dressed now."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The mansion was in ruins. Bullet holes in the walls, scorch marks, entire walls missing, corpses everywhere, and the stink of death in the air.

"What the hell?" Asteria muttered, pinching her nose. "Did you bring in a militia?"

"No, I brought in you."

"What?"

Shin'en allowed a faint ghost of a smirk on his face. "Just keep following, and watch your step."

"This is the entire security force," Annabeth gasped.

"Indeed. Didn't even break a sweat."

They reached the central staircase, where there were more dead bodies, but there was something else. A black, humanoid figure that looked feminine, and had a tail. Sally was off to the side, lying in a pool of blood, and Asteria wasn't sure how to process that, but she was more preoccupied with staring slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the person running the Director through with their tail.

With a grotesque pop, the evident girl split Marian in half at the waist, splattering the floor with the woman's insides. Annabeth squeaked, and Asteria almost cheered, and would have if not for the fact that the girl's face was revealed.

Once again, Asteria felt like she was looking in a mirror, though this one was more accurate than Shin'en.

'Hello there.'

Asteria blinked. "Hello…" she continued to stare. "Who are you?"

'The same as him, only where he's an interdimensional ninja, I'm an interdimensional science experiment.'

"...huh?"

'How about I show you.'

And then Annabeth and her boyfriend were sucked into a vortex of sound and images that they could perfectly decipher and understand, to a certain point. No need to involve gods and genocide in this. When the ride was over, the lovers nearly collapsed, but Asteria, the one with the tail, was there to steady them.

"Woah," muttered the human Fallen Star. "I guess I should count myself lucky, then."

'Something like that.'

"And I'm your daughter in another life?" Annabeth said dazedly, and she nudged her boyfriend. "I am not calling you mommy. Or daddy."

"And I'm not wiping your stinky ass...or potty training you."

'Yes, but do keep in mind that's the reality of having children.'

"Yep, got it. I can't have kids anyway, so...yeah."

'I can fix that, you know.'

Asteria and Annabeth pulled away from Asteria.

"How?" Asteria asked.

'I can fix the hormone imbalance in your body, I can redistribute the fat and the muscle, I can fix your larynx, and I can make your sperm fertile again. Just say the word, and I can strip the trans from you and make you a full man again.'

"A full man…" he whispered, the implications and the meaning weighing on him. No more back pain from the weights on his chest, nor more eye-catching bubble butt, no more wide hips or slender waist, no more pretty face or lustrous hair, and that was to say nothing about his shriveled penis, altered from so many years of hormones.

And the possibility of children. Children with Annabeth in a new life of their own.

But this wasn't a decision that would only affect him. Asteria looked at his lover. "What...what do you want?"

All eyes were on Annabeth. She pondered for only a second before responding.

"I want a quiet little life, a simple one somewhere in the country, away from politics and social justice and arguments and debates. I want to live in a small house, comfortable for everyone, get a dog...and I want to do it with the man I love. The man who's always been a man to me, regardless of how he looks."

Asteria looked at his female counterpart. "I'm fine, though I wouldn't mind having my ammo back."

'Granted,' was the response, complete with quirked lips.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"You're not coming with us, are you?" Annabeth said.

"No, I am not," Shin'en answered.

Asteria rounded on him. "Why not!? You've been with us since the end of August, and as much as an ass as you've been, you're our friend. You can't just ditch us like that, not after all we've been through together!"

"Friends come and go. You make some, lose some, kind of like money."

"No!" Asteria stormed up to him and grabbed his cloak in his hands. "You are not comparing yourself to money, and you are not just leaving us!" She pressed her forehead to his. "I don't want to lose my brother," she said softly.

Shin'en gently pried her hands away from him, and pinned them to her sides in a hug, keeping his forehead pressed to hers. "This is life. Things change, faces come and faces go, nothing lasts forever."

"I don't like it."

"It's life. It's not supposed to be liked, it's supposed to be beaten and tamed. Besides, what's the expression? 'Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.'"

"That's cheesy and stupid. I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you, too."

Asteria pulled away, quickly turning around so that her tears wouldn't be seen, and Annabeth hugged Shin'en.

"I'll never forget you," she whispered.

"Neither will I."

She kissed him on his cheek, and joined Asteria at the car. It was an old one, nondistinct from anything else on the road. If they drove out of here in the Lamborghini, or Ferrari, or Bugatti, it would turn heads and raise eyebrows, especially because the owners of such vehicles were well known, and seeing that kind of car coming from where there was a massive cloud of smoke would be cause to call the police and the presumed escapees

The two lovers lingered, and Shin'en looked at them. "Get out of here before it becomes awkward."

Asteria's lip visibly trembled, before she nearly threw the door open and piled into the driver's seat. Annabeth caught Shin'en's eye, conveying more emotion, conveying more of a message in that brief look than words could ever do. She got in, and didn't get to shut the door before Asteria gunned it onto the driveway and off the property, tearing down the road and into a new life, a new future.

A single drop fell from Shin'en's eye. Asteria gripped his shoulder.

'Are you okay?'

"No," Shin'en exhaled. "No I am not. Like you, I want to live their life, be with them, and escape the nightmare, but I can't for the same reason you couldn't stay with Estelle. My path is different."

'It's more than that. What's wrong?'

Shin'en whipped around to face her fully. "What's wrong? What's wrong is that I watched them both die, and I lost control! I killed over centillion people, people who had wronged me in no way, people whose death served me no purpose, people who had no viable reason to be killed, and yet here those two are, alive and well and happy. So what was it all for? What is the point of doing anything, when there's a dimension in which it doesn't matter what you did, because something else happened!?"

'Why do you care about those people in the first place? Aren't we incapable of regret and remorse?'

"You are, biologically. I still have the capacity to feel those emotions, and I feel them in this instance, because shinobi are the ones who can kill X-amount of people and not care, and I've tried so damn hard to be as anti-shinobi as possible, so not caring about the deaths of one centillion people is something I take a bit of issue with."

'Fair enough, there's a bit of humanity left in you after all.'

"Praise the Lord for small favors."

'Indeed. You asked what the point was in existing when there's a dimension that undoes all your work and efforts and accomplishments? This is the point: figure it the fuck out for your fucking self. I don't owe you an explanation, and neither does the universe nor the beings that run it. Suck it up and move on, because shit happens.'

Shin'en was silent, before he grunted. "Whatever. Are you satisfied?"

'The Flock lives peacefully with my younger self, and myself here with Annabeth now have the opportunity for their dream to become reality. I'm satisfied.'

"Then our business is concluded. Farewell, Asteria Jackson. I give you the world."

They vanished in a flash, and then the Director's mansion erupted in a megaton explosion, destroying all evidence of disappearance and murder.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

And this is how it ended:

Imbued with the power the destroy Olympus, basically becoming a goddess herself, Asteria ravaged the world. She waged a global war, and won. She entered a state of perpetual menstruation, and washed clean the North American continent in less than a month. The United States, Canada, and Mexico were wiped clean of humanity. Then she moved to South America, and overran it within eighteen days.

Dozens of Hives were established on a continental level, dozens of Queens, a handful of Empresses to govern the Queens, and even fewer Queen Mothers that served as Regents over massive swaths of land. Militaries and militias fought back, of course, but their weapons were ineffective. Bullets and missiles and tanks, when their munitions hit anyway, didn't do anything to the Hive besides piss them off. When the planes came in with the bigger missiles, then they did something, but Asteria made an effort to not let that happen. Ever. A mental attack, and any pilots were nosediving for the ground.

Of course, word did get out. An errant social media post right before death, a couple of urgent calls from authorities, and massive noncommunication with all of the western world is enough to tip off the important people. And so nuclear missiles were launched, and were subsequently detonated in the atmosphere before they could be properly armed.

So the world power attempted quarantine measures, blockading the whole western continent in hopes of starving the invasive threat, not that anyone knew what it was. Agencies and organizations attempted covert search and seizure missions for specimen capture, but all ended in terrible failure. For ten years, the threat remained inactive, and the governments did something of a good job of making people forget, but there was no inactivity.

There was battle, and there was training, and there was child-rearing.

Battles came in the form of the gods that were left over. Asteria and Cain, and their Queens and Praetorians, hunted them down, beat them, and harvested them. New Rome was overrun, the entire populace being bred, the Xenomorphs taking great care to neutralize and not kill. The giant Alcyoneus was harvested, the Inuit gods were harvested, the monsters that roamed were harvested, the unclaimed demigods around the Americas were harvested. Everything was harvested. When the humans ran out of stock, the animals were next. The end result was a mixmash of hundreds of different Xenomorph types.

There was training because all these Xenomorphs, Xenomorphs born from Asteria and demigods and gods, had powers. They were all legacies, legacies of Poseidon and other gods, and they had abilities to be honed and harnessed, explored and fleshed out. And beyond just demigod powers, there were quite a few Xenomorphs with something else, and that was because these Xenomorphs were born not from demigods, but from the Blood of the Pharaohs. They had magical powers, spells they could use and practice, and the ones born from gods needed time to learn just what they could do, and while they weren't divine enough to classify as actual gods, they were very powerful. When the godborns matured, they overthrew the current hierarchy in that many of the Queen Mothers, Empresses, and Queens found themselves without life.

But no one attempted to overthrow Asteria. Her Hive Mind was too strong, her power too great, and besides that, she was more. She was bigger than all of them combined and could flatten them all.

And finally, there was child-rearing. Not just Annabeth, Amelia, and Ariel, but the fourth child, Asteria and Cain's child. The child took only five weeks to grow and mature until he was ready to emerge, and emerge he did. Not from a C-section, nor a natural birth, but from the inside. The child ripped himself free of his mother's womb, tearing through her body. It hurt, and she screamed and she bled, but after the child flopped to the floor, she immediately began to heal, sealing the massive wound in less than ten seconds.

The child, while an infant, was not like any other baby on this earth. It had no fat, was not pudgy and squishy, and did not sleep all the time. The child was already lithe and athletic and proportionally sized, and was the perfect mix of his mother and father. His left upper dorsal tube was curved forward like his father's, his others were straight, his tail was bladed like his mother's, and his right eye was pupiless and glowing, like his father's, while his left eye was venomous green and slitted like his mother's. His hair was also a perfect mix between his parents, with his bangs being the spikes of his father, all aimed upward at an angle, with the rest of his hair being the smooth tendrils of his mother.

It looked like a natural tiara, almost, which was more appropriate than you might originally think.

The child was just as much a biological marvel as both of his parents and all of his sisters. Internal stores of acid, acidic blood, extendable tail, launchable claws, Hive mind, ultra-durable skin, super strong jaws and muscles and bones, everything. But he was built differently; he was built to carry on the survival of the species through any mean necessary, should it come to that. He could gestate internally like his mother, impregnate via his penis like his father, but he could go further. He could become impregnated as well.

The way his genetic code formed was different. The DNA was almost sentient when it coded itself from the given material from the sperm and the eggs, and it took the female reproductive code in Asteria, and substituted it for the vestigial structure that was the colon. With all internal organs being acid sacs, and all the blood being acidic (meaning no diapers and no potty training, much to Asteria's infinite relief), codes for things like the digestive tract were done away with, and replaced with something more readily used.

All of this to ensure the maximum chances for the survival of the species if it ever came down to something so drastic.

Asteria and Cain named their child Arcadia, for he was their little paradise.

He was rowdy and rambunctious, too. An energetic little thing, scampering around and exploring at his leisure. He always had someone with him, teaching, watching over him. As much as Arcadia loved his parents, he probably loved his sister, Annabeth, just as much, if his constant teething on her tail was anything to go by. Like any small child, Arcadia liked to put things in his mouth, only where that was a serious safety concern for every other parent, it was a serious safety concern for anything near Arcadia. His jaws and his blood would take care of any disease.

Arcadia also liked to hunt with his dad. Always eager to learn things, despite also wanting to try and put the entire world in his mouth. Cain was a good teacher, and a better father. One time, one of the insurgent missions almost captured Arcadia, but Cain was there to physically rip them apart.

So, yes, for ten whole years, Asteria let her Hive grow and train in number and power, and became super mom while she was at it, juggling between her husband, her son, and her daughters. All successfully. Meanwhile, the remaining mortal governments were working on weapons to use, and after these ten years, they launched an amphibious assault, as all air traffic had proven to be ineffective.

Besides her being the daughter of Poseidon, the assault ended in total failure, because Asteria had long since taken to the seas.

Atlantis was first, she assaulted it almost with ten million Warriors and Drones, and completely overran the undersea Olympus. She used it as a new breeding ground, once again sparring no one. Triton fought valiantly, feeling deeply betrayed, but he was overwhelmed by Cain's monstrous strength, strength boosted by Asteria sharing the Power with him. Triton's fate would be as incubator for the sea's future rulers, as would be the same for Amphitrite, Delphin, and the rest of the sea gods. After less than twelve hours, there was an entire new caste of Xenomorphs.

Camp Fish-Blood was crushed under heel like a junebug. And then Asteria went deeper, with only Cain by her side. The girls and her son were left topside to oversee the western continent. The husband and wife went down into the black waters, down to where the ancient monsters dwelt, down where the ancient sea entities occupied, and they whipped ass.

Cain got several trophies, many massive skulls, and Asteria was able to breed a new strain of super-Xenomorph, born from Oceanus himself, and several forgotten sea creatures.

So when the mortals launched their amphibious assault, they couldn't get a tenth across the Atlantic nor the Pacific before every single ship was beset in the dead of night, and all were physically pulled under the waves before being cracked open by the bigger, newest breeds. The crew members that didn't drown were, of course, harvested. After that event, Asteria crossed the sea floors and branched out.

Nothing special happened, only the routine eat, propagate, annihilate, repeat. Though, Cain did have an uncharacteristic field day in Volterra, Italy. It took almost two months to subject the whole of Africa, Europe, and Asia. The only thing worthy of note was the England campaign, and that was solely because of two children who unleashed twin blasts of power eerily familiar to that of the Xenomorphs born from the Blood of the Pharaohs in the Americas. Asteria personally investigated, harvested the tweens, and that was how she gained access to the Duat.

Which was an absolute nightmare for any living thing left on planet Earth.

An entire pocket dimension overflowing with forgotten gods and demons (demons is a loosely used word here), and Asteria had a field day with her harvesting. Sunny Acres Retirement Center was drowning in hundreds of senile Egyptian figures, and while Tawaret put up something resembling a fight, Ariel took the hippo goddess down without a scratch, and Amelia made short work of Anubis, and it was Annabeth that found the sweetest prize of all: Ra himself.

Senile, childlike, and a complete retard, he was still the Sun God, one of the oldest of all the gods, and Asteria did not waste the opportunity. Only one Xenomorph was born from Ra, but one was all that was needed.

Asteria found Apophis of course, and the Chaos Serpent, with the lack of so many Egyptian gods to keep him under wraps, broke free of his prison...and had his scaly ass handed to him on a silver platter by no less than three billion Xenomorphs. Three billion Xenomorphs born from gods and demons, none of them from outside the Duat.

And that was how Asteria's global Hive numbered in the ten billion.

All of that over little more than a decade.

And suddenly it was over.

As seemingly as quick as it began, it ended.

There were some things to do here and there, like some submarines, a few remote pockets of humanity, a couple of herds of various animals, a god that popped up every now and then, but or the most part...it was over.

Asteria found the Princess Andromeda deep in the Arctic Circle, frozen in the ice, the crew all frozen to death. Luke, Clarisse, all the others, dead. Spared from Kronos' wrath, spared from Asteria's Hive. It was fitting, the traitors freezing, like they were in the Ninth Circle for deceivers and betrayers, though that didn't stop Asteria from almost pitying them, especially Clarisse and Luke and the small children.

She had to wonder what they were thinking, coming to this place. Come here to die? Start a settlement? Get lost? Something else? Who knew? Well, Hades did, but Asteria had no interest in going to the Underworld and seeing her uncle. There was no point nor purpose, and so she left Hades to his devices, and the Underworld to him.

As for Kronos and the other Titans, and the Giants, and all other gods and assorted deities that escaped harvest, they faded. With no more mortals, there was no more Internet, and with no more mortals or Internet, there was no one to still believe in any of them, or even suspect of their existence. One might've made the argument that Annabeth, Ariel, Amelia, Asteria, Cain and the whole Hive would know of their existence, but no. Through her Hive mind, Asteria wiped all knowledge of all mythology from the whole of every one of her brood.

She was the sole keeper of this forgotten knowledge, and forever would it stay like that. Of course, where this made the Titans and Giants fade to Oblivion, it also made the Primordials enter an even deeper sleep than what they were already undergoing, making such threats like Gaea and Nyx and Tartarus nonfactors, as their essences became so weak that they only clung to Existence through their domains, and their domains only. Of course, this vast fading effect took hold on Hades and Persephone, and their children and their underlings, and when they faded, so too did the Underworld, and all the souls therein, all of them moving on to the only afterlife still available.

And that is how it ended.

Asteria took over the earth, harvesting all organic life, and she harvested all of the Duat, breeding an army of ten billion Xenomorphs, all of them with extraordinary powers and abilities of their own, and like Shin'en said, it was over. No more conflicts, no more injustice, no more racism or sexism, no more bigotry, no more unfairness...only peace everlasting.

And with peace came a lack of life, and with a lack of life, came a lack of carbon dioxide. The green of the Earth slowly faded, and the plants that did survive did so by adapting to the much lower amounts of carbon dioxide in the air, and the Earth became like a desert planet. Dust storm ravaged the surface, wiping away the remnants of man.

The great Hives, run by the Queens, overseen by the Empresses, commanded by the Queen Mothers, ruled by Asteria, fell dormant. The Hives were set up above ground as massive lattices of black resin that covered all the buildings and skyscrapers in a web of pitch that interconnected about themselves. Asteria's own Hive was set in Manhattan, where she had brought Olympus down from the sky and used the ruins of the mountain and the city as her structure. The oceans were left to themselves, and the bacteria there and the Xenomorphs with the sea creature genes did their part in making blue water again.

If you were to look at the earth from space, you would the browns of the deserts, the blues of the oceans, the white of the mountain tops and polar ice caps, and the black of the Hives.

With all life extinguished, with the Hives spread as far as they could go, the Xenomorphs all fell into hibernation. Asteria's family fell into hibernation. All of it into hibernation.

The caste system had been redone, naturally, due to all the power influxes and differences and changes. There were still the Eggcarriers and the Drones and the Warriors and the Praetorians and the Queens and the Empresses and the Queen Mothers, but there was more now. There was the Royal Family. There was the Prince, Arcadia, and the First, Second, and Third Princesses, Annabeth, Amelia, and Ariel, and there was the Emperor, Cain, and there was one more, a caste above all else, a caste more powerful than all others before it, more powerful than all combined. It was a caste that would never be reached, never, not even by the caste's own daughters.

This final caste would forever be occupied by one individual, and one individual only for all time, the caste that was Asteria Jackson.

The caste of the Xenomorph Goddess.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I'm in tears, guys. It's over, after two years, it is done, but more than that, they are all over. The first three, the first trilogy, Backup Plan, Leviathan, and now Xenomorphic. The first stories I've worked on, all completed. Take a moment to let that sink in, all of you who were there from the beginning of Backup Plan and have read all of them.

Done sinking in? Good. Now, how was that for an ending? Complete and total annihilation, Xenomorphs born from literal gods, all other deities fading because Asteria destroyed all knowledge of them, Lucy vanishing from this dimension, Asteria and Shin'en going together to alter destiny (which was the surprise I mentioned last chapter, hoped you like it), and the wrapping of loose ends.

I know it felt rushed and there was a lot of exposition, but with the amount of content that was there, writing it all out would've taken forever, and there was probably some stuff I missed, too, some plot holes I forgot to fill, but we'll leave that to you conspiracy theorists to make up and figure out for yourselves.

I hoped you like/caught all the little references here and there, they were fun to write in.

You might ask if there'll be a spin-off revolving around Estelle and the Flock in the other world, or a spin-off involving Annabeth and Asteria in the other world, or even a sequel to this story, and the answers are: maybe, maybe, no. I might do a spin-off Xenomorphic, I might continue the Mortal AU that is Xenophobic, but don't count on it. And there won't be a sequel, at least not at this point. I can't think of anything to go off of besides alien invasion several hundred years later, but that feels cliché and boring…despite how much of a playground that is.

Now, just because this is the last chapter, don't let that stop you from Faving, Following, and Reviewing one last time!

And I'll see you all in Son of Jashin.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

October 10, 2104

From the depths of space, a Yautja vessel approached Earth...and thousands more followed right behind. They came here not for Youngbloods to undergo their rite of passage of killing a Serpent and claiming its skull, as was their centennial ritual, but for war.

Down on Earth, in the Manhattan/Olympus Hive, deep within its confines, a pair of eyes that had been shut for over eight decades opened, the slit pupils dilating to a paper-thin width. The owner of these eyes bared her translucent teeth, and shrieked with terrible volume.

The planet shuddered when ten billion more shrieks were added to the horrific cadence.