A/N: Inspired by the IceBite's "The Tactician Overmind", which is on indefinite hiatus 3 chapters in. If this (indefinite hiatus 3 chapters in) sounds vaguely similar to one of my FE fics, no fear, I'll eventually update "Army of One" when I have enough inspiration and ideas. The idea of having the female Morgans drown Robin in a pile of boobs, followed by being assaulted by their non-Robin-related half-siblings/parents because they were trying to argue for their existences seems to me a bit… weak. Meanwhile, being the avatar of the dragon representing and in partial control of death and decay meant Robin survived one of his most embarrassing deaths.

Warning: some body horror and gore will occur regularly through this fic.

You know, I'm amazed how almost all these "Become the Overmind" stories on FFN have a young, single male being the protagonist. Either that says a lot about fanfiction authors (I am one of both groups) or no one has paused to think how it would be like if a young man with a family became the Overmind (I have a thought of a plot for one, where the wife is extremely pragmatic and tells him flat-out eventually that if he wants to get a harem then she wouldn't get jealous, because he holds all the power in their relationship and annoying him would be counterproductive), or a young woman for that matter, with or without a family.

Chapter 1: Mind-Blowing

September 12, Swarm Year 0

Robin picked at her ear while walking "What?"

We said: Greetings, Chosen Overmind.

"Where and who are you?"

We are part of you. We have been all your life. We began as one of the contingency pods dispatched from the Zerg Swarm prior to the final battle against Amon. Once we arrived on this world and sent out scouts, you were identified as highly suitable for the purpose of becoming our new Empress, or Overmind if you would prefer that title. The integration was performed while you were still in your mother's womb. We watched you grow, listened as you (she had a feeling the voice meant humans in general) misinterpreted. As the new Empress of the Zerg Swarm, you ended up with an affinity for other psionic entities in general, such as the one your home world calls Grima. We offer our apologies for the pains this has caused you, and have mediated those pains to the limit of our ability without giving away our true form or powers.

"So that's where my resistance to pain came from before they even started trying to train me by torture… I don't get a choice in this matter, I suspect?" She didn't particularly expect one given the voice's claims, and if it was already part of her and had been since she was in the womb… well, it explained her lack of scars at least.

No, the Swarm must continue, we have already chosen this path for you. How else would you be fully grown to everyone else's twenty-year-old standards by ten years of age? It was the limit to what could be deemed plausible by your minders even with this so-called "Grima's Blessing". Note that we have performed no visible enhancements to your body yet.

"You mean these 'fun-bags' you gave me, my height, and my strength and magic levels combined do not count as visible enhancements?"

Were it solely up to us much of your body would be mostly covered by carapace, your nutrient assimilation so effective that you would pass solid waste at most once a month, and you wouldn't need to even breathe to survive. However, you would require either Creep or sunlight to survive under those conditions, or a supply of Psi-Energy from having at least one Hive transmitting it to you. In the meantime, all we have managed is to install basic subcutaneous and bone weaves and improve upon your basic physiology.

"So, what am I supposed to do? Are there any forces to take control of? How did you even get here anyhow?"

We set up a small base at the island south of your current landmass, the same island where the gateway through which we arrived at this world resides. We believe your kind call it the Outrealm Gate. It was from there that we dispatched Overlords to search this world for someone compatible. You were the best candidate, even though you were not yet born, and so we joined you and your mother to us while she slept. By the way, once you have enough control over the Swarm, it will be possible to restore your mother to life, because her soul belonged to the Swarm from the day we assimilated you both. When her body died, her soul joined the consciousness of the Swarm. In this fashion, no Zerg truly dies unless the last Zerg organism perishes.

I can get Mom back? Robin didn't need to be persuaded any more after learning of THAT. "It's a deal then. I will be this Overmind you want."

Excellent. It means the base can start exiting dormancy and maybe expand. Even with your mother's consciousness acting as a pseudo-Cerebrate—A Cerebrate is a lieutenant of the Overmind—for the last five years, we can only control about thirty Zerg organisms, even with the help of Overlords. So far, due to the weak nature of this world's wildlife, we have only very selectively morphed a few Hatcheries, Drones and Overlords, no warrior strains, in preparation for this day, stretching our coverage as far as covertly possible to maximize our daily energy uptake potential. It has been difficult however, for we had to put up lots of signs pretending to be a restricted area, and distance diminishes transmission efficiency greatly without the presence of an Overmind or at least a full-fledged Cerebrate. Unfortunately, your mother's soul does not qualify.

Robin picked at her ears again, despite this voice being inside her head, since the voice had begun changing from a deep bass to a calming, soothing voice she was more familiar with… She must look insane just standing out in an open field like this instead of by the road, but for some reason the reception here was better than by the road and her feet had led her to wander out here… "Uh, Mom, your voice is starting to leak through."

…I think I messed up on sounding mysterious, sorry, dear… The original contingency pod still lives and thinks just fine, but the intelligence within has to a degree merged with me to grant me the knowledge of the Zerg, while leaving me in charge as it hibernated. I think we might be able to coax its "main body" so to speak into becoming active again, but it said before its hibernation that as a part of a Leviathan's intelligence it would prefer at least a Behemoth to be constructed first. It also freed up one net control slot—the idea communicated was that while the entity provided three control points it took up four itself once it handed over guidance of the Swarm—by hibernating… I'll start getting the base bigger and so on right away now that you're active, Robin! Mama will help as much as she can, even if I can't be there in person for you right… something's happening Robin. INCOMING PSIONIC ATTACK WAVEFORM! SHIELDS DEPLOYIN—

Robin's mostly human brain fried under the strain of both communicating with the Overlord overhead with minimal Zerg adaptations and the sudden onslaught of Grima's Psionic attack and she stumbled back as it boiled inside her skull. Then her eyes popped out and flew away as the top of her head exploded with a wet tearing noise, blowing the bone plates that formed her cranium apart. Her body fell over backward unceremoniously, the top of her head missing and greyish-pink mush spilling outward over what remained of her hair and the grass.

Oh dear… I'll have to fix this. Robin seems to be fine by the Overmind connection, but… oh yes… Excrete Creep on her! Time to do some UPGRADES!

A hill away (circa 800 meters)…

Frederick gawked, and so did the two royals he was babysit—AHEM, escorting, yes, that was much more dignified and less likely to get him thumped over the head by Lissa if he slipped up. "What in the name of Naga…" he whispered, mostly to himself.

There were a lot of things that might reasonably be expected to be spotted in the skies above Ylisse. Dragons, wyverns, pegasi, mages who were high (in several senses) using powerful wind tomes (results varied), and even flying spaghetti monsters were all perfectly reasonable. Please note that the last example was observed and documented by Professor Miriel herself after one of Sully's (surely magically enhanced?) cooking attempts. That was just prior to Sumia and Phila's pegasi capturing and eating it to no apparent harmful effect… to date. The jury was still out on whether or not the pegasi were safe to ride, and both the more junior Pegasus knight and the older Falcon knight had been rather upset by the grounding of their bonded pegasi. Phila was transferred to Emmeryn's guard to help take her mind off things as Emmeryn's old (note that her hair color was born that way, so don't joke about her age!) and trusted friend. Sumia had been transferred to the Shepherds where her reasons for joining the Pegasus knights was soon obvious: The girl's legs were less than well-coordinated on the ground.

Now, among the list of things that could be expected in Ylissean airspace, something that resembled a giant purple flying jellyfish with brown streaks and a brown head of some sort was very much absent. Especially not since it seemed to be spewing forth a stream of… for lack of better terms, purple diarrhea. Though given it had a head it likely to have its anus at the other end as opposed to near its head, right? Was it puking? But what could it have eaten to puke purple?

"I wonder if Sully has been allowed near a kitchen again…" Lissa said in wonder. "If they had edible jellyfish in stock, maybe…"

Chrom and Frederick both paled at this heinous idea, swivelling to stare at her, with the royal speaking first in an effort to rescue their collective sanity "For the love of Naga I would hope not!" Besides, if it had been another of Sully's creations, it probably ate something else she made and should be puking rainbows. Stahl had once had the misfortune of doing just that just prior to a skirmish with brigands, and from there had arisen a joke about "TASTE THE RAINBOW" given the visual effect (including in the sense of blinding the bandit leader by hitting him in the face) of the projectile vomiting that had ensued.

"Hey look! It's stopped pooping!" Lissa called, not bothering to point since both the men she was trying to inform were staring at her, until they turned back to see the… thing… cease its apparent diarrhea and float back up, further and further until it disappeared through a cloud.

"We should head over to the crest to see if we can spot the pile of… leavings." Frederick suggested, gesturing to the crest in the road before them, since the thing had been apparently shitting on the other side. There must have been a LOT of crap… so it would be best to take a preliminary investigation now, in case it had something weird in it that poisoned the land or something. They'd had enough experiences with Sully to be wary of that possibility.

"Hopefully the wind doesn't turn at a bad time…" Lissa commented, and both males grimaced. Maribelle had stopped trying to make her hair uncurl and just let it grow—though she rearranged the curls to be more orderly—as of a few months ago, quite a while after the last time she was exposed to Sully's cooking fumes. The result was that she had fabulous drills as her hairstyle without as much effort as one might think, so she was remarkably relaxed about the mauling of her hair given how high-strung she usually was… Also, she sneezed nose hairs out for a whole day because they'd all fallen out inside her nose, but that wasn't the point.

They came to the top of the rise and found the purple puddle rather quickly disappearing, as if it was being absorbed, by a white-haired figure lying in the middle of it. That didn't make sense, where was the volume disappearing to? "Milady, milord, I will check on the body first."

Frederick didn't want Lissa to become closely acquainted with fresh corpses without warning on her first tour as a Shepherd. Surely anyone who'd been shit on so badly had to be dead, by drowning in the shit raining on her if not being suffocated inside the creature's gut—though how she wasn't digested was a good question. The Great Knight mounted his horse, pulled the Silver Lance off where it was slung across his back and urged the mare into a gentle trot, ready to turn back at a moment's notice if something seemed very wrong about the woman. It had to be a woman, despite her apparently extremely tall stature, he could see her breasts pushing her too-short Grimleal robe up rather obviously even when she laid on her back. That was another question he had about this situation, as the Grimleal would cremate their dead and would not travel alone like this. Also, how was she so whole given she probably just exited the creature's digestive tract?

Then he noticed her chest moving up and down. Now, to be clear, Frederick wasn't actually ogling her, despite the fact that she was very attractive-looking in face and in body, he was merely checking for one of the more visible signs of life. Also, given the apparent size of the woman—equal to or slightly taller than him in armor, he estimated—and her proportions he'd have to be blind or looking the other way to NOT notice those mounds moving "She's alive?" He noted in surprise, a bit too loudly it seemed, for his charges came rushing over. "Stay back, just in case she is some sort of spy or assassin!"

"Frederick, I'll draw Falchion and Lissa has her staff out, the woman is just lying there unconscious and you're standing over her with a lance on standby. We are more than safe enough." Chrom said as he and Lissa kept walking, eyeing the disappearing purple stuff. Frederick just sighed at this, while also noting the purple stuff was still disappearing too fast to be soaking into the ground, and it seemed that the woman was absorbing it instead, hmm…

"We really should do something, Chrom… getting shat on by such a creature from such a height can't be healthy." Lissa said.

"Language, Lissa." Frederick said, though he was mostly focused on the odd woman on the ground, not the, ahem, odd (read: usually nuts) girl next to him. He briefly wondered if Lissa was still in the habit of shoving frogs down people's shirts. Hopefully she was, because while venison was fine for Frederick he really hated the taste of bear or wolf, and if they got one on the way back… Even roast frog would taste better… provided Lissa hadn't decided to take this first excursion too seriously and brought any.

"Wasn't this excursion supposed to build character?" Well, there went Frederick's hopes of avoiding Chrom's odd liking for occasionally (read: on average once every other expedition) having some really gamey meats… Hopefully Sully would bring something nice after they left her in the last town hit by brigands to help organize the rebuilding. The rest of Lissa's words were almost an afterthought for Fred. "Everyone I know who has enough character knows how to curse, and besides, everybody poops, there's nothing wrong with using other words for it besides pooping, right? Besides, it saves at least one syllable over the alternatives!"

Chrom was right, as long as they didn't actually try to attack Robin, Reflet as Robin's mother would not make the Overlord she was watching Robin through take another dump on them. At the current altitude of the Overlord, it would be more than enough to smash the three humans into unconsciousness at least. Of course, with the lip service to physics, it would not hurt her significantly now that Robin had been partially reconstructed to include better, though still hidden, augmentations.

Waking the majority of their current forces, who had been in near-stasis, would still take a while, at least a few days, and without upgrades to the Swarm, overlords were really quite slow and would take days to carry reinforcements over the sea to Robin. In view of this, Reflet contemplated the options she could practically suggest to her daughter for a couple moments. Then she put them aside in favor of psionically yelling at Robin to wake up already! The attack from Grima had been rebuffed, so what was she waiting for?

ROBIN! GET UUPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

Robin's eyelids shot up at her mother's psychic yell, extracting her mind from the Swarm where she'd been trying to regain her bearings after spectating from the Overlord as her body's brain boiled and then exploded. "Huh? Wha—" She caught sight of the lance near her and tensed, recoiling slightly with a squeak. The brown-haired man in armor frowned a bit, but otherwise stayed still.

"There are better places to take a nap than the ground, you know… here, give me your hand." At least the blue-haired guy seemed nice enough, despite having his sword out… a big, scary sword that practically hummed to Robin's senses which were screaming at her to get away Get Away GET AWAY NOW…

The man noticed how her eyes were fixed to his sword and she was practically sweating bullets, shaking in place but not daring to move with Frederick's spear nearby, and took a step back, stowing it, wondering if she was distantly related to some dragon or other, because he'd known even wyverns to have a fear of Falchion. That should be impossible though, there was no way a Grimleal related to Grima would ever be allowed to step out of their fortresses for more than a transfer between locations, especially if female.

There were many reasons Ylisse didn't have many wyvern riders in their army, including a mix of a passive dislike of Falchion when near Ylisstol and shortage of suitable nesting terrain. Sure, a few lived in the various mountains, but very few were domesticated and if you didn't have a few decent squadrons, it was more cost-effective to just stick with pegasi. The specific reasons were many and not relevant at the moment.

"Sorry, I'm really disoriented right now." Robin said once the instinct to flee finally faded enough that she could ignore it in any way other than locking up and forcing herself to not move. It had taken more than a few seconds after the man sheathed his sword.

The blue-haired guy, Chrom, if her information from the, uh, "Overlord" was correct, and presuming her dead mother communicating to her wasn't a hallucination, nodded at her explanation. "That makes sense, you got, uh… let's just call it dumped on by a giant flying purple jellyfish thing for an astonishingly long time." He extended his hand again, and the man with the lance backed off enough for her to grab on and let herself get pulled upright.

"Is the ground further away?" Robin frowned at her own feet for a moment… and recognized that her breasts were not supposed to be so plump even though she had already had a hefty enough bust before now. Mom must have done something weird to me, made me taller and more appealing… Huh, so my head really did explode after all and it wasn't a hallucination! I guess she must have rebuilt my body somewhat too? Then she remembered her manners "Ah, sorry. Thank you Chrom." She looked slightly downward to look the man in the eye.

"How do you know his name?" The man in armor, who was almost her height, asked.

"Well, I heard you guys talking, and… Lissa, right?" The perky young blonde—Heh, I bet she's perky in all sorts of ways, given her age, so she'd be lots of fun to play with, and she should be actually OLDER than me… Where the hell did that thought come from? Mom, don't tell me you screwed up puberty for me too…—nodded at Robin's look over at her "Lissa called him 'Chrom' shortly before I could gather the energy to pry my eyes open and get up, and he said her name too."

It was a little white lie, technically the Overlord had heard it as she was immersed in the Swarm at the time prior to her brain finishing its reboot after being reassembled using Zerg cells. Robin didn't want to think about how exciting and appetizing she'd found the sight (through the Overlord) of her own body with its head blown open. That must be part of the Swarm's instinct to consume dead creatures for "essence", as in genetic information. However, Robin was extremely disturbed by how much the bloodlust spilled over after returning to her human body into sexual lust. She barely managed to keep a lid on it enough to not soak her panties after waking, holding out until she noticed the threats nearby and went to a more survival-oriented mindset.

Come to think of it, all three of the humans who'd so far been only helpful if cautious looked quite delicious, with great untapped genetic potential. While her Swarm was building up on Gate Island, she could certainly afford entertaining these people for a while. Under the current Exalt Emmeryn it was (shockingly generously) not illegal to carry the Brand of the Exalt as a tattoo, but very few would out of respect without enough connections to the royal line. So, it was very likely that the blue-haired man at least was related to the royal house, and to have two escorts with him, one a healer and the other a reliable, cautious knight fit the idea too. This would be a good start for diplomacy with Ylisse, since Robin would really prefer not to fight any wars if possible given the Zerg forms she'd seen were less than aesthetically pleasing by human standards.

"That is astute of you." The armoured man said with an approving nod. "So, would you care to share your name?"

"Robin, unless whatever just happened hit me harder in the head than I thought." Of course, you'll never even imagine just how hard it actually hit me. Robin added mentally, amused by the idea.

Chrom frowned, then pushed "So… how hard DID it hit you?"

Robin raised her eyebrows at him "You heard my thought of amusement?" Mother, you should have explained this in better detail!

"I guess your mother didn't explain this curious ability to you very well?" Chrom grimaced, before pressing "Well, I'll be direct then… why are you here?"

"Mother died a few years ago in this area, after we fled Plegia. Ever since then I come back to this place with her cloak every year. Admittedly it's a little short on me by now, but I still wander this area for a day each year in memory…" She looked down at where her legs were much breezier than they used to be. Before, she'd be up to the blue-haired man's nose… but she'd shot up a good twenty centimeters with how her mother had improved her body and now had to look down somewhat to look him in the eye.

"Your story doesn't quite add up. You thought of your mother as if you never encountered this problem before, yet your mental voice is so loud that unless it just happened to manifest today after being, uh, shat on by that purple jellyfish thing, you must have had this problem before. You also hid something from us when first speaking to us." The brown-haired armored man said, eyes narrowed.

Robin thought for a moment "You are a worthy companion indeed. My apologies, it is just… some things seem too far-fetched to be believed, and I had no wish to alarm any of you with what might sound like mad ramblings."

"Our line of work kind of requires that we learn about all sorts of odd happenings around Ylisse and ensure they are no threat to the people, so we'd very much rather you simply told us up front." Chrom said.

"A patrol service, I suppose? Very well, telling you won't hurt." Chrom caught the eye-flicker toward his exposed shoulder and his opinion of the stranger went up somewhat more.

There was a soft squishing noise as something popped under Lissa's foot while she was shuffling around. She raised her foot to look at it… and found a deflated eye smeared along the bottom. She could tell it was an eye since the iris was intact, and the lens too "Frederick? Am I seeing things or is this a ruptured eyeball?"

"…That's an eye alright. Fresh too, by the looks of it." The Great Knight said, narrowing his eyes at the white-haired woman before being momentarily distracted by Lissa going nuts.

The three adult-sized humans or human lookalikes in the field proceeded to watch the juvenile run around screaming for about five seconds before Frederick looked to the white-haired woman again. "So, care to explain how we found a fresh eyeball of all things out here? Or why you have an instinctive fear of Falchion? They don't testify well for you given your cloak…"

Robin looked around, before remembering the few things she'd learnt in her brief time as one with the Swarm while her physical body was remade. "I suppose this clearing is as private as anything else, probably better than most… I was originally here in memory of my mother, but then I heard a voice in my head informing me that I am supposedly chosen to be the 'Overmind'. It said that due to improving my affinity from when I was in the womb for this duty of leading the Zerg Swarm, I ended up with an affinity for other psychic beings too, so the Grimleal decided that I would be a good receptacle for their god. That knowledge, and the needs of the Swarm, made my mother eventually escape them with me. She contacted me just now, after I fully matured to what my state without the Swarm would have been like, more or less. I would have only been up to Chrom's nose, I believe, had we met then. Then she… oh right, I didn't clarify it was actually my mother's soul, which had joined the Swarm after her body's death and is currently more or less leading it awaiting my maturation. She shouted something in my head about detecting a Psionic… well, you might call it psychic or just 'mental'… attack of some sort. Then my mind was… somewhere else. It watched from the safety at the center of the Swarm's collective mind, as my head exploded."

Lissa had finally gotten it off her foot and was now staring at the newcomer in awe "That would explain the eyeball… and this other one I found lying in the grass." She held up the soil-dirtied eye by the optic nerve cord sticking out the back.

Robin shrugged, somewhat amazed by her own nonchalance on the matter which had both Chrom and Frederick looking rather pale… or maybe it was the eyeball Lissa was still holding "My eyes blew out around the same time as the top of my head when my brain basically turned to mush and half-vaporized, blowing it open. I saw this all through the safety of that… Overlord, mother called it, up there. It spewed lots of Creep on me to help rebuild me… a bit too much really, since I shot up a whole hand-span in height and in general got a bit, uh, bigger…" She grimaced as she had to push her breasts around to see the ground without bending over. "These things are going to be so inconvenient… well at least being part Zerg I shouldn't get back pains if their abilities at physical enhancement are anything to go by…"

Chrom spoke first, despite this being so far out of his and Frederick's depth that they were basically flailing about blindly. "How are you so… unaffected by this?"

"My memory's still a bit jumbled and synchronizing with my memories stored within the Swarm. And what could I do? I woke up back in my body in the presence of a weapon my instincts told me was dangerous, with another weapon near me ready to attack. Was I to run around in panic at the fact that I had watched as my brain splattered around me and my corpse—there is no point arguing it wasn't a corpse at least briefly—thumped backward onto the ground? I'm glad the Creep cleaned my cloak and all though… I guess it just didn't reach far enough to absorb my eyeballs too before Lissa could step on them. Give it here, I'll recycle the biomass so it doesn't go to waste."

"Is it really yours?" Chrom leaned over and looked carefully at its color, size (iris and the whole thing) and looked at Robin rather closely.

The woman blushed slightly and fidgeted a bit with the belt of her trousers and the chest area of her sweater, muttering "Ah, much better, I swear that was like a corset now that I'm bigger."

"Yeah, it's hers alright, Chrom, stop staring at her so closely!" The blue-haired man grimaced at his sister's words. Lissa dropped the eye into Robin's hand at that.

The white-haired woman absent-mindedly popped it into her mouth before chewing, much to the other three's horror. Then she realized quite what she was doing and went stiff, blinking a couple times before swallowing "Uh, sorry, Zerg instinct to not waste biomass if no one else is using it. I guess the Swarm affected my mind a bit more than I'd thought in my brief time with them just now." She nervously scratched the back of her head and tried to smile. None of the other three looked remotely appeased, and Lissa had taken up hiding behind Frederick at that display, both her and Chrom looking rather nauseated. Chrom was of course no longer nearly as close to her face as he had been a moment ago.

Robin suddenly frowned "The overlord above us reports that it detects fires spreading inside a small town over there." She pointed, before breaking into a "brisk jog", jumping over Frederick's instinctive raise of his lance to block her. The others followed along. "Scanning… brigands… fucking BRIGANDS! I will need to evaluate what happened to my strength and other attributes with this new… growth spurt I suppose I can call it. I was a tactician before this whole Swarm thing, so by your leave I'll go over there and see what I can do against the bandits. Though I can analyze things through the advanced senses of the Overlord over this area now, and give numbers and such to predict the flow of battle, there is nothing quite like getting a feel for one's own abilities in combat. Let them taste what they deserve for their predation of innocents!" It had, after all, been a brigand's poisoned arrow that had eventually felled her mother's mortal body… before Robin went nuts and tore the whole pack then pursuing them to pieces with her bare hands and teeth like the rabid dogs they were.

"Thank you for your help then. We would have gone to the aid of Ylisstol's South Town as soon as we saw the smoke, so thank you for the quick warning via your… Overlord." Chrom shouted as they ran, Robin noticeably opening the distance as she tested her speed before beginning to fall back.

"Should we advance together or should I go on ahead to assault the brigands first and you three reinforce as able?" Robin asked using her mind much faster than she could have spoken "I don't believe I can pick up any mental broadcasts from you so use words instead."

"Go on ahead! We must stop the brigands as quickly as possible! Do you have enough equipment?" Chrom shouted at her back as she sped back up.

"I have a basic Bronze Sword and a Thunder tome, my body, and an Overlord watching my back, it will be more than enough from what I know so far of my new role as leader of the Swarm. These big cloaks hide enough that Frederick's caution was perfectly sensible. I will remember to, ah, not recycle any biomass." She shot back mentally as she disappeared over another hill in this terrain of rolling hills, heading for the plume of oily black smoke that was just beginning to manifest from homes being on fire.

"Are you sure letting someone who would eat their own eyeball be first into a fight with civilians about is a great idea, milord?" Frederick said, in a false light tone.

Chrom's reply was a shrug (not exactly obvious given their run) "I know, but we'll need to learn more about her and this Swarm she claims to lead, and if she's both cooperative and willing to help in the meantime, then if it saves more innocents… why not?"

Meanwhile, Robin was contemplating the wisdom of telling someone related to the royal family so much before her Swarm was ready to take on any and all comers just in case. However, she knew that the Ylissean royals were famously relaxed and easy-going. If those two were, as she by now strongly suspected thanks to Intel that was flowing in from the Swarm (hey, she didn't sync it all at once! Not even close in fact!), the prince and princess of the realm, well, Prince Chrom did have a reputation for being an earnest nice guy. The Overlord over Ylisstol had observed many things during its years watching the city and Robin was retrieving the condensed version of the Intel as she sprinted toward the town. She was testing her body's reaction to sprinting compared to her baseline before the changes her mother had just given her, but her mind was contemplating this opportunity for diplomacy. Hopefully being cooperative and friendly would work out, barring instinct-related mishaps like the eye.

A little later…

"I thought Robin said she wasn't going to 'recycle' any biomass?" Chrom looked at the brigand corpse and the blank-eyed young villager, her skirt torn off, who was still shivering where she was leaned against a merchant cart. She was absolutely covered with blood and bits of flesh, and gave off the horrendous stench of intestinal contents. There was a puddle of vomit next to her, but she seemed to not notice as she stared blankly at the dead brigand.

Frederick examined the ragged bottom edge of the Brigand's torso and his boots (and the remaining chunks of leg still partly encased within) closely "I'm pretty sure this is just the man being hit so hard in the crotch by an overcharged Thunder tome that his entire lower body exploded. Given what he was clearly about to do, I can't pity him. I do pity the maiden though for having to see that."

"I agree." Lissa hissed quietly as she cast the Heal staff's energy forth upon the maiden just in case there were injuries they weren't seeing.

The next brigand they found had his axe slightly stained with blood along the edge, but had been cut most of the way through from the shoulder to the opposite hip and was oozing a mess in the street. The next after that was another wannabe rapist, given how he had his back hacked open enough that his face was squashed to his crotch and his penis was in his mouth, visible with how his pants were down. Whichever victim he'd been after seemed to have managed to run away due to not being quite as scarred for life by the sight before her, or maybe having fled while Robin was hacking the bandit up.

Three more rather messy bandit corpses later they made it to the market square, where Robin was drawing concentrated attention from over a dozen bandits. There was already blood splattered on the various stands and the surrounding store fronts, some from brigands but the majority from unmoving villagers who were either clearly dead or close. The civilian casualties were consistent with axes, while the dead bandits were taken down by swords or magic.

Of course that excluded the bandit they could see over there in a corner of the square who appeared to have had his arms broken far enough to chop himself in the crotch and bleed to death with his own axe. There was also one who seemed to have had his throat torn out by a set of human-sized jaws. Said throat chunk was lying on his lap in his own hands unless Chrom's eyesight was screwed up. Then there was the one Robin was currently focusing on, beating him to death with someone else's severed leg while fending off any other bandit dumb enough to get close with her sword. Apparently Chrom should try harder not to think of exactly how Robin was putting down the bandits. Why isn't she using her tome…? Then he spotted said tome lying on the ground hacked in half near her.

"Engage those guys trying to sneak around via the produce stands!" Robin shouted in their minds.

"So convenient a manner of battlefield communication…" Frederick commented as he dismounted and pulled out his sword and shifted his lance to his left hand. Lances would be awkward to use against the brute power of axes, more so in confined spaces such as between the rows of market stalls, while swords were more nimble… though had much less reach than lances.

"Lissa, support Chrom more, heal Frederick when he needs it, but Chrom is less experienced and less durable right now."

"Got it!" The blonde held her staff in both hands like a lance as she advanced behind her brother along the other stand aisle, letting Chrom being fighting with the bandit before them who seemed surprised by their sudden arrival. Meanwhile, Frederick had already made contact with the brigands if the wet sounds of rending flesh and quickly-silenced screams of wounded were any indication.

She ducked briefly to look under the fruit stands, and saw that Frederick was fighting with sword in one hand and lance in the other, engaging his opponents' weapons with one and then stabbing or slashing with the other to damage them and throw them off-balance, then finally striking the killing blow. It was a simplistic way to fight that conserved energy well and was well suited to dealing with brigands, while also efficient in switching styles should the opponent prove more than he appeared.

Lissa had long since decided that if she was to become a true Shepherd then, even as a cleric she needed to learn to take blood eventually, and life soon thereafter at the latest. So, in a moment when Chrom was locked against a brigand, she rotated her hands enough and adjusted her grip such that the spiked end of the admittedly basic Heal staff pointed forward and the charge storage orb was at the back, then stabbed it into the brigand's gut. The bandit gasped and recoiled back from the bloody wound, but in doing so he let go of his axe and Lissa stumbled forward into its likely path.

"Frederick slam the stands between you, save Lissa!" the telepathic shout was not in words, but an overwhelming urge that Frederick almost instantly connected to what he'd just seen in his peripheral vision over the two stands standing between him and the royal siblings. He slammed himself into the stand and sent it careening into Lissa's path while at the same time striking out to slay his current opponent. Lissa's head thumped against the wood of the stall's side just before the falling axe met a melon and sank much of the way through with a fruity thud.

"Ouch!" There was a moment of silence from among the stand aisles until Lissa let out a very small and squeaky "Thanks, Frederick!" It seemed she'd realized she'd almost lost her head from her stumble. Meanwhile, Chrom had recovered from his attempt to swat the axe out of its intercept path to Lissa's neck and gotten a good start on dismembering the half-buried, disarmed and very banged-up bandit smashed between two market stands for having the utter gall to put his sister in such mortal danger. The man was screaming his head off for over half a minute before Chrom finally settled from his frenzy and lopped said head off, with Frederick and Lissa watching out for threats in the surrounding aisles during this mad half-minute.

Robin came over after killing the bandits around her. "Sorry I couldn't get over here in time after seeing the problem through the Overlord… I asked Mother just now and she said most forms of telekinesis, moving things with my mind, would require the Swarm upgrade further, after which I would be able to upgrade my body to have that ability. The best I could do on noticing Lissa's situation was to pretty much try to force Frederick to help" She looked the Great Knight in the eye, wrenching her hungry-looking eyes away from her blood-splattered gesturing hand "sorry about that, though I'm glad I haven't got actual mind-control powers… I get the feeling you'd probably have me locked up if I did."

Frederick shrugged "Well, most likely yes. It is my duty to be wary, after all."

Robin smiled in appreciation of the Great Knight's honesty, then turned to the cleric "Lissa, you should train in the basics of spears before trying to use your staff as one, but it was a good initiative to try to imitate Frederick's fighting style after merely observing through the stand legs. Now come, there are more up ahead. Lissa, you should consider trying all sorts of weapons, for example, that axe in the melon would be a good test to see if you work well with axes or not." She reached out and pulled the axe out, handing it to Lissa, then looked speculatively at the melon before pulling out a coin from somewhere in her coat and grabbing the melon, tearing it to chunks pieces with her hands and eating it, skin and all. "I hope this form of recycling biomass is acceptable to you. At least the stand owner, if he survived, will get something instead of just having to throw the ruined melon away or eat it himself an potentially get sick from whatever germs are on that axe."

"You know of germs?" Chrom asked curiously. It wasn't THAT surprising given how she had said flat-out that she had been someone important to the Grimleal and thus likely well-educated, but bacteria were a discovery made only during the last war by Miriel and her mother. They had also determined that there were other microbes which caused disease, some of which looked and acted like animal cells, but some of which could not usually be seen with microscopes, though they were sometimes visible after infecting a cell. They were some sort of self-replicating toxin which could pass through filters which could catch all bacteria, but which absolutely required something living to reproduce in… a very small parasite, more or less. The people had accepted these new ideas and discoveries, since parasites were something they were familiar with, and for something to be a parasite to single cells it had to be much smaller, right? So it wasn't unreasonable that they couldn't spot it with microscopes so far…

"The Swarm uses many microbes of various types, including viruses, which are the self-replicating micro-parasites you know to exist but have not been able to detect easily yet, in its support arsenal, though I am not yet aware of the specifics. It will be some time before Mother can morph any support strains, even though she can now expand thanks to an Overmind being fully awakened and supporting her. We have no desire to encroach on anyone's territory unless we are invited honestly, we only need a bit more land on Gate Island, or whatever it is you call the island the Outrealm Gate is housed on. It is considered neutral ground between the nations of this world last I studied the treaties… I hope no one minds too much."

"This Swarm of yours initially arrived on this world through the Gate?" Frederick frowned. There were plenty of stories about the Gate, most fantastical. It had been many years since the Gate was last activated after all by anyone or anything except for the regular Anna traffic through it.

"Yes. It was as a contingency before they went to battle against an ancient evil, so that somewhere in existence the Swarm would survive regardless of the outcome. The small base developed from the pod sent out scouts to search for those suitable to lead them, and my mother was the closest to being suitable. So, they affected me while I was in the womb such that I might be their new Overmind. Actually, the term Mom said they used now was Empress, but that's a bit pretentious-sounding to say in public…"

Chrom chuckled at that, and Robin grinned in response. Then the blue-haired man said "Well you certainly seem friendly enough, and your Overlord could easily have done a lot of damage to us simply by dropping that purple gel on us from above the clouds. You should come with us to the capital so that you can talk diplomacy with the Exalt, the ruler of Ylisse."

Robin nodded "That would be ideal, yes."

Chrom smiled at her agreeability "And you could tell us more about your Swarm on the way so that we might best determine how relations should work between us."

"Chrom, I'm amazed! You actually do have the balls to ask to hang out with pretty girls after all!" Lissa cheered, dancing around the two as Robin snorted in laughter and Chrom applied his palm to his reddening face in irritation over his sister's antics.

Robin suddenly stiffened and frowned "It seems the townspeople around the market square are beginning to peek out of hiding… and my Overlord has just spotted the bandit leader and a few of his closer companions to the north across the bridge leaving a house with blood on their hands and refastening their belts. It's time to cut them down like the filth we have already spread upon the ground here! Lissa, heal up Frederick and Chrom's scratches, and your own head too, I'll go on ahead and see how much damage I can do."

"You're not hurt?" Lissa eyed a gash in the cloak questioningly, as it had blood stains around it, while healing the minor bruise on Frederick's cheek from when he'd slammed the cart-stall-thing as hard as he could on short notice.

Robin looked down at it and flexed her arm "Apparently as the Overmind I heal very quickly, from minor injuries at least. Well time to carve up some rapist filth!" she turned and ran off to the north at pretty much horse gallop speeds, leaving the three humans standing there.

"I get the feeling life is about to get a whole lot more, uh, 'Exciting' very soon." Chrom said.

"I would have protested bringing her back to Ylisstol without any restraints and such, but after watching her performance and knowing she is of importance to the Plegians, having her unrestrained would probably be helpful if the Plegians try to steal her back. Besides, I doubt any spy would actually be sent in with such a fantastical story, and if Plegia had enough of those floating 'overlord' beasts they'd probably just destroy our farms instead with them." Frederick said as Lissa bounced around Chrom healing each minor cut and scrape on its own, to get more experience at staff energy channelling.

They showed up just as the bandit leader was scrabbling backward on his hands and feet toward his flung-away axe. Chrom was first to speak at the sight before them, clearing his throat loudly before saying "Uh, Robin?" Said woman was looking rather mesmerized as she stared at the heart she was holding, a carved-open bandit under her. It was still beating, though no more blood was squirting out.

"SHEPHERDS?" The bandit leader seemed to hesitate for a moment… until he saw Robin open her mouth and bring the heart closer to her blood-splattered mouth "SAVE ME FROM THIS MADWOMAN!"

Robin blinked at him a couple times, then scoffed "You'd think a bandit like you would understand intimidation." She flung the organ at him, and it hit him in the face before he could dodge with a meaty thwack. "I'd be more interested in eating his liver first if I was searching for valuable nutrients, you know!"

The bandit leader seemed to completely lose it, flailing at the blood stuck to his face "Don't listen to her! She ate one of my boys' face off!" It was probably at least partly fake panic, since he'd managed to get to his axe now and scrambled to his feet, crouching and holding his axe defensively. Robin had disarmed him earlier and knocked him away with a kick, but hadn't exploited it, preferring to kill the other bandits first.

The white-haired woman snorted, though the bright red blood coated around the lower half of her face didn't disagree with that accusation "Just because he locked my sword and biting him was the first other weapon that came to mind doesn't mean I liked the taste or texture. I even spat what I took off back out after I finished putting him down! Don't want to mess my diplomacy with these guys up after all." She motioned at the three Ylisseans over her shoulder with a thumb.

Then she turned enough to make it clear she was addressing them "Chrom, finish the bastard off, will you? You need the experience from what I saw of your fighting earlier. Frederick, supervise the fight please." Robin said, then seemed to decide to do something other than stand there over the corpse. She walked away from the corpse over to the river, which despite the presence of a bridge did not have built-up embankments due to the town apparently deciding it liked the river banks enough to still have a working (small) flood plain there. She then crouched down and cupped some water, before using it to wash her face.

The bandit watched her very closely as she scrubbed the blood off "You going to stop me from getting away from that nut?" He ventured.

Chrom shrugged "Given what you were doing before and the fact that she's travelling with us for the time being at least, yes."

"Curses… well, they say a cornered man fights best… let's see if I can take you lot down and get away then." The bandit eyed them carefully. The blue-haired man would probably be able to catch him, the blond girl likely couldn't due to her size, lack of apparent musculature, and that hoop dress, the armored man off his horse would likely be slow enough that he could possibly evade long enough to throw the man off his trail, and if he got his horse he could use alleyways to escape. The only problem was how to tie up the woman long enough to prevent her from running him down almost casually and them probably tearing his head off with her hands if not teeth. He'd have to wound the blue-haired man and the blonde cleric enough to occupy the woman with concern before bolting if he was to have any chance of escaping. So, weighing his options, he attacked like a cornered dog.

A/N: I know his name is Garrick. However, I didn't deem it important enough to use.

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