Anoona knew she was being illogical.
That she was overreacting to 02's death when she should have been focusing on self-preservation.
But she didn't care.
She couldn't care about the risks.
Something had killed one of her babies, and while her more lucid self understood that she wouldn't be able to stop future deaths, the very least she could do was avenge the death of 02.
To remember him and let the world know that his life meant something.
Such sentimentality was beyond foreign to Anoona, but it, along with so many others, was a feeling that moved her hands before her mind could issue a single command.
Not that she was a slave to them either.
She knew that facing the horde alone was foolish, but if it meant all of her children had a slim chance of surviving and seeing the next day, she was willing to trade her ticket for theirs.
And so she stood hunched forward, her limbs twitching with potential and her mouth dripping with hunger.
She needed to eat.
Her body was incinerating through whatever calories it had and would soon start consuming itself.
And so, as the Mantises rushed in to attack her, she walked, at an incredibly deliberate pace, towards them, but this act alone was enough to send out several shockwaves that travelled through the ground and tore open the bodies of the Mantises.
Anoona, as her vision darkened and her stomach ached, knelt and ate the still-warm piles of meat on the ground, and her body rejoiced.
Giving her access to more power.
The Locusts all flew towards her at a barely conceivable speed.
The information Anoona's cells had given her informed her that they each had a Noetic Presence of 3.0ML, which is what was allowing them to achieve such great feats of physicality.
Anoona, however, had a presence that was more than twice as large.
And so, as they approached with their clubs, Anoona grabbed one of them and threw it at its brethren, turning the bunch into a ball of flesh that crashed to the side.
She then used her claws to slash through the air, sending forth waves of force that tore into the remaining Locusts, but Anoona didn't have time to celebrate the death of her enemies.
She quickly crouched and began eating their corpses.
She ate no less than a ton of flesh, which was quickly burned by her new stomach, which was fuelling her enhanced strength.
She looked around, licking her lips as she scanned her surroundings, and sent out a ping to her scouting cells.
They reported that the horde was still about a hundred kilometres away but was coming from all directions.
Anoona could feel the truth in this in the almost unperceivable tremor in the ground.
While the incoming enemy forces seemed to be mostly made of Mantises and Locusts, her cells also detected several large Bio-Signals deep in the horde.
Her cells had yet to make contact with these signals and so couldn't provide any further information, so it would be up to Anoona.
The unit she had made up to measure Bio-Signals was the Ostraka or Ø, which measured a life form's survivability on a granular level.
A single, unchanged cell had an Ostraka of 0Ø because it would die if not fed by other cells and systems.
This is why Anoona used her own cells as a base for the measurement, since just one of her cells could survive on its own, giving it a Bio-Signal of 1Ø.
This was the same for single-celled organisms, and the more of these autonomous cells a complex organism had, the larger its Bio-Signal.
However, organisms like humans were designated as having 0Ø since a single human cell couldn't survive independently.
But humans were a thing of the past.
This world was made of beings that were not only autonomous at a cellular level, but they also wielded Noetic Abilities that allowed them to communicate across large distances and exceed their normal fleshly limits.
Anoona's goal was to eliminate the horde's heavy hitters before her children hatched.
Then they could clean up the stragglers.
And so, with all this in mind, she nodded to herself and began making her way to the closest large Bio-Signal, which was eighty kilometres to the south.
It had a Bio-Signal of 500 000Ø and was most likely going to be a tough opponent, so as Anoona sprinted south, she ate whatever she came across.
Her steps grew more powerful and faster, her muscles and her very bones resonating with Noetic Power.
A vitality that coursed through all the new life on earth.
.
..
Anoona could barely recall the silence of her bedroom in the penthouses of the old world.
Especially now that she stood atop a cliff that overlooked a portion of the horde that was coming for her and her babies.
She counted no less than seven hundred thousand threats, and there was a large mound of flesh at the centre of all this.
So many claws, teeth and hisses that crawled and clawed over each other.
Some of them ate and attacked each other, but for the most part, they were all just passively crawling about.
Anoona had reverted to her "Mother" mode and so was expending far less energy.
That said, she had also eaten so much that she was now full.
She felt like releasing all of her potential Noetic Energy at once, nuking everything in sight, but she didn't want to burn all her energy before she knew what was inside the flesh mound because it was the source of the strong Bio-Signal.
Anoona let out a sigh as she moulted some of her flesh, entering her "Warrior" mode.
This sent out a Noetic Wave that immediately alerted the horde.
Like the rising sun above the tainted skies, they roared towards the cliff and clawed over each other to reach her.
As their claws and teeth reached towards her, a hundred at a time, Anoona slashed at the first wave, slicing through meat and bone in a wave of force, but this was the largest group of threats she had ever faced and, even though she could cut through tens of them at a time, the thousands that came per wave eventually overwhelmed her.
They viciously tore her arms and legs in a frenzy that was determined to leave nothing left.
But, as she was disembowelled, Anoona wondered why she had been reborn.
Whose sick joke was it to make her suffer like this?
Her cell memory told her that it was a freak mutation, but...
What was her purpose?
What was she here for?
She was a mother now, and that was the only reprieve from the oppression.
Anoona wondered if it was this hard for mothers back in the old world.
The old world...
A rotten and stagnant place that Anoona only knew through the view from on high.
She was never so self-possessed that she couldn't see the woes of others.
She just never saw a reason to care.
A small smile graced what was left of Anoona's face as it was eaten.
This was clearly the Earth trying to get back at her.
And she wasn't planning on making it easy.
Even as her cells were consumed and distributed among the horde, she felt the determination to live.
She felt...
She could think.
Even though she had been eaten...
This is what it meant to have a Bio-Signal of one million.
To be able to actuate oneself across a million points.
[Anoona?] One point, one cell asked, sending out a ping to the others.
[Yes? We're here.] Another responded.
[In order to survive, we must completely consume and assimilate.]
[Agreed. Proceed with Total Absorption.]
The cells that had been ingested began to secrete their defensive sludge, which rapidly broke down the stomachs of all the creatures that had eaten them as the cells multiplied.
Thousands of agonised screams filled the air above the cliff as everything that had eaten Anoona burst into a mess of blackish, cyan coloured sludge.
Countless gory explosions followed as the Locusts, Mantises and even the organic matter that covered the surface, ruptured after having been devoured from within.
A new Noetic signal instructed the horde to try and eat the rapidly growing pool of sludge, but this just doomed many more creatures to a violent death.
The sludge then began to gather, bubbling and steaming as it began to reform Anoona, only she was much, much larger now.
Even while sitting, she was thirty meters tall.
This was her "Giantess" mode.
Something she was able to do because, like 01 and the first-generation Thetas, she had no biological limit to her growth or design.
Her legs remained mostly unformed, a gelatinous mass that ate anything they came into contact with.
The Mantises and Locusts that were mindlessly trying to eat her found their teeth and claws dissolving as they were broken down at the cellular level.
Anoona turned her gargantuan eyes to the large Bio-Signal.
Her cells had since made contact with it and, according to them, something dangerous was inside.
As thousands of lifeforms were dissolved and digested, the mound finally opened, and it birthed something that was surprisingly humanoid.
It stood two meters tall, had four limbs and a head, but that's where the similarities ended.
Its skin was a collection of hardened segments that appeared almost metallic, and it had ten eyes dotted across its featureless face. Black dots that immediately turned to Anoona, along with its two antennae.
Her cells reported that up to two hundred meters of the ground beneath the birthing mound had been hollowed, meaning that this creature had consumed no less than one hundred tons of organic matter during its gestation.
This was what it took to create a Beta Class organism.
[Identity: Humanoid Threat
Class: β (beta)
Bio-Signal: 500 000/500 000Ø
Epidermal Integrity: 100%
Noetic Presence: 3.5 (ML)]
The humanoid stretched its arms before violently splitting its head open from the front, revealing a maw of twisted teeth.
It then let out a horrid screech that sent out a Noetic wave that flattened everything around it in a radius of fifty meters.
It then dashed towards Anoona at lightning speed and punched her in the chest, vaporising an entire ton of her flesh.
Anoona tried grabbing it, but she was far too slow in this form.
It appeared as if the Earth had actively modified the humanoid to counter Anoona's existence.
It knew to completely destroy her cells, hence why the humanoid was able to throw punches that vaporised flesh.
Anoona quickly manifested a smaller version of herself, which was in Warrior Mode.
This mini-Anoona, or Ani, stood one meter tall and had a Noetic Presence of 6.0 (ML), but it wasn't the only one.
Anoona created ten of them and since they were smaller, they were abele to catch up to the humanoid which was ceaselessly punching at the giant mass that.
The Anis all rushed towards the humanoid, only for it to immediately turn and cleave them all in half with the swipe of its hand.
It then ravenously ate some of their torsos and swelled with power as it rapidly digested them.
This was the nature of new life.
Hyper-Adaptation.
The humanoid then continued to punch Anoona, steadily destroying more of her each time, but Anoona had already won.
The humanoid's movement steadily slowed, and its Bio-Signal rapidly dropped as its cells were eaten by Anoona's.
She let out a soft chuckle at the Earth's attempt to adapt to her.
Had it already forgotten that she was human once?
That it was humanity that claimed the surface once before?
And it would be her who would shape the surface now.
The humanoid, in a moment of apparent panic, tried releasing all of its remaining Noetic Power in an explosion, but it didn't even get a chance as it was devoured by the Anis.
They tore through the Locusts like they were paper, a strength they bore because they were essentially parts of Anoona.
Not copies but segments of the same whole.
[Mother?] 05 called from the nest.
"Yes?" Anoona asked as the Anis helped her thin the horde.
[01 seems to be hungry. We would fill his cocoon with nutrients, but…]
A small smile graced Anoona's face at the hesitance of the Thetas.
"Alright. I'm on my way."