While the Locusts and the humanoid creature may have had high Ostraka, they did not have a cohesive enough consciousness to pull themselves together and regenerate.
Their cells were probably still alive and active, but all they could do was sit around and absorb whatever nutrients were available to them.
Their best case was to gather in a large enough clump that they could survive for long enough time periods when food wasn't available, but Anoona wasn't going to allow that.
She had added a new directive for her scouting cells.
They would find and eat whatever high Ostraka cells they found.
And as for how her cells were able to get about, they were mostly airborne, but they could also wriggle around.
A now normal-sized Anoona had finished pouring some milk into 01's cocoon.
The greedy little guy was swimming in the stuff, much to Anoona's chagrin, since she had to produce milk herself.
She shook her head and made her way to Level 7 of the Hive, which was the Hatchery, where she sat next to one of the eggs as it began to hatch.
Within was a Theta Class child who only had a Bio-Signal of 100Ø.
He emerged to reveal that he looked like the first-generation Gammas, only was set to be much smaller.
He was also rather centaur-like, having a dark grey, ant-like lower body and a humanoid upper body that had four arms.
He had an adorably big head and a pair of glowing cyan eyes that looked at their mother with wonder and awe.
[Identity: 9091
Class: θ (theta)
Bio-Signal: 100/100Ø
Epidermal Integrity: 100%
Noetic Presence: 0.0007 (ML)]
"Go. The others are waiting." She whispered in her many voices and, although the fist-sized little one was a bit confused at first, he soon rose to his six shaking legs.
He then made his way to the fifth level, which was the nursery, where he would be given the exact amount of food necessary to grow to his full size, which was about the size of a regular adult human.
The food would come in the form of processed, regurgitated and dried tubes that were as big as a 19kg gas canister.
These were made by the Delta Class children who had hatched in the week that had passed since 02's death.
Anoona followed the newborn Theta child into the Nursery, which was a large space that was lined with the greyish food tubes that were being distributed by the Deltas, who resembled dark grey ladybugs that had a feminine torso sticking out from where their heads would otherwise be.
What was hidden, since they were sitting, were their long, hard and pointed legs that could skewer anything that pissed them off.
Standing at fifteen meters tall, their large gasters held and processed all of the organic matter that was brought in from above.
[Identity: 9091
Class: δ (delta)
Bio-Signal: 5000/5000Ø
Epidermal Integrity: 100%
Noetic Presence: 0.035 (ML)]
The newborns communicated with little chirps and peeps, but whenever they spoke to her, they put in a little extra effort and used telepathy.
Anoona carefully walked past all of the little and big children as she made her way up into the Repository, which took up levels 3 and four.
It was a vast space filled to the brim with organic and inorganic matter.
Flesh. Stone and metal were all stacked to form gory hills that were sorted and processed by the Gamma Class Children, who were built like lobsters, only they had long, spiderlike legs that allowed them to walk over the heaps of resources.
That said, they spent most of their time sitting as they ingested and processed stuff and, to that effect, they were colour coded: those with red exoskeletons processed food, the blue ones ate rocks to produce Carbonic Gel, and the black ones worked with metals.
They couldn't keep molten metals inside them, so they were much smaller than their brothers and worked with forges instead.
Fuelling the fires with the Propane they stored in their gasters, which popped off when they were full.
To avoid disaster, unused fuel gasters were kept outside the Hive.
[Greetings, mother!] One of the compound-eyed blacksmiths greeted. He had a masculine torso, but like his mother and siblings, it was lined with hardened tissue.
He also had mandibles, which made a clicking noise whenever he spoke with his mouth, which Anoona found cute.
[Identity: 44 939
Class: γ (gamma)
Bio-Signal: 70 000/70 000Ø
Epidermal Integrity: 100%
Noetic Presence: 0.49 (ML)]
Anoona walked up to 44 939, who was designing different kinds of armour for his siblings, but what he especially wanted to show Anoona, who he dwarfed by five meters.
He handed her a small tiara that was made of misshapen twigs of various metals.
Anoona gracefully accepted it and tried placing it over her head, but her tendrils were in the way, so she asked that 44 939 lower his head.
She then carefully placed it on his head and between his two antennae.
"There we go. I think it'll look prettier on your head." She smiled, and while 44 939's little jitters told her that he was happy, she couldn't quite explain the warm feeling that filled her chest every time she shared a moment with her children.
It didn't matter how many of them there were; she remembered each interaction.
And so, with a smile still on her face, she continued upwards and into the Sorting Bay, which was the second level.
There she beheld the only other thing her children looked up to that wasn't her.
The Beta Classes.
Standing at two meters tall, they were mostly humanoid, having undergone metamorphosis.
They were dark, being covered in an ultrafine layer of Bio-Metallic plates that formed both their internal and external skeletons.
They had faces that bore four eyes which could see almost every kind of light, small nasal openings that were sharp enough to follow trails for kilometres, small mouths and teeth that only ate the most refined food in the Hive.
One other thing that differentiated them was the patterns on their wings, of which they bore four.
They were adorned with all kinds of patterns that they stubbornly kept hidden since their wings spent most of the time tucked beneath the folds in their backs.
Betas also had tendrils growing from their heads, like their mother, that acted as antennae that allowed them to communicate with all of their siblings, regardless of distance.
The strongest and biggest among them was 515, who was an anomaly who stood at four meters tall and was incredibly loud—
"Mother!" The giant warrior greeted as he stomped towards Anoona, who rolled her eyes, going limp as her son picked her up and spun her around.
The Sorting Bay was a vast and mostly open space which held tens of thousands of other children, all of whom watched with envy as 515 or Rolling Thunder carried their mother.
[Identity: 515
Class: β (beta)
Bio-Signal: 950 000/950 000Ø
Epidermal Integrity: 100%
Noetic Presence: 6.65(ML)]
Anoona pulled one of her arms free from Thunder's embrace, gave him a swift chop on the head, and the idiot dramatically reacted by feigning injury.
"Oh… what pain! What did I do to deserve this?" He chuckled while setting his mother down. His voice, just like Anoona's, was layered, sounding like a choir of song and scream.
"Situation Report." Anoona didn't need to ask, since she already knew what he was thinking, but she also just wanted to hear him speak.
It was nice, after being the only voice in the new world in the weeks before.
"The Horde is being successfully repelled from your territory, and their estimated number has been reported to be fifty billion and dropping." He grinned while accompanying Anoona out of the Hive with her hand in his and five of his Beta class siblings in tow.
There were many entrances into the Hive, but the main one was a large opening in the middle of the first level, which allowed the ever-busy Thetas to come and go as needed.
Sleeping around the mouth of the Hive were the first-generation Thetas, who had finally stopped growing at forty meters.
Anoona led Thunder and his siblings away from the Hive and towards the hill wherein she was born.
"Any casualties?" She asked with the slightest hesitation.
"None at all, mother. My teams are all operating at full strength and, as per your warning, were are only engaging humanoid threats in groups of three or more, which has made for swift eliminations." Thunder nodded while giving Anoona's hand a little squeeze.
She was determined to face the Horde alone, but as soon as the Betas grew big enough, they begged that she stop risking her life and allow them to protect her instead.
Anoona initially rejected their request, but it was Thunder himself who disobeyed her direct wishes and went out to clear several threats alongside her, which proved that there truly was strength and safety in numbers.
Anoona eventually reached the Hill, which she specified shouldn't be touched, and sat by the crevice she was reborn in.
She looked out at the world beyond and finally let out a sigh.
She had been so busy ever since she awoke that she didn't even get a chance to sleep, but it was nice to just sit and do nothing for once.
Thunder surprisingly remained silent as Anoona dug her nails into the fleshy ground beneath her.
She thought of asking Thunder a few silly questions but chose to keep them to herself, lest he yell a hole into her head.
She shook her head and chuckled at the thought that the reason why he was so loud was that he didn't know how to tune down his Noetic Presence.
"Mmm?" Thunder raised a brow at his mother, who finally asked.
"If I asked you to punch a hole into the world—"
"I'd ask how big you wanted it to be!" He huffed, making his siblings deflate with sighs because that's exactly what they expected him to say.
"I swear, he's like a Theta." 1748 shook his head as Anoona stood up, her eyes narrowing a little.
"It's like mother preprogrammed every line he'd ever say," 21 899 scoffed before joining the others in gasping as Anoona suddenly ran down the hill and to the west.
"Mother! Wait!" Thunder cried before easily catching up to Anoona, who changed into her Warrior Mode.
She then outran her son, a frown lowering her brow as she reached speeds over three hundred kilometres per hour.
Thunder and his siblings were always operating at a hundred percent, and so, while they weren't able to run as fast as her, they were able to keep up as Anoona ran into the Acrid Swamps that were over two hundred kilometres to the west.
They were also in the heart of the Horde and were a hotspot for powerful Beta Class humanoid threats.
"Mother…" Thunder cautioned as he reached Anoona's side in the middle of a pond of black, brown liquid that burned her legs as she stood.
Her gaze, her glare, was focused on a Noetic Signal that was pulsing from this and a few other signals.
It wasn't coming from a single organism, but he ground itself, and the signal said only one thing.
[CRUSH!!!]
Anoona immediately called out to all of her cells and received reports of a light tremor that was coming from every direction.
It was different from the march of the Horde, but it was enough to make Anoona's jaw clench.
A humanoid organism tried ambushing the group, but as soon as it emerged from the pools of rot, 1748 punched it so hard that every cell in its body popped, leaving not even mist in the explosion that followed.
"Mother… what's wrong?" Thunder asked as Anoona finally turned to face him and his siblings.
"I can feel it… the coming of a wave of destruction."