Chimera woke up to the sound of her atoms being burned at the rate of fuel igniting after a spaceship burn.
“Holy Fu-! AHHRGGHHHH!!”
Vacuum surrounded her for about two seconds before the bright blue planet decided to catch her in its gravity field, which then decided that she was going fast enough that the atmosphere had to make it their solemn duty to bombard it with countless amounts of ozone.
When her very fleshy body collided with said particles and atoms, the chemical party that occurred in real time decided there simply wasn’t enough fire and fuel to burn.
For another three minutes she screamed until her body shifted into its aura form, pulling from her immense reserves of life to create stone to surround herself. It worked, until the rock started to melt and she was back to square one, trying desperately to regenerate faster than the atmosphere could burn her away to nothing.
Parts of her flesh started to break off, leaving even more of her form to shrink in itself.
In a last ditch effort to stop herself from burning up completely, Chimera tapped into her hydrokinesis, and drew the surrounding water around her to attempt to cool off her combusting body.
Come on, not like this! I’m not dying like this! I got too many freaking things to do!
The water coalesced around her, bursting into thunder clouds that spread rain around her in a blast. She did it again and again, cooling herself off like a sword quenching in a fire.
Her tendrils merged behind her into wings, slowing her descent enough that the atmosphere began to finally stop hitting her like a flaming truck. The water continued to cool her while the fire that was burning her up finally began to fade, leaving her burned body to feel the stinging winds of salty air.
Wait, salt?
The sting finally made her open her eyes enough to see the largest body of water she had ever witnessed, a sea that stretched outward towards the horizon with not a speck of land in sight.
Crap! CRAP!
She tried to flap her wings, but the fire from reentry turned them into a pair of gliders rather than functional wings, and her body was laden with water from the countless bursts of thunder clouds she created.
Instead of a burning ball of flesh, she was now a water-soaked solid ball of flesh.
Her regeneration was working, but not fast enough to stop her burnt body from hitting the water below, and with so much force to her descent, she was going to splatter when she hit.
Even with her regeneration, she didn’t want to know what would happen if she hit the water at terminal velocity.
Her mind flashed with ideas, trying to do her best to find a solution to her impending death.
The first thought that appeared oddly enough was her mother’s, a memory when she was conducting an experiment with water and stones.
She was younger, and the experiment was showing the volume of displaced water in a classroom environment.
“Remember class, when the stone falls into the water, be careful not to drop it as it will splash across the surface. Gently place it on top of the surface of the water, and let it fall in.”
Chimera looked below at the approaching wall of water, and smirked as she started generating more stone.
I can’t break the surface of the water before I hit, but a big freaking rock can!
She built a massive boulder, easily four times her size as her terrakinesis combined with the latent power of the Elementalist abilities she had from Iaos’ DNA.
With a few seconds to spare, she quickly grabbed hold of her boulder and braced for impact.
SPLASH! FWOOOM!
The water around Chimera exploded with the arrival of the massive meteor, breaking the surface and squishing her a bit before the water began to envelop the stone.
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Oh no you don’t! I worked hard on this damn raft!
She had made the rock as porous as she could to displace the water, allowing it to absorb the impact of the water and to float above it.
But not for long, the air inside was the only thing keeping her afloat, and once that filled in…
Think damnit, there’s got to be a way!
Smashing the rock wouldn’t do enough to make a boat, since the thing was too heavy for that, and shaping it would take too long to matter.
Land, she needed to have land enough to stand on.
I’ve never made anything like that though…
Chimera checked her reserves as she began to tap into her magical organs as well.
It might be possible, but I’m gonna be hurting after this.
Flooding herself with power, she tapped into the power of terraformation, syncing it with her magic and aura along with her vast reserves from her PEGs. She also tapped into that sickly power from Terralord, allowing her finer control of the gem-like structure she was going for.
A floating island, a floating island!
Her arms disappeared into the soil, her body merged with the surrounding land that she created, and a force of hundreds of years of life surged forth!
Magma coated the ground around her as life burst from the soil. Her body began to burn along with the land as it rapidly cooled from the water surrounding her. A constant burning, regrowth and cooling cycle began to form around her, creating more and more landmass that not only grew from her, but grew other things as well.
Trees from her native Asta, with their orange and pink hues shot up from the soil. The purple mushrooms and teal grass from Seros coated the land while one massive tree dominated the center island she was now crafting.
Animals she had never seen sprung from her body, and life grew sporadically with each pulse of her work.
This is nothing like I thought it was! What the fu-
More and more fed into the land, and Chimera could feel her body beginning to reach its limits.
Crap, this had better be enough or we’re all drowning…
Finally she let go, pulling herself up from the ground as the last of her magic and aura fed into the ground. She laid her head back down as her body reformed into her childish appearance.
As she looked up into the sky around her, she noticed the trees did a good job covering the clouds and sky, giving her some nice shade. She smiled as she closed her eyes.
A nap sounds good right now.
Her worries felt distant in her mind, as though she didn’t have to worry at all. It was strange, knowing that the ground beneath her had her back.
She dozed off, letting the ground cover her as her energy fed back into her.
…
A few hours had passed according to Chimera’s internal clock as she awoke from her relaxing nap, and judging from the fact that she wasn’t underwater, she choked that up to a win on the island strategy.
What she was feeling from the soil and land, she could tell that about two thirds of the land she crafted was underwater.
Still seems low, and we are still floating somehow.
She lept into the air as she grew wings on her back from her tentacles, surveying the ground from the sky.
Woah…
The land was vibrant to say the least, with trees and jungle all around. Roughly three miles in around her, Chimera could see the scope of her entire landmass, as well as the three hundred foot walls of land that covered the beach around her.
That wasn’t all either as Chimera could feel the etching of smaller lifeforms all around her, all partially connected to her from the life giving energy she had poured in through her aura.
It was an island to be sure, but it felt like her skin was all over the place.
Okay, I think I see why those snake bastards wanted Iaos so much now.
If this island was just a small scope of those abilities, imagine what a theocratic dictatorship like the Verdant Hood could do with this.
Instant land masses, natural bastions and entire ecosystems at their beck and call.
Fighting a war with the power of nature behind you, no army would survive that.
This would only really be possible with a ton of life energy though, and that comes from aura or other living beings. Unless they were like me, there’s no way for the Hood to do this. This can’t be the reason.
Where would they get the energy they needed for something like this?
Chimera thought back, tracing her memory of places that she had been too as she looked for clues.
It was one place that came to mind, a deep place in a mine, with thousands of people captured and drugged.
And an odd temple underneath it all, littered with desiccated bodies.
Nothing’s certain yet, and that place is buried under the earth now, but keeping an eye out for more of those places seems like a good idea.
Shaking her mind from those thoughts, Chimera checked the rest of her island overhead as she took in the scene.
This power, the things I can do now, its all a bit too much for me.
She had wanted to be a Hero, to help people and save the day. So when did she turn into a world hopping life shaper?
I still don’t know much about the Teras’emon, even with the little I learned from Bay and the others. Mona only showed me the evil side of what they were capable of. Why did they die out fighting over purity? Why even fight like that at all? If they might be capable of this, why were they so hell bent on killing each other?
Chimera had only met her mo-, Mona, she corrected herself.
That thing was no mother to her or Sarah.
Yet she ended up killing her too after she sent the bitch into the sun.
Was that the legacy she accidentally inherited, a cycle of killin her own kind and others?
Chimera landed near the largest tree in the center of the island, her wings shifting back into her tendrils as she anchored herself against the familiar hue of orange bark and pink leaves. The breeze already smelled of home, with the sun setting in the distance.
With her mind still uncertain of her next steps, Chimera stared up into the approaching night sky, thoughts of her crew and friends plaguing her.
They have to be okay, and once I find some locals, I’ll get back to you guys. Hold on.
Chimera took a break for a few more minutes before shifting back into her flight mode, searching around her as the night coated the sea.
…