Disclaimer: Science is mixing renin and milk and getting cheese. Science is performing trial after trial after trial in hope of finding a trend. Science is consistently and repeatedly proving yourself wrong. This is not any of those things. It's still fun though. Also, don't own it.

(Transitions are transpositions of remissions in all their odd submissions whose missions lack conditions.)

This nonsense makes sense...all it took was a rhyme scheme ~f

Catalyst

Studying was by far the most boring part of pretending to be a terran. Reviewing things that had already been memorized for the sake of pretending to have a mind that hadn't already had its ability to forget removed. Even worse was that his camouflage insisted in doing it in a group, as if more human minds somehow corrected the weakness shared by all of them. And worst of all, it was done in the library, where there were yet more terrans and more flaws in memory to frustrate Abathur, and more risks to expose him. He was starting to wonder whether getting camouflage was really worth the risks.

Unfortunately, Abathur still found himself sitting at a table surrounded by books and terrans discussing topics from the inane, such as what color of robe was somehow "in," (exactly what they were in was never specified), to the blatantly pointless, like the random "rules" of psionics that Abathur knew from experience were, at best, largely inaccurate.

Eventually, Abathur couldn't take the ritualistic torture anymore, and pulled out his own, more interesting book. A text describing something called an Animagus. Abathur had been meaning to read it for years, but never seemed to have a good moment for it. Abathur eagerly cracked open the cover.

"Hey, Abathur, what's that?" Harry chose that moment to interrupt him. Absolutely great timing.

"Book. Information for Animagi. Desire to read. No interruptions," Abathur stated, somewhat aggressively.

And, of course, Hermione took that as an opportunity for discussion. He should have been less subtle. "Oh, I've heard about those! They're wizards who can turn into a certain type of animal!"

That was what they were? Mildly interesting, but only so much of the human species flaws could be corrected for with extra creatures. The process may be interesting, but not the result.

Unknowing of Abathur's disinterest, Hermione continued. "They're like werewolves, except they can transform into other things, and whenever they want. But you have to be really good at transfiguration to become one, so I'm not sure you could do it, Abathur."

Werewolves... Where had he heard of those before? Ah yes, the lesson with the Potions "master" who didn't understand basic chemistry. The semi-humans who transformed into wolves every full moon. Now that he thought about it, that sounded quite similar to the traits he collected from the competent one, Lupin. Well that was interesting, but it didn't change his inability to use the essence as it was. The transformation was still too strenuous to be sustainable. Maybe if he had some form of catalyst...

But he did. The Boggart essence, practically all of it, was devoted to transformation. It would be simple to repurpose its strands to make the transformation simpler. But transforming into a wolf-like thing would be pointless, near useless. It would be a downgrade in all but speed. If he had a way to get essence from something more useful, that would be very useful.

Abathur returned to his reading. It would still be fascinating to find out how humans who didn't even know the shape of their own essence were able to pull off such delicate transformations.

The first few pages were a pretentious introduction. The next ones were warnings, accompanied by images of the horrific accidents that were described in the text. Those ones made Abathur somewhat nostalgic. He missed making those. The pages after that were covered in prerequisites, boring things that Abathur could sidestep. After that, though, was something very interesting. The mechanism by which an Animagus determined their form. Simple potion based meditation, and nothing else, not even essence from the creature they would become.

Was it that simple? A potion to gather his essence again. More essence to hide it and yet more to make it available whenever he needed. All he needed was to make that potion, and he could be whole again. He would be a zerg once more.

(Transition)

Dumbledore liked to host teacher meetings within his office. It kept the professors from feeling as if being there had any negative connotations, reinforced the idea of peerage among the staff. Any space concerns could be easily solved with a few charms.

This week's staff meeting was one such occasion, and he making himself comfortable in his seat as the teachers filed in and took their seats along a table. They were all talking, enjoying each other's company, telling stories of their students to each other. Normally, this would be all the meeting consisted of, barring some particular disaster. The constant patrol of Dementors outside the grounds dampened that of course, but the overall cheer fortunately remained. Unfortunately, that cheer was not to last.

Soon enough, all the staff were seated, and the meeting began in earnest. Some minor issues with the most recent couple who had been discovered in a broom closet, discussion of the new prefects, and similar topics were thrown around. Eventually, after most of the talk had died down, Dumbledore brought up the subject that had been troubling him since it was first brought to his attention by Remus, that of Thenabar Jaren.

There was a momentary silence as the teachers contemplated the yellow-green eyed youth. Bathsheda was the first to break the spell.

"He's very dedicated to Runes, uses them with a passion I rarely see. I barely have to finish telling him the meaning of a Rune before he's figured out a dozen uses of it."

"Jaren has an excellent understanding of potions, perhaps surpassing my own." Severus's statement drew surprised looks from around the room, shock clearly written on more than a few faces. "If only he didn't have such unfortunate choice in companions, he would be such an excellent student."

"He doesn't participate much in class, but his Transfigurations are always very detailed." Minerva said. "And I remember him displaying an interest in runes; last year he was asking about how wands worked."

"He was talking about literal wands?" Filius squeaked, cheeks flushing. "I gave him a book about puberty."

And so the conversation went. All about his academic achievements, his style of writing, how he worked with others. He should have expected this, really, given how that was the only meaningful way they interacted with Jaren. Dumbledore decided to speak up. "But what do you know about him as a person? His likes, his dislikes, what he does in his spare time?"

Another silence, longer this time. Minerva was the first to break it.

"He can be very impatient. I remember one time I was passing out tools and paused for a few minutes to ask Mr. Longbottom about his essay. Mr. Jaren looked as if he was ready to snatch the box out of my hand," said Pomona.

"Well, he's definitely a perfectionist. I said his wand work was perfect, and he looked at me like I was insane," said Filius.

"Jaren is precise. He wastes no time on idle chatter, which is more than can be said for the rest of the dunderheads I teach," Snape added.

And so it went. The staff now painted a very different picture. The picture of a young and intelligent boy, but one who was also both arrogant and impatient. That was... unpleasantly familiar. But even Tom had never done something like eat a boggart, and he certainly hadn't been so helpful in fighting the Dark Lord of the time. This was useful information, but Dumbledore could make no conclusions from it. Just what was Thenabar Jaren, and what would he become?

(Transition)

Abathur was quickly running out of intact stone tablets to carve runes on, mostly because all the sequences he was carving on them seemed to be so volatile. Why was this so difficult? The patterns of runes in class had been simple, conditional configurations, with one trigger and one effect, linear. So why, whenever he tried applying the concepts on a larger scale, were there so many explosions?

At least it had the fortunate side effect of clearing the Slytherin common room. It appeared few terrans liked the sound of continuous explosions. Or the resulting dust going everywhere. Or sharp stone shards flying into their flesh. Maybe he could keep some of the particularly explosive sequences.

But that wasn't the goal. Babbling had taught the class the sequence needed for a basic shield, a bubble. The design was uncomplicated. But whenever Abathur tried to apply those concepts to his own project of a multi-layered, shape-reactive, self repairing shield, it just shattered violently. He was getting tired of having to regrow parts of his eyes.

Why was this proving so difficult? As the Evolution master, he had assembled new constructs out of nothing but a few chemicals arranged in varying sequences. Granted, a lot of those were patterns taken from other organisms, but not all, and what he was trying to make was far, far simpler than that. Did runes follow a separate sets of rules? Abathur had had his fair share of explosions working on creatures (it had taken a lot of time to clean up the remains of the hydra-roach), but seventeen tablets in a row was absurd.

Perhaps he was going about this incorrectly. It was a different medium, a form of essence with rules and complications he knew nothing of. He knew enough of it to create more than Babbling intended to teach, but runes at the complexity of genetics was beyond him. Creation like that would have to wait, for now. After all, Babbling had yet more to teach him, and he had more time to experiment with simpler forms. Sooner or later, he would understand the essence of psionics. Even if he had to work with the dust that had been tablet 18.

(Transition)

If there were any witnesses to the remainder of the war between the ants, they could have only described it as an execution. The Hive rallied their newly diversified forces, and, after reclaiming their demolished territory, set themselves on the remainder of the super-colony with a vengeance. There was no possibility of the super-colony fighting back. Armies were shattered. Nests burned. For the Hive had no mercy, and the super-colony had posed a threat one too many times.

The ants of the super-colony had no way to fight against flying opponents or parasites. They were infested or devoured, along with their queens. Armored beetles and stinging scorpions carved bloody paths through any meagre resistance the colony pulled together. Every last patch of eggs, every tunnel, every last chance for the super-colony to survive was annihilated. Soon, there was nothing left.

Almost as soon as the super-colony was eliminated, the Hive moved in. Webs covered the ground and trees, a visible marker of their misshapen blob of influence. Even the larger creatures learned to avoid the area controlled by the Hive, bears and deer carefully stepping just out of the area of webs lest they be swarmed with stingers and fangs. The Hive seemed to control their territory absolutely.

Then came the new prey. An odd creature, standing on two legs, with two manipulator limbs. Nearly completely devoid of hair or carapace aside from its very top. It was wrapped in odd colored substances the likes of which the Hive hadn't before seen. It was carrying a small box with a clear front.

Spiders and ants moved to observe the creature from afar. It was different from the other prey. It did not step onto the webs and die. It did not run from it. It just stayed at the border, pointing its odd tool at the webs and the Hive. At one point, the creature even put the box a mere inch away from a worker ant scurrying along the webs. Its actions made no sense.

The Hive waited and watched the interloper, even as it did the same to them. The Hive waited, swarms of various strains gathered, waiting for anything to give them a reason to attack. Caution had its place, but so did preemptive strikes. If the prey displayed anything resembling aggression, it would be consumed. They could always find the key to its behavior within the essence.

The intruder took a single step too far, its foot coming to rest on a collection of threads. As one, the Hive acted. The bee swarm moved forward, while the assorted ground based creatures rushed ahead and climbed up the offending limb. Once they had covered the base, they bit... into nothing. More and more coating was all they could find, all they could dig their mandibles into.

Before they could climb any higher, the ants found themselves shaken off, the covering they were grasping separated from the prey. The flying swarm moved in at the Hive's behest, only to meet a cloud of toxic mist emitted from a cylinder the prey was wielding. The swarm scattered, some falling to the ground. They did not rise.

The Hive sent more troops. Ants and spitters, along with heavier units, but by then the prey was fleeing. Off the webs, they didn't have the speed to pursue on foot, and the flying creatures were useless so long as the mist remained in its hands. No matter. Every threat would be eliminated sooner or later. The Hive was willing to wait.

Mutalisk: The Swarm's most distinctive flying unit, the mutalisk is a fast, damaging, agile harasser. Resembling a bat, it flies on two, hand-like wings, or uses gas for propulsion while outside of the atmosphere. Its bottom half is a gaping mouth, a separate parasite that launches itself. The glaive wurm projectile, the repurposed variant of the parasite, and the main weapon of the mutalisk, is a living thing, that redirects itself to strike multiple foes before detonating. They are effective both against aerial and ground targets. Mutalisks, due to their high speed and regeneration, are most frequently used as harassers, striking at supply lines before flying and regrouping. Distinctive and deadly, flying from one target to the next before moving in for the kill, these are what make the mutalisk such a ubiquitous and lethal force of the Swarm.