Disclaimer: Again, college. The change in lifestyle and the different workload has just sapped my desire to write for a long time. Also, don't own it.

Remember when he was complaining that I had let real life get in the way? ~f

Catalyst

Tassadar could not pretend to know all of what was happening. Between the bizarre new almost terran-like zerg strain, the oddly warped psionic techniques the terrans were using, and the other grotesque zerg which looked to be several of those psionic humans linked together in a horrid fashion, he could understand that there were perhaps dozens of factors he was entirely unaware of. But there were still zerg and there were still terrans, and for as long as he could stand, he would stand between them.

The templar began by creating a rippling storm of lightning, thrusting it towards the larger monstrosity. Smoke rolled off its charring flesh as the lightning danced across the beast, black burns carving their way across the terran faces. Whatever brood had infested this distant colony had fallen to new depths of depravity, even beyond what he had seen before.

The monstrosity shuddered for a second, before it snapped its multitude of arms out from its body, banishing the lightning from itself. In the next second it lurched forward, its many gazes focused directly on Tassadar, hands forming many globes of light. A second zerg, smaller and looking more terran-like than the first, whirled out from behind its larger brethren, launching a hooked tendril towards the elderly human.

"You have got to be kidding me, Dumbledore. A protoss! You summoned a protoss, and you just had to get this one. You have no idea how much I'll enjoy ripping apart your flesh after this, you decrepit little nuisance!" the small one shouted.

Tassadar had already batted away the tentacle with a burst of force by the time it finished speaking, but couldn't afford to take any other actions in the face of a sudden barrage from the monstrosity. It's various mouths let out pained groans as the terran limbs contorted and twisted to fling balls of psionic force into Tassadar's shield. Meanwhile, the other terran, Dumbledore if the terranoid zerg was to be trusted, formed ranks with the infested terran as the two formed their own shields and cast their own explosive psionic blasts at the zerg. How an infested could turn against its creators was beyond Tassadar, but that was a minor consideration given how utterly absurd the whole situation already was.

The blasts were deflected by the abomination, it's multitude of limbs slapping the blasts away almost contemptuously. The smaller zerg stopped spending any effort on its disguise, warping into a many armed brute that rushed forward and began beating its limbs on the terran Dumbledore's shields with surprising ferocity even for a zerg. Tassadar moved to assist, but was blocked by a line of blue fire extending from the horrific monstrosity. It raised its arms, preparing a dozen psionic patterns to launch at Tassadar and the infested. The two of them exchanged a glance, before Tassadar reinforced his shield, the infested began launching its own psionic blasts, and both turned their focus utterly towards the battle.

(Transition)

The second Abathur's bisected halves hit the ground, the hivemind screamed. The multitude of threads wrapped like a knot around his commanding presence fell free, lashing wildly in the air, as chaotic and unrestrained as the zerg were now, running rabid all over the planet, no doubt ravaging the humans even more thoroughly. But only for a second. That was all Luna would allow.

She reached out with her mind, shaping her thoughts like her physical tendrils, grabbing the flailing leashes and lashing them together, binding them all to her. She snatched them up by the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands, coiling them into a massive knot within her mind, seizing control. Her net grew across the surface of the Earth, wrapping all of the Swarm into her. She felt the feet of a thousand zerglings stall, digging into the soil, the plants, the concrete, felt the burrowing claws of roaches stop, half stuck in the rock.

In a matter of seconds, she was the net holding a million zerg together, covering half the surface of the planet.

It was remarkable. It was everything she had ever wanted, to explore the breadth and width of the world, to be connected to so many, to know and be aware of them intimately, every quirk and oddity of their biology, hers to explore. She was the center of a hive that was wrapped across half of the world.

In the next instant, she felt pain from every direction as the new borders of her body were flooded with agony. The terrans were taking advantage of her Swarm's sudden hesitation to push the attack forward with their own forces. Luna couldn't be bothered to care about that right now, even as the edges of herself were frayed away by bullets and bombs.

With a cold, numb certainty, she ignored all of it. Her eyes, all of the millions of them, turned upwards. Some of the assault on her hesitated at such a coordinated action, but she hardly noticed. Heedless of the bullets and vicious magic which were even then still flying into her Swarm, her pupils darted in her sockets, tracing the lines of the net arrayed just over her own, stretched out over low orbit. They weren't descending any farther now, just circling and maintaining a wary perimeter around her.

A tendril extended from the hovering net, reaching down towards her own. Daggoth wanted to talk.

You have betrayed the Swarm,Daggoth's voice spoke in her mind, its thoughts coming across muddled, wet, and distorted across their nets. A simple statement, matter of fact. Luna supposed it would be hard to dispute it. Bits of Abathur's corpse were still dripping off of her tentacles.

He was hurting everyone, Luna sent back. You will too. Even now she could see the basilisk eye flying over the continent, several thousand kilometers away and directly above her heads. She could see the porous membrane that served as it's eyelid twitching, letting rays of light out in distinct cones, petrifying the humans it was passing over. It would be in Europe soon, probably to fulfil whatever mad scheme Thenabar had been implementing. She could feel him too, in the back of her mind, fighting and fuming.

It was so hard to focus when she was essentially the sum of so many flailing, screaming minds.

Will you stop resisting?Daggoth asked.

No, she replied, resolute.

The second she responded, the edges of the leviathans become fuzzy, teeming at the edges with mutalisks and devourers, the creatures flying out of the side of the living vessels like bees from a hive, swarming down towards her.

Luna responded by ordering every zerg under her direct control to come to her.

The wizards and witches that Abathur had warped were the first to respond, apparating in with a series of pops. The nydus worms surfaced a second later, disgorging a veritable flood of the smaller land bound zerg. The rest simply ran to her. She could see them, through the eyes of her own flyers, coalescing around her, abandoning every front, performing instinctive and half-hearted defensive actions as they ran, moving like so many drops of muddy water splattering in reverse.

The terrans were again closing in, maintaining a loose perimeter around the collective zerg forces, adding another edge of tension. They probably weren't even aware that the two entities were separate, but they couldn't have been moreso. Eventually, Daggoth's Swarm stopped several miles above the surface, and began to circle her, watching.

For now, no side struck. Each of the swarms were all but still as they examined the other, vast waves of flesh creating the borders between the earth and sky. Luna could feel Daggoth's considering mind sweeping over her bodies, pondering what to do even as she did the same.

(Transition)

Every zerg with intellect greater than a hydralisk was born with an awareness of certain things that never needed to be explained. Every one of them knew their capabilities, their place in the Swarm, and what they would be expected to use their abilities for. In other words, every zerg above a certain threshold of intelligence knew what the protoss were. It saved time educating them, removing the need for them to learn manually the way the lesser races did, and allowed them to enter the fray right after their birth. So while Thenabar was quite young by human standards, barely a few years old, he still knew exactly what the protoss floating on the other side of the room was as it flung lightning bolts and guarded the humans from the psionic master. And he knew to despise it, to despise the mere fact Dumbledore had seen fit to draw such a thing to this world.

This was one of the main reasons he was currently covered in spikes and armor, attempting to furiously pummel that insolent, decaying, ignorant human whelp into raw paste. Thenabar would be lying if he said that it was the only reason, but the last thing he needed now was to figure out why he wanted to pluck the irritating thorn out of his side.

His tentacles and hooks and spines and fists pounded down again and again, morphing into new forms every few seconds even as they pummeled the shield in front of him. The shield was stubbornly refusing to break, but Thenabar didn't care. So long as it cracked in the end, that was all that mattered. Then he would be free to rip and tear and eat what little was left. He wanted to taste that fear, the helplessness as Thenabar plucked away at his skin, the despair and dismay, and finally sweet resignation of Dumbledore's last moments. He wanted it so desperately he could almost taste it. Nearly unbidden, a half dozen more arms emerged from his torso, bulky, haired, and muscular. He noted the pain as a couple of them were blown off, but ignored it in favor of slamming the remainder against the shield hiding his prey.

Where was the fear, the dismay? Everything the man had ever known, crashing down around him, his species on the brink of extinction, the Swarm at the pinnacle of victory, his last bastion breached, and the human still refused to give him what he wanted!

There! Finally, Dumbledore was flowing with that addictive rush of fear. Thenabar pressed himself against the shield, trying to get closer to his sweet nectar, when he was suddenly pulled back. Thenabar flipped his head back and reversed his limbs, furious, looking to see what would dare to interrupt his meal. To his surprise, he was being pulled towards the Psionics master, one hand outstretched to grab his legs. One of its heads looked at him, while the rest directed their gaze upwards? What was so important above the...oh.

Thenabar looked up to see a titanic yellow eye, a thin black slit running through the center. Well, not quite so thin now, it must have been a few hundred meters across. Any further observations were cut off when Thenabar exactly what he was looking at. The pupil finished dilating.

The gaze bore down on the zerg like a physical force, surviving only because of the Psionic master's shield. One of the humans, the half zerg thief, hadn't survived, turned to stone. Tassadar was shielding Dumbledore, but even the famed templar was struggling. Ah well. Even if he didn't get to kill Dumbledore himself, the mixture desperation and resignation was proving itself to have an interesting aftertaste.

(Transition)

Abathur blinked. His mind felt odd, fuller, disjointed, like two essences refusing to mesh. There was something inside him, pushing at the edges of his psyche, as if it was larger than it was intended to be. The cocoon he was occupied with was swallowed into the floor of the evolution chamber as Abathur tried to figure out what was going on. The last thing he remembered, he had been riding the minds of the brutalisks, crushing the humans and buying time for Daggoth to arrive and deploy the basilisk weapon, but then there had been a sudden, intense ripping pain-

No, he had been working on a new strain, trying to recreate the ravagers of his future self's memories. And then he had felt the mind of the Overmind reaching into him, grabbing and adding...

Oh.

He would not have considered how the mechanics of resurrection would work when there was more than one Abathur walking around. Apparently the Overmind had deemed it necessary to simply merge one with the other. He would not question Its judgement, he would adapt.

Of course he would have to get rid of this silly notion of using anything other than the essence of the apex predators of each world's food chain. Clearly only the adaptations that had let creatures rise to the peak would be worthy of being used by the Swarm.

Of course, he would also have to get rid of this absurd notion that only the apex predators had any worthwhile adaptations or mutations to contribute. Every creature had clearly found some way to emerge alive from the pressures of natural selection.

Hmm.

He had quite a bit of work to do.

At the very least, it was quite a relief to not have to worry about Earth, or any of the miserable creatures upon it. Let Daggoth collect the useful strains and then wipe out all the rest. There was nothing of real value to worry about there.

For now, he should devote his efforts to resolving the issue of having two distinct consciousnesses in one body. He simply couldn't work while his mind was so divided.

For now, he should at least spend some of his efforts on his projects. The conflicting viewpoints could provide some unique innovations.

What a frustrating turn of events.

(Transition)

Will fighting us give you what you want?

I could ask you the same.

You may have a point, betrayer,Daggoth acknowledged. The swarm of zerg above shifted and warped, like a titanic dog tilting its head. Surrender your brood. We will scavenge this world and leave you to yourself. Surely that is acceptable.

If you touch what's on this planet, I'll make you pay, Luna snarled, agitating her own flesh. Her spines bristled under her crests, her claws spread wide, her wings shifted, ready to take the air, her hands raised, a dozen spells on the tip of her tongues.

The terrans were getting anxious now, not quite on the point of firing, but they still had their machines and infantry encircling the fully retreated Swarm. Luna hoped they wouldn't attack, that she wouldn't have to defend herself. She didn't see what the Swarm sought in this conflict, what goal they achieved, what the point of it all was. She really didn't want to have to kill more.

Really, what did they have to gain from this? What did they get here that they couldn't have gotten anywhere else, that they didn't already ha-Oh. Of course.

This was always about the wizards wasn't it? Luna asked.

Of course.

I could kill them all now. Luna moved her hands, putting them towards her own throats. The words of the Killing Curse sprang to the forefront of her mind. She'd never cast it, but most of them had. More than enough.

Daggoth's spiral accelerated. The terrans tensed. Luna waited.

All it would take was a twitch.

Suddenly, a voice boomed across their minds like psychic thunder. Daggoth, you shall take her brood, and leave the planet. This outcome is in accordance with my will.

An image of an eye suspended by thick knotted tendrils burned itself into Luna's mind. She had never realized just how powerful the Overmind really was. Its presence was so much stronger this close to its cerebrates. Strong enough that it took her a second to process what it had just said.

The Overmind was listening, it was doing what she wanted. Why?

I shall obey,Daggoth acquiesced. Far above, Luna could see Daggoth's brood descending slowly, hesitantly. The Overmind's will extended over her like a scalpel, carving away her Swarm, feeding the zerg into Daggoth's vessels and taking them off the face of the Earth.

(Transition)

The slitted pupil was suddenly hidden behind the massive eyelids, the pressure dropping immediately. Thenabar and the Psionic master looked up, confused, before the Overmind's influence washed over them too.

The protoss and human stood there in bafflement, exhausted beyond the point of fighting.

(Transition)

Luna turned on her heel, moving from one side of the planet to the other with a sharp crack, landing in the middle of Dumbledore and Thenabar. She looked over the alien, a protoss templar according to the whispers in the back of her mind, standing amid the rubble, corpses and singular stone statue still remaining around the hole left from the brutalisk. She could still feel it for now, pushing away stone and dirt on its way to the leviathans.

It would probably take a full day to evacuate the Swarm from Earth. At the very least the presence of a protoss would give her an opportunity to keep the humans off her back while she disappeared. Luna wasn't entirely sure where she wanted to go. The Amazon perhaps. She had wanted to go there for a long time, and it was easily large enough to hide in. But first, the present situation needed to be dealt with. She turned her eyes, just the two of them now, towards Thenabar, who was currently doing his level best to eviscerate Dumbledore. As she did so, she noticed Abathur's latest project. A grotesque thing, really. The people in it were long past saving at this point, and Luna could only be glad it would be gone soon, if only because the Swarm would put whatever remained of the people in there out of their misery. But no, she was getting distracted, putting off this final step. She once more turned to gaze at Thenabar.

"Hello Thenabar, Professor Dumbledore. It's been a while," Luna said, keeping her tentacles low to the ground, her voice as neutral as she could make it.

"Ms. Lovegood, it is quite a shame to meet you under such circumstances," the wizened old wizard said. Luna could see his hand still tensing around his wand.

"If it's any consolation, this should all be cleared up in a day or so," Luna replied, ignoring Dumbledore's shocked expression. There wasn't a hint of the ineffable wise old man now, or if there was Luna couldn't see it. Should she be sad about that? "In the meantime, would you and your friends mind giving me some privacy?"

Dumbledore took a teetering step forward, and Luna could see his limp for the first time. Another thing wrong, out of place. The invincible wizard, just about ready to collapse. Luna would have said it was the final nail in his coffin, but she was no longer so eager to see him dead. She had moved past that.

"I suppose I'm hardly in a position to refuse you, am I?" he chuckled humorlessly. It took him some for him time to navigate the ruined entranceway, but he gave Luna the privacy she had requested.

While the old human disappeared, Luna turned her gaze to the protoss. She supposed she should hate it, hate the enemy of the Swarm. She just couldn't work up the energy at the moment. From the looks of it, it couldn't either, arms hanging limply by its side despite the determined glare it was directing at her.

The Psionic Master flexed an arm, and then it was gone, the protoss somehow being taken with it by force. She felt the alien appear elsewhere, too far away to bother them.

"So, are you happy now?"

"Excuse me?" Luna asked.

"I'm just asking Luna, are you happy with how this went? I mean, you've tossed away the only beings who ever accepted you for a species that never so much gave you the time of the day." Thenabar said, grinning with a smile that didn't extend to his eyes.

"They were killing people Thenabar."

"So? You still betrayed us. And before that, you helped us. No matter how you look at it, you fucked up."

"Do we really have to do this? Can't I just say goodbye? Can't we just go our separate ways and end this?"

"Couldn't you have just gone along with us for just that little bit more? We were nearly done Luna, we were nearly finished with all of this!" Thenabar threw his hands forward pleadingly, dropping his grin. "We had nearly won!"

Luna shook her head. "I don't want to get into this. You were a friend to me for a while, so I'm saying goodbye. Goodbye Thenabar."

"So you really think you can live with yourself after this?"

"Thenabar, even if I live for another 200 years, I will still never regret what I've done here today." Luna snapped. "It was the right thing to do."

She hadn't expected him to burst into laughter, nearly doubling over in his hysterical fit.

"What's so funny?" Luna asked testily.

Thenabar took a second to gather himself, before falling once more into giggles. Eventually he managed to regain composure enough to choke out a question. "Did-did the Evolution Master never tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"We don't age Luna. You were planning to, what, hide off in an undeveloped area of this little rock until you die? If you were human, sure, that would be a fine plan, going off and dying in obscurity. But you aren't. You could wait around a century or millennia, and you'd still be just as healthy as you are now. So go ahead, try to hide and wait it all out, but trust me. The humans will never accept you, and they'll never stop trying to get to you. You'll have time for regret for what you've done, you'll have time to regret what you did, and when you've had enough time to change your mind, we'll be right there, waiting for you to come back. But don't worry Luna. We'll be waiting with our arms held wide open."

(He forgot the final transition again)

Zerg: The definition of a Zerg is that it's scary, it's organic, and it's trying to kill you in an attempt to harvest your DNA or biomass. Or, if you're very unlucky, both. ~f

(By that definition, Tyranid are also zerg. So, it's completely correct.)

Zerg: The zerg are a collective entity, mutable in form but never in purpose. They devour, they learn, and they evolve, warping themselves into more efficient and more effective forms they can use to continue their endless evolution. Larger concentrations of the Swarm are not so much infestations as forces of nature, overrunning entire planets in mere weeks. This power and adaptability is often coveted by other species, most notably the certain individual terrans or the Xel'naga known as Amon. The resulting attempts to control, emulate, or manipulate the zerg number almost as many as the zerg themselves, and each and every one has ended in abject and often bloody failure. Almost all of these failings can be traced back to a single misunderstanding; The belief that a Zerg can work for the good of an entity that is not of the Swarm. They may not be theoretically incapable of such actions, but they have never in their history demonstrated the slightest willingness to work for any species' good but their own. The zerg are, somewhat ironically, selfish and self-centered almost beyond reason. They serve themselves, and seek to evolve for their own sake alone. They may cooperate at times, they may even form lasting alliances. But they will always further their own goals before others, whether the cost may be.