~"As you can see, I am very much alive and not a frozen corpse. Meaning I was saved. As to by whom I was saved that day? Well, the answer should be pretty obvious."~
Ten years ago, Mt. Oum
The crash of the Terran machine didn't go unnoticed by the inhabitants of the mountain. Quite the contrary actually. They had been watching the entire area, because of the recent activities from space, namely several meteors entering the atmosphere of the planet. While the Hive may be well hidden and protected inside a remarkably huge cave system, they decided to be cautious and watch the oncoming rock bombardment. Luckily it was soon discovered that most of the meteorites were too small to actually reach the ground, before burning out in the atmosphere of the planet. The ones that were big enough to actually come through, would be too small to damage any of the Zerg structures if they even hit the immediate area, which they didn't. What one of the smaller rocks did manage to hit was one of the Terran flying vehicles, which class had yet to be identified.
Normally the swarm would dismiss such an unfortunate accident as not relevant, however, the opposite was the case this time. The craft just happened to land nearby the Zerg's main base of operations on this planet, which led the hive mind to the decision to investigate the crash site. Quickly a small group of Zerglings with the Metabolic Boost mutation were sent out to investigate the craft. With a speed that could rival most known Terran standard vehicles, the Zergling's made their way to their objective, guided by the Overlords, their equivalent to the Terran GPS, only more reliable.
It didn't take long for the Zerglings to arrive at the scene. Initially, they approached the site through some nearby bushes, in order to avoid possible detection by enemy forces. However, as it turned out this proved to be a useless endeavor. The vehicle had been abandoned by its occupants. It appeared that the Terrans successfully managed to evacuate the transport craft before it crashed on top of the mountain. The Hive Mind deemed it both unsafe and unnecessary to further investigate the craft and ordered the Zerglings to return.
As the pack made their way, one of the Zerglings sniffed a particular mixture of scents out of the air. Most of them came from the surrounding terrain, leaves, trees etc. Others could not be identified by name, but only their chemical composition. There was one specific scent that stood out, though. Granted it was always a little different, but this was unmistakably the scent of a human. Once this information reached the Hive Mind, it immediately gave new orders to the Zerglings, namely finding the human, but keeping a certain distance from them. The pack was to observe the human and await new orders.
Finding the human wasn't all that hard, seeing as it didn't move from its position. The reason for that became apparent rather quickly. The Zerglings moved as quickly and as silently as it was possible for them, not wanting to possibly startle the human. Hiding behind every bit of terrain, such as bushes and whatever small tree grew up this high in the mountains, the scent becoming stronger and stronger with each passing moment. The objective of the Zerglings came into visual range only a few minutes after they picked up the scent.
It turned out that the scent had come from a lone female Terran, which was lying on the ground. It or rather she was very small, indicating that she was not a fully grown specimen. This or she was suffering from a genetic defect. Terrans were inefficient after all. Inefficiency aside, Terrans normally didn't exhibit the habit of leaving their young behind, sometimes even if it was necessary for survival. As such, seeing one lonely youngling threw up a few questions. Where were her parents? Were they on the way here or were they still trying to locate the crashed machine?
Whatever the reason, this child just became a security issue for the swarm. The probability was high that sooner or later adult Terrans would appear looking for the child. The Swarm's Hive Cluster was hidden very well, but the Hive Mind knew better than to underestimate Terrans as had been previously proven. Security measures had to be increased the very instant.
Back to the child, it had yet to move on her own. The Zerglings could see her body slowly rising and falling, meaning it was still alive, but without their power armors, Terrans were a fragile bunch. There was no doubt in the Hive Mind that the child would die soon if left to its own. Maybe this was for the better. Once the dead body of the child would be found, the Terrans no doubt would stop their search, meaning an increased chance of the Swarm Cluster to not be discovered. Normally the Hive Mind wouldn't even waste a second considering other option, however, matters were a little bit more complicated.
Due to some…"unfortunate" circumstances, the Hive Mind was currently leaderless. Well, that was not completely true, as there were some higher beings left, which had full control over the Swarm, the problem was they were not born to lead. Oh sure they could lead the Zerg into battle and use other strategies than "attack until it drops dead", but there were certain traits which were required for a leader to have, which none of them possessed.
As such, a rather unconventional decision was made. The Zerglings were to pick up the human and bring it back to the Hive Cluster, alive. The Zerglings didn't mind the order. They didn't even have the brain capacity to mind. They were simple creatures made to scout areas, kill the enemies of the Swarm and throw their lives away for the survival of the Swarm.
Following the orders, one of the Zerglings approached the little girl, until it stood directly above her. The girl didn't react to the dangerous creature standing right next to her. She shivered a little, but this was mostly due to the wind, which had suddenly appeared, chilling the already cold body even further. Not wasting any more time, the Zergling roughly picked up the girl with its teeth and placed her on it's back. Well, that was the plan at least. In reality, all the Zerg managed to do was to tear the girl's clothes apart. Considering that Terrans needed those things in order to survive, this had been rather counterproductive. It took the combined effort of two Zerglings to put the girl on the third Zergling's back. They accomplished that by gently carrying the girl in their mouths on each end of her body. This resulted in her legs getting some rather nasty puncture wounds, which her neck luckily was spared from. There were still some bite marks though and frankly, it was a little miracle that the girl survived this treatment. On the other hand, the girl was now cold, with no way of keeping her warm in some way and bleeding.
With time no being on their side, the Zerglings, they took off towards the Hive Cluster. Unfortunately, they couldn't run at full speed since there was no way for the girl to hold onto the Zergling in her unconscious state.
/X/
"Wait, how do you know all of this if you were unconscious?" Blake interrupted Weiss' story, leaning forward on her living chair. The cat faunus had to admit, this thing was very comfortable, which didn't mean that she liked sitting on that thing or anything. It would have otherwise been...inconvenient.
Weiss, who was sitting comfortably on her own chair with her legs crossed, absentmindedly crawled the head of a Hydralisk, while answering. "I was actually going to get to this part right now. You see, most Zerg may be only useful for fighting purposes, there are some exceptions. Someone needs to lead these killing machines after all."
At a mental command, the local Hive Queen came out of the cave, casually approaching the four chairs outside. Ruby, Yang, and Blake eyed the new creature wearily, subconsciously reaching towards their weapons. Granted it looked rather clumsy and the girls could probably outmaneuver the things, but there were still more of those Zerg surrounding them right this very moment.
"This is the Queen of this particular nest. Her name is Syama."
"Greetings Terrans." The Zerg Queen greeted with a dry voice.
"IT CAN TALK?!" The non-infested girls exclaimed, throwing their arms up into the air and their eyes becoming completely white due to the dumbfounded shock. Weiss rolled her eyes at her team's antics.
"Really girls? It didn't even come to your mind that I might present a creature that can actually talk since this was only the topic I was currently talking about?"
"It appears Abathur was right. Terran brains are truly inefficient." The Queen commented off-handedly.
"Hey, are you saying we're dumb?!" Yang exclaimed, her shock being quickly replaced with anger.
"Yang, calm down," Weiss told her teammate. "Thank you for coming, Syama."
Syama simply made a short curtsy, before going back into the cave. In the meantime, Blake and Ruby also managed to catch themselves and were slowly sitting back down on their chairs.
"What was her deal?!"
"Relax Yang." Weiss groaned putting a hand on her forehead. "Don't let her comment get to you. Believe me, they're almost all like this."
"Tch." Yang pumped her fists together, glaring in the direction the Queen went.
"So, this was...the Queen of this nest, you said?" Blake asked for confirmation. Upon Weiss nodding, the faunus stated: "I guess one of those told you everything that happened?"
"Not exactly," Weiss admitted. "The swarm Queens usually don't talk too much. They mostly focus on their tasks of keeping their individual cluster running. The ones who told me what happened to me were the ones in charge of the Zerg."
/X/
~"I vaguely remember slipping in and out of consciousness from time to time. I remember being cold, feeling completely miserable...and yeah, that's about it. I must have been pretty close to dying, no surprise there. Luckily, the Zerg are surprisingly versatile, when it comes to survivability."~
Abathur was less than pleased with the state the small Terran had been brought to his Evolution Chamber. It was nothing unrepairable, but in his opinion healing the little girl would be a waste of biomass.
With the girl secured in two of his six arms, the worm-like Zerg creature violently removed the rest of the clothing, as it would only get in the way. Once this task was accomplished, he immediately crawled over to the pod he had prepared for the girl. The Gene Master could feel the blood pressure of the Terran simply by holding her and judging by how low it was, she had lost a critical amount of blood. Really, Abathur was expecting the girl to die any second now, but she managed to pull through somehow. The Gene Master made a mental note to check his own sequences, seeing as this was the second time he had been wrong about the survivability of humans. The first time had been on Cerus when the Queen of Blades entered the first Spawning Pool.
A green, transparent membrane grew above the girl, sealing the pot perfectly off. As soon as this was done, the pod filled with a Zerg liquid mixture, which was normally inside the eggs of growing Zerg units. There were some differences, for this girl was a special case, but in general, it was very much the same.
Once the pod was filled to the brim, Abathur began observing the changes the Zerg Virus did on the body, using his specifically designed eyes to take in every detail. It was at this stage where he would decide whether the girl would live or be turned into biomass the very instant. After he did some experiments with this specific Terran. Observation of the local Terrans had shown that they had abilities neither Terrans from the Milky Way or the Koprulu Sector possessed.
While he was observing the female Terran, Izsha, the Terran-snake-like being, which acted in a similar fashion to a Terran Adjutant, only better in her opinion, descended from the ceiling. She hovered just behind Abathur, looking at the pod the Gene Master was observing. The girl's face could be seen through the membrane, as it was floating pretty close to said membrane at the moment. From what Izsha knew of Terrans, this girl appeared to be sleeping peacefully, similar to a Terran-baby growing in the womb of a female Terran.
"Will she survive?" Izsha asked the Gene Master. Although she didn't doubt his abilities, there was always this one percent chance she counted into her calculation. The Queen of Blades once called it "Murphy's Law", which was another description of a certain Terran saying: Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Translated this basically meant it was best to be prepared for anything.
The Gene Master turned around upon being spoken to. "Damage not critical. Terran will recover. Zerg Virus exhilarates recovery. Pod supplies Terran with water, nutrients, and oxygen."
"I see." Izsha put one of her hair-claws on her chest. "And is she suitable for our needs?" The woman like Zerg-snake asked.
"Affirmative. Terran at pre-evolution stage of becoming psycher. Can finalize evolution. Zerg Virus helps. Establishes connection to Hive Mind."
"But if she is at the pre-evolutionary stage, she won't be as strong as Zagara, let alone the Queen of Blades." Izsha pointed out the flaw in the Terran female. Luckily, Abathur had solutions for this.
"Can artificially increase potential. Strong leader in short time. Limited options. Further growth slowed down.
Can infest Terran with evolutionary virus. Terran continues growing at normal rate. Leader growing strong takes longer. More possible mutations, greater adaptability.
Recommendation: Seek better specimen."
Izsha had listened intently to the solution of the Gene Master. At the suggestion of seeking a more gifted Terran however, she had to shake her head. "With have been leaderless for far too long. The more time passes, the higher the chance we return to a feral state. We'll have no choice but to take her. Our forces are too diminished to attack one of the human settlements to seek better-suited humans."
Abathur understood. Everything Izsha said was logical. If there was something the Gene Master outright feared it was to become feral once again.
"Awaiting orders. Chose proceedings."
Izsha didn't answer immediately, as this was a big decision to make. Both methods had their pros and cons to consider.
On the one hand, Abathur could probably accelerate the growth rate of the Terran female in order to be able to put more adjustments to her body. She wouldn't be as strong as the Queen of Blades, but she would be a force to be reckoned with. Plus Zerg never stopped evolving, so there was a chance she would become as strong as the Queen of Blades eventually. However, the growth rate would be significantly hurt, due to this being a child. Izsha didn't say she understood it completely, but apparently, from what she could gather from Abathur's thoughts, the sequences had to be manipulated in such a way that on the long run, their leader would have a harder time to grow in power. This could be also considered a good thing, as Zerg mutations often were triggered by severe stress, such as life-threatening situations.
On the other hand, Abathur could infest the Terran to a point where she would be technically a Zerg, but still, retain a lot of Terran sequences. From the outside, she would appear as human and would also grow as a human. Her power would grow slowly, but more significantly, which in the long run meant she would be much stronger, than if they gave her the full treatment now.
No matter the decision, the immediate threat would be dealt with, namely the swarm regressing into a feral state.
Izsha decided, before she gave her order, she would take a look at the memories of the child. What she found was interesting in its own right, but more important was what she didn't find. No tactical knowledge, no military or fighting experience, very limited knowledge of this world's military power and no combat experience. And these were just the biggest flaws the girl had.
However, these things could be worked out over time. A very interesting piece of information Izsha found was the existence of Huntresses and Hunters, elite warriors trained to fight against the forces of Grimm, the black animals which the Zerg had encountered on this planet. It was impossible to gather their essence, as their bodies somehow dissolved upon death. Catching one alive had proven to not solve the problem, as the biomass seemingly disappeared into nothingness, aside from their masks. Unfortunately, those were practically useless to Abathur.
Back to the matter at hand, Izsha had made a decision. "Proceed with the second option. The Terran isn't a special combat operative, like the Queen of Blades was before her infestation. However, through her memories, I found out that the local Terrans train their young to become elite warriors, who fight the foes we have encountered." Through the Hive Mind, Izsha showed Abathur what she had learned.
"Solution imperfect. Acceptable." Abathur conceded. "Train controlling Zerg via Hive Mind. Train fighting with Terrans. Infiltration mission. Learn strength and weaknesses of Terrans and Grimm." the green worm summarized Izsha's plan in his own unique way of putting things.
"Begin infestation."
/X/
"SAY WHAT?!" The non-infested of Team RWBY exclaimed in shock.
"T-they m-made you their leader?!" Ruby stuttered in shock.
Weiss nodded.
"But….err….you….how…." At this moment stopped working and was starting an emergency reboot.
Yang for once was at a complete loss for words. She was inwardly fighting with her emotions ranging from sympathy for her fellow teammate, because of what happened to her, to downright paranoia because of a lot of bad science-fiction movies.
Blake...she had a question. "So...uh….you're not going to impregnate us with your children, are you?"
Was that...longing? No, Weiss must have misheard. She certainly hoped she misheard. Of course, she could check, but er...after what she had seen in her brother's mind…
"Seriously Blake? THAT'S the first thing that comes to your mind? What kind of movies do you watch?"