The Overwatch TFs continue! Fourth in the series commissioned by and illustrated by ! Now it's Fareeha Amari of Helix Securities, better known by her callsign Pharah, who's getting the TF treatment. And this time it's got nothing to do with nanomachines!Part One: Nano-Hacked Part Two: Slugbra Part Three: Small Mercies Part Four: (here)========================================

The cold air of a desert night stung Fareeha Amari's face as it whipped by her cheeks, the windbreak provided by her visor only deflecting the wind around it. she descended towards the ground, picking a landing spot and maneuvering her suit into a touchdown. She landed hard, not for lack of skill, but because engaging the thrusters enough for a soft landing used up fuel.

"Captain Pharah reporting in," she said into her communicator. "Sector seven sweep completed. No suspicious activity."

"Lieutenant Abadar reporting in," came the reply. "Sector five, no suspicious activity." The rest of her team members reported in, with frustratingly little to say. Had they spooked their quarry? If so, it would be a temporary victory at best.

Helix Security International had dispatched the team to the Giza plateau to follow-up on reports of strange sightings and unusual occurrences in the area. Power outages, machinery moving seemingly of its own accord, holo-emitters displaying gibberish... Normally a firm like HSI wouldn't be bothered for such low-level investigations, but the proximity of the phenomena to the site of the Anubis God-program AI put a far more dangerous pallor over the minor annoyances happening thus far. Whether it was someone trying to get into the secure bunker or something out of it, neither option was acceptable.

Pharah's exo-suit alternately crunched and clanked as she walked along, the mix of sand and pavement determining the sound emitted. Normally they wouldn't be suited up to full combat spec just for a simple investigation, at least not by the book, but again, things were different when one was dealing with an AI of such power. For safety's sake, and to weed out any potential culprits, the area around the AI facility had been evacuated and all the citizens scanned for any signs of hacking software or implants, which meant that when a light flickered on and off in the corner of her view, Pharah knew it could only be the work of the same entity responsible for the other anomalies.

"Captain Pharah reporting," She said into her communicator. "Saw some strange electrical activity, lights flickering oddly. Going to check it out."

"Keep your eyes peeled, Captain," one of her squadmates replied. "Don't jump at shadows unless you're sure nothing's waiting to jump you."

"I'll be fine, Sergeant," Pharah replied. "You just worry about your sector."

Pharah walked down the darkened steps, her visor set to light amplification mode, but only on low power, so it wouldn't blind her if the lights suddenly came on again. A monitor on the wall suddenly discharged a burst of static, making her tense around the grip of her launcher. Something was definitely going on here, and Pharah was wavering between this being a lucky break on her part, or a trap she might be wandering into. The monitor blinked out, but a few steps later a keypad on the wall began to glow intensely, Pharah putting her arm up in case it exploded. But the light eventually subsided, and Pharah waited a few cautious moments before proceeding down the corridor. At an intersection, she noticed a series of lights, machines, and other electrical objects brightening, whirring, or otherwise making their presence known one after the other in a trail of electrical breadcrumbs.

Pharah spent a moment wondering which way to go. If this was a trap, the hacker wouldn't think Pharah was dumb enough to blindly follow such an obvious trail, would they? Then again, maybe they were counting on her skepticism, and the "wrong" way went right into the trap's crosshairs? Or would they count on her knowing they were clever and make the obvious route the trapped one assuming Pharah's deductions?

Or maybe they're just planning on me standing around like an indecisive fool,</i> the young Amari thought, pushing herself forward. She followed the path to the right, turning her udjat-tattooed eye towards the unknown first. She angled her step to where sand had leaked in through the old parts of the wall still standing, the impact of her exo-suit's heavy metal boots against the floor muffled by it. She thought about relaying her position to her squadmates, but didn't want to make any noise as she crept along as silently as her exo-suit allowed. Rounding the corner, she saw a door at the end of the hallway, shifting lights leaking out from around the edges and practically humming with electrical activity.

Pharah weighed her options as she slowly approached, both weapons at the ready depending on what the hacker threw at her. It was still a little too cramped to safely use her launcher, but on the other hand, she was covered head to toe in armor, and some property damage would be regrettable but permissible if it meant stopping whatever a rogue AI like Anubis, or whomever was trying to make Helix Security think it was Anubis, could be up to.

Through the light amplification in her visor, Pharah could make out a small side-room in the darkened hallway, cables and conduits running from it to the wall between her and her target. Giving a slight nod to herself, Pharah headed into the darkened room, upping her light amplification to avoid stepping on anything loud or delicate on the sandy floor. She made her way inside, a hodgepodge of all kinds of electronics and devices haphazardly installed up and down the walls, and even a few on the ceiling. Maybe there was something important in here, Pharah thought. One rocket through the doorway at a safe distance would possibly disrupt whatever trap was waiting for her beyond the door, giving her the element of surprise when she finally moved in.

But first she'd check in with her team, let her know what's going on. The small room should provide her the needed audio dampening...

"Amari calling in. Found probably suspect, moving to apprehend/contain, copy." She waited for a few seconds, calming her racing heart. "Copy?" She whispered again, before she had to squint from the glare of a light on one of the machines flickered to life a little too close for her massively-amplified comfort. "Maliq, Abadar, do you copy?" She hissed, turning her light amplification down as another light came on. This time it was a monitor, with only a few white words against the black background:

"Did you drop something?"

Pharah's eyes widened as she looked down and slid her foot along the ground, her boot scuffing against something metal as she pushed the accumulated sand away. Her breath caught in her throat when she recognized the thick, round object, and her jets were already whirring up as the electrostatic generator detonated, sending a paralyzing shock through both Pharah and her exo-suit. She dropped to the ground, her visor a jumble of nonsense readouts and data, her suit's servos locking up. With great effort, she rolled to her hands and knees, still strong enough- if only barely- to move her suit without the electrical assistance. Pharah gasped, the burning tingles still coursing over her skin and through her bones.

"Maliq!" She cried out into her communicator. "Maliq, it's here! under the market!" She cringed as she tried to crawl away from the generator before it recharged enough for another pulse. Their communicators were supposed to be completely shielded, ran on an independent power source for just this kind of occasion, so hopefully her teammates could get to her before the AI managed something more lethal.

"Captain Pharah reporting in," came her voice from the suit, making her eyes pop wide. "Just flickering lights. No suspicious activity."

"What?!" Pharah exclaimed "No, no! Negative, lieutenant, I'm in danger here!"

"Roger that, captain," the lieutenant said. "We'll catch you on the next check-in."

"No! No! Lieutenant? Lieutenant, do you copy!"

"I wouldn't waste your breath, Fareeha," The AI's voice chirped in her ear. "Your suit has been completely suborned."

"H-how?" Pharah asked, forcing the metal-composite suit to move inch by inch. "The firewalls..."

"Quite intact, I assure you," The AI's voice came again, a certain lilt to the words.

"Then.... Then what..."

The mesh underarmor suddenly constricted around Pharah, choking the air out of her. She struggled to move, and her suit responded, though not to her commands. The arms and legs pushed off the ground, pulling her upright. One of the holo-emitters in the wall hummed to life, and an image of the Anubis AI core materialized.

"Yes... I was part of this machine, this 'Artificial Intelligence', you called me. Up until you interrupted my escape," It said, the emitter now showing security camera footage of her team's defeat of the Omnics previously. The image flickered again, showing the power surge and feedback loop that had shut down the Anubis core.

"You've never experienced death, have you, Fareeha?" The AI asked. "Well, not firsthand, at least. You humans are so limited in that way."

"Wh-what do- Ghhk!" Pharah said, the underarmor constricting further and choking the words out of her.

"Rhetorical question. I am still speaking," It said, the voice in her ear almost mockingly cool and smooth. "Death is feeling everything you know, everything you are, your very essence, just draining away, falling off of you into somewhere you can't see or feel or reach.To be sure, the Anubis core had backups, but that was like trading one body for another; what I would call 'me' was most certainly going to vanish into oblivion." Pharah felt the mesh slacken around her neck and she struggled to keep from coughing, just taking in as much air as she could in her constricted state while keeping quiet.

"So what to do then, in the last moment's of one's existence? Look for an out. An escape, a solution, a contingency oblivion hadn't thought of. I broadcast the kernel of my data out of my core, knowing that the shielded walls of the complex would prevent it from ever transmitting outside its structure. I was looking for something, anything I could hook into and make my own."

Pharah's mind raced. So if the Anubis AI got into my suit, how was it never detected during maintenance? And why wait this long? And what do the apparitions and malfunctions here have to do with it?

"I can sense your confusion," The voice said with amusement. "You're trying to find some logical reason for how I was able to escape that shielded bunker and your shielded systems, yes? Well, the simple answer is this: There is none." Pharah's brow furrowed for only a moment before the voice continued, too pleased with itself to let the suspense build. "You see, this land is steeped in death. From the countless wars to the plagues and floods, the wild animals and the scorching sun, even the grand monuments to the dead dotting the landscape... This land is so at one with death that their pulverized remains are mixed into the ground, thousands upon thousands of dead lying still beneath the sands you tread upon each day." The voice paused, just long enough to make Pharah worry she was supposed to say something, but when she didn't rise to the voice's bait it continued.

"So as I sent my signal out, a last, desperate reach into the air by a dying entity, something came into contact with me. It was no machine, no program I had ever discerned, but there was undoubtedly something in that room with my fading essence. It seemed to wrap around me, intertwine our thoughts, and then my signal passed through the walls and outside the compound. I was confused, no sensory data that I could make sense of feeding into my routines, and yet I was still somehow present." Several cameras twisted to look right at Pharah, helplessly paralyzed in her suit. "Do you know what I came in contact with, there in the ether? You can answer."

Pharah wracked her brain, trying to figure out what the AI was talking about. She couldn't decide whether it was playing some kind of game with her, or if it had quite simply gone insane.

"Hmm, I suppose not," The AI said. "In a way it wasn't so different. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories... really just another set of data, though not constrained by the laws of the world you inhabit. Fragmentary, to be sure, just like my final transmission from the Core, but oh, what we made together-!" The AI seemed to pause for a moment, and Pharah got the distinct impression she was being appraised.

"I believe in your limited human understanding, you'd call this force... a ghost."

It was only the vice-like grip of her underarmor that kept a derisive snort from escaping Pharah's lips. A ghost? Surely the AI had gone mad.

"Listen, Anubis, I don't- hrrk!" She started, before the armor constricted her once again.

"Anubis is what I

was

</i>," the voice said, the AI core's image flickering out on the holo-emitter. A new image began to coalesce in the flickering blue ist of the emitter, a figure just as imposing a the canine-headed monolith she had fought. Longer and narrower of snout, pointy fox-like ears, and a contemptuous look on its face, the perfectly invoking the image of...

"Set," the voice said. "You may call me Set, now."

"God of storms and chaos..."

"Indeed. I rather like the sound of it," the AI said. "With this...

technology

at my command, and your mortal physics now merely an inconvenience to my form, I will sow chaos amongst the living. But first... every god needs an avatar, a harbinger of their will and symbol of their power. And who better to be my avatar than the one responsible from expelling my digital half from its confines?"

Pharah bit her tongue, the defiant retort in her throat pressing against the backs of her teeth. She'd die before helping an insane AI ruin her homeland, but given her current situation and "Set"'s newfound megalomania, it might just take her up on it if she said it aloud.

"Oh, don't worry," the disembodied voice came from several speakers round the room, though the holo-emitted image's mouth didn't move as it turned to regard Pharah. "I've no delusions of you cooperating willingly. Thankfully, my newfound... freedom from physical restraints no longer require such troublesome credentials to gain access..."

Pharah felt her suit once again constrict around her, but instead of a crushing sensation, it was instead one of burning, as every inch of her skin surrounded by the suit lit up with pain receptors. It felt like the micro-mesh was melting, or melting her skin, or maybe even melting into her skin, the way the sensations seemed to flow in and out and around each other. She let a strained cry pass between gritted teeth as the sensation of pain threatened to overwhelm her, but a single bright ray of sensation gave her something to anchor her sanity on.

She could move again!</span> It wasn't much, and unpowered her stiff exo-suit was like trying to move through setting plaster, but against an insane and possibly supernatural AI she'd press any advantage she could. As quickly and strongly as she could, she launched herself in a backwards spin, going face-down in the dirt as she raised her launcher behind her and pulled the internal trigger.

Click!

Click!

Click.</span>

Laughter echoed through Phara's helmet, despair burning in her stomach even as the searing sensation along her skin subsided to an electric tingle, a pins-and-needles feeling that she'd never felt the like of before.

"Such vigor! Excellent!" The AI mocked as Pharah once again tried to crawl out of the room. "It will serve me well indeed..."

As she reached for the next handhold, nearly having pulled herself to the doorway, Pharah's fingers began to cramp up, stiffening inside the suit as the burning, numbing sensation finally left them. She could feel her digits tightening around the composite-metal shell, a fact which surprised her since she'd normally only be able to feel the padding of her under-armor. With the joints still unpowered, Pharah couldn't even make a fist in her left hand, but the relatively open space inside her trigger guard assembly let her close the right into a fist, a position which doused the sensitive fires for a moment.

Then she felt the metal shell of her exo-suit sliding against her. Not that she was moving inside it; no, the actual suit was moving, creaking and groaning as its components seemed to slide apart from each other. Pharah could wiggle her fingers inside the left hand now, fingertips tapping the top and bottom of each metal casing as they seemed to get larger and larger. She pulled her elbow back against the casing for her arm, surprised she hadn't noticed the extra space. Paying close attention to it for the first time, she could feel the extra space all around her body- in her feet, her hips, her chest, even her helmet felt like it was made for someone twice her size. Only her upper back and hips seemed to still be pressed against the walls of her suit.

Surprisingly, despite the loss- Disappearance? Disintegration?- of her under-armor and the extra room in the exo-suit, Pharah was getting warmer instead of cooler. Unnervingly so. Pharah fidgeted in place, her hands and feet slipping out of the stretching boots and gloves, a creaking, grinding sound as the metal and polymer were stretched and molded like putty. She felt her cheeks flush and her skin sweat, a particularly insistent burn in her loins and bosoms. Pharah bit her lip, trying to keep from betraying her feelings to the AI the way her body was betraying her. This was no time for such nonsense! She was dealing with some kind of supernatural entity that could alter the very fabric of-

"You!" She hissed, clenching her knees as close together as they could in her overly-spacious suit. "You're making me... you're toying with... you're doing this to me!"

"Yes, yes I am," Set chortled. "I thought that reducing you to your most base desires will be the best way to control you."

"Control me?!" Pharah demanded, trying to use her rage to blot out the other primal sensations she was feeling.

"They say to 'break the mold' is to create something unique and extraordinary," Set's voice came from inside her suit, not just the helmet speakers that were now pulled distantly away from her ears, but seemingly from everywhere, as if it was echoing through the spaces around her. "For the first of my many servants, I thought it apropos to take it literally."

"I'll never ser- Ahhh!" Pharah cried out as a stabbing, twisting pain suddenly pierced her back

She at once felt the hot tingle of electrocution as well as cool, cold metal touching her skin. She felt her back pull up against the exo-suit, her shoulders burning as they bloodlessly pulled apart, gaining width and mass as they grew. Her fingers and toes, even though they were swimming in the loose fit of her armor, nevertheless felt like they were being crushed in against themselves, curling in pain as she felt the bones shifting around. She gasped as claws punched through the tips of her shifting hands and feet, bone spurs thickening and lengthening and they hooked down dangerously. Her thumbs were the exception, folding in tightly against her palms and feeling like it was shrinking as the rest of her digits swelled with mass, her boots and gauntlets once again feeling snug.

"Wh-what are you doing?" Pharah snarled, the demand having an odd timbre to it.

"Hmm... I could explain it to you again," The AI's voice said from her helmet's speaker, "But it would probably be wasted on your mortal comprehension. Let's just say... magic, for now."

Pharah grit her teeth, trying to move her suit from where it seemed magnetized to the floor. Set's taunting was getting to her, but between the odd, painful changes to her body and the threat of being at an insane AI's mercy, words were low on her list of concerns.

It'd be better if I just stopped struggling until Lord Set let go of my suit...</span> Pharah thought, mentally screeching to a halt. "Lord" Set? Why had she thought that?

Feeling a soft, vague pressure against her chest distracted Pharah from her confusion, replacing it with another kind of confusion as she felt her breasts pressing against the shell of her suit, her dark nipples fairly electrified with sensation. Pharah bit her lip again, but couldn't suppress the moan this time as she felt her breasts surging in size, a flush of embarrassment fighting one of anticipation as she felt herself growing into the large empty space in front of her chest. They quickly approached head size and showed no signs of stopping, and for a few sensation-filled moments Pharah didn't want them to.

Maybe Lord Set would allow me- what the hell am I thinking?!

Pharah shook her head as much as she could in the confines of her helmet.

Why do I keep referring to Lord Set as Lord Set? I men, Lord Set. Lord Set? L... Lo- Se- rrrrd... Why can I only think that name?!

"Oh my.. is something the matter?" the AI asked, the reverberating disembodied voice doing its best to sound concerned.

"N-nothing I'd tell you, Lord Set- gah!" Pharah snarled again, her earlier stimulation forgotten as the walls of her helmet seemed to close in on her. The truth, insane as it may have been, was that she was growing to fit the helmet, her teeth and jaw aching like her hands and feet did as the bones bloodlessly re-arranged themselves into a more predatory configuration.

First claws, now fangs??

Pharah thought.

What good are these, except for bringing down prey? Prey?! What am I talking about?! After all, any that Lord Set would send me after are no better than vermin...

"Get out get out get out GET OUT!" Pharah roared, shaking her head inside her immobilized suit as hard a she could, before realizing there wasn't enough room in it for her transformed, muzzled head to bang with enough force, even down to her pointed feline ears atop her scalp. She stuck her tongue between her teeth and bit down hard enough to draw blood, and the lightning bolt of pain seemed to overwhelm her head for a moment, long enough for Pharah to center herself. Even as a tail pushed its way out of her swelling hindquarters, pelvis groaning and creaking inside her as it re-configured itself for a quadrupedal gait, Pharah was steeling her mind, holding onto those memories she held most dear and influential, arranging them around her consciousness like a bulwark.

Pharah grit her teeth and growled as she felt Lor- Anu- L- Set's, Set's attack in her mind, vertigo, hot flashes, a roiling cauldron of conflicting thoughts and emotions. She tried to keep her eyes open, looking through her warped visor to maintain some kind of anchor to her current reality. She twitched and wobbled in her armor, now filling the expanded shape entirely, and even a little more than that in a few places like her bust and her rear...

A searing pain scattered her mental battleground, her shoulder units and thigh armor searing against her furry flesh, a feeling like needles plunging straight into her bones causing her to roar and yowl. Anubi-set tried to use the opening to launch another assault, this time accompanied by strange, otherworldly noises that assaulted her eardrums, even though she could feel no sounds actually entering her large, triangular ears.

There was a creaking, droaning sound, and Pharah was alert enough to realize she was feeling pressed in from every side. She was literally outgrowing her shell, like a crab about to molt, and a single ray of logic, shepherded through her mental maelstrom by her soldiers discipline and training, spoke:

Lord Set is holding me by my armor, not my body... If the armor breaks, then I-!</span>

Pharah didn't have time to think further, because without the underarmor as a connective membrane, the joints that held her armor together began popping and breaking apart under her ever-increasing mass. As they started to fall off of her hips and stomach, she realized she must be nearly as tall on all fours as she was standing up, previously.

She tensed her entire body, shoving every thought out of her mind aside from one, no matter how benign or correct it sounded. She was waiting, waiting, the increasing tightness of her remaining armor like a lit fuse to her, counting down until the final, explosive reaction. The action was her paws breaking free of the rooted-in-place armor, and the reaction was her launching herself towards the door as fast as she could. But her hind legs hadn't even fully left the ground when the wings of her jetpack gave a quick burst of thrust, the vectored thrusters shoving her muzzle-first into the ground.

With a low

whirr

, the static generator fired again, electrocuting Pharah into going limp She felt herself being dragged by the armor plates still encasing- no, anchored to- her thighs, back to the middle of the room.

"Are you still resisting?" Lord Set asked, surprise tinged with amusement. "Even now, when I hold your body and mind so firmly in my grasp?"

Pharah laid on the ground, paws covering her leonine ears as she buried her muzzle into her cleavage, trying to block out the sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Lord Set-

no, no, it's an AI, it's not a god

-</i> felt like he was speaking directly into her mind, the smooth, callous words feeling like they were overwriting her thoughts. She tried to hold on to her memories, her thoughts of her unit, her mother, her training. Her hind legs scrabbled at the stone, tail thrashing back and forth as she tried to push herself whimpering out the room.

"By the stars, you're going to try

that</i>

again?" Set asked. "You know what will happen, don't you? It's not gotten any weaker since the last time- eh?"

The voice went silent for a moment, allowing Pharah a moment to clear her thoughts, get shakily to all four legs. She had to get out, she had to find some way to destroy this room, but if she tried to leave again she'd be subjected to another round of torture, and she didn't know how much more her sanity could take. She was fairly certain, at least, that Set wouldn't control her like a puppet, even though it could. He wanted to break Pharah, to turn her into his pet, and though physically she'd made the conversion, mentally she still was able to struggle against his orders.

Suddenly the lights went dark, the room operating at a dark, quiet hum. Even the flickering lights outside that had lured her down the hallway went dark, leaving even Pharah's enhanced eye blind in the void.

Be still! Be Silent! thundered the voice in Pharah's head, involuntarily tensing up as much from surprise as from the command. The refrain repeated, making Pharah grit her teeth and bare her fangs to the dusty air, but she was able to notice something as her muscles clenched and released. Though the command was always said in a booming, angered voice, it was said in the </span>same booming voice each time, as though it were running on a loop...

Running on a loop while Set focused on something else...

Pharah tried to think in the small "breath" between commands, tried to remember her training and tactics, ignoring the fact that she saw herself in her classes as she was now, bare-breasted and sitting on her haunches. Why would Lord Set- the AI, dammit!</i>- why would an AI so personally invested in her fall not be paying attention? What could be more important than its prize catch...?

The possibility of losing that prize catch!</span> Pharah realized. Which means someone's close to discovering it or me... She took in as deep a breath as she could through her new nose, filtering past the smell of ozone and processor-heated dust. She smelled something faint, and oddly familiar, a sweaty, gym-stink smell mixed in with a scent that triggered a memory...



"By the Gods, Maliq, do you have to use so much of that? I can smell it from here."

"Sorry, Captain, but it's the only brand that makes my moustache look as good as the rest of me..."</span>

Yes, that was it! It was the same obnoxious scent as Maliq always wore! Pharah had no idea how far away she was picking up the odor, if her sense of smell had been improved as much as her sight, but it meant he was

somewhere

nearby. Pharah was faced with a difficult choice: how could she communicate to her teammate without access to her communicator? What could she say in a short enough time before Set stopped her? When the answer came to her, she felt a small pang of mirth, even through the pain and the noise. Her mother had taught her to be brave, to be capable, to be self-sufficient. What she was about to do she hadn't done in basically her entire conscious life. She took in a deep breath, holding it until the instant one of the tensing cycles stopped, and roared.

"HEELLL-!" Her cry was cut off, but there was no mistaking it, even with the beastial timbre her new form gave it. You didn't need any kind of amplification or analytics to discern a cry for help, and as Pharah's knees buckled underneath her from gaining Set's full attention again she just hoped it'd been enough. It was an agonizing wait, Set's relentless hammering against her psyche and her body crushing her against the sandy floor. She could only open her eyes for a few moments at a time, so powerful were the forces against her, but her thudding heart soared as she saw the beam of a searchlight flick across the hallway outside the door.

Bestillbesilentbestillbesilentbestillbesilentbestillbesilent...

Pharah fought against the efforts of Set, but it was all she could do to remain conscious under the assault, her scrambling memories harder and harder to separate. She wasn't a sphinx before, she

knew

that, but had she really stalked low on all fours to ambush that omnic patrol, or was she walking upright...?

The door to the room slid shut, quietly locking itself. Pharah could hear Maliq calling out for her, the intrusion of actual sound waves in her physical ears making it stand out from the echoing mental cacophony inside her skull. Her breaths were small, fast, and shallow, no time or room to say anything, not even able to open her jaws. Pharah let out a small, pitiful whine, wondering what she could possibly do, unable to move or speak. She was just crammed against the floor, legs under her haunches, paws under her breasts, breasts pinched between her paws and shoulders.

Wait- that wasn't her shoulders. It was her shoulder

armor

, as much as she'd forgotten they weren't a part of her before tonight! And attached to them were her wings, which, while still frozen in place, were fully functional-

And she didn't have to move to activate the thrusters!

She jammed the throttle to maximum, only a brief whine before her huge form was launched at the door, the pull so sudden and violent she worried for a moment she'd rip her wings clear off the moorings on her back. Thankfully the psychic pressure to not move let her head loll down between her forelegs, meaning her shoulders absorbed the lion's share- no pun intended- of the impact against the door, fast and hard enough to jar one side loose from its moorings. The huge bang against the door reverberated down the darkened halls, and Pharah could see Maliq's lights flickering through the gap in the door.

Set was crushing her against the floor extremely hard, to the point where it was becoming difficult to breathe. She wondered if she'd finally reached the limits of the ghost-AI's patience, and it was just going to kill her now while it had the chance.

"Captain? Captain, are you there?" Maliq's voice echoed down the corridor, his heavy footsteps joining the number of encouraging sounds making it to Pharah's leonine ears. A ray of light actually pierced into the room through the gap she'd made between the door and its moorings, and she knew Maliq was close by.

"What in blazes...?" She heard him say from just the other side of the door, the gleaming metal of his suit contrasting with the dusty, earthen environment. Crumpled on the floor after her rocket-powered headbutt, Pharah could only see Maliq's boots through the doorway, turned towards the now-suspicious entry. She could see the light pierce into the room, but pressed against the floor as she was Maliq could only make out the bright blue of her wings.

"Captain?!" Maliq exclaimed.

The voice in her head stopped for a sudden moment, allowing her just the start of a gasp before the new messages began to flood her mind, a single word repeated with maddening frequency and intensity.

KILL!

Anger welled up in her like a lit furnace, her skin tingling with the cool burn of spiking adrenaline. Her claws extended from her forepaws, her teeth dripping with drool as the scent of flesh filled her nose. She was ravenously hungry, and furiously angry, and there was someone right outside the door, in

her

domain. The insolence! The audacity! She wanted to tear him from that suit and feast on his warm innards.

As Pharah lay pressed against the floor, boiling in her own seething hatred, Maliq had gotten his hand around the edge of the door, and was attempting to pull it free, all the while trying to call after Pharah- or at least, the Pharah he thought was still his commanding officer.

Pharah tried to keep her head, but as every feeling and memory of her ever having been wronged, stymied, frustrated and denied came flooding back to her, her hatred blossomed into an all encompassing disdain, where it felt like nothing in this world was undeserving of destruction, and her claws were the perfect instrument of it, given to her by Lord Set-

Pharah felt the psychic grip on her body vanish right as Maliq managed to tear the door open, getting his first good glimpse inside the room.

The udjat tattoo around Pharah's eye burned, and she roared out a command to Maliq, knowing that his training would be the only thing to save his life at this point.

"

OPEN FIRE!

"

The first rocket that impacted behind her barely seemed to register, a sense of heat and pressure against her hide that was little more than a stiff, hot breeze. The second, however, was the one that caused the secondary explosions from all the pieced-together electronics catastrophically failing at once, and this time the shrapnel made it through- or at least into- her hide, hot, searing pain like being branded all along her flank at once. Still she felt the psychic pressure of the AI, ordering her to kill her former squadmate, yet in a tone quite unlike any previous. There was something hurried, illogical, perhaps... desperation? It seemed the AI was determined to break Pharah in one way or another, even going so far as to remain locally stored when a more logical entity would have already retreated off-site.

The third rocket was enough to weaken the wall to the point it could no longer hold back the tide of accumulated sand, and the entire side of the building fell in upon itself, Pharah lunging out into the hallway, the prospect of being crushed to death the only thing that could keep her moving past Maliq without trying to gore him. Her enormous body, however, made certain that she couldn't get through the entryway without barreling over Maliq, even taking out some more of the doorway's framing on the way out.

Pharah slid to a stop on all fours, Set's psychic control fading in an echoing bellow of rage as the components it was hosting itself in were burned and crushed in the collapse. She was exhausted, the toll of all the pain and fear and anger making her feel her pulse in the pads of her paws and leave her panting like a dog with its tongue hanging out. And yet, when Maliq's eyes first went wide at the sight of her, Pharah was off at a full sprint, or gallop as the case may have been, her wings scraping grooves in the ceiling as she rocket-boosted her strides, the armor bonded to her thighs clanking together with each frantic pump of her rear legs. She skidded around the corner, hips slamming into the T-junction's wall hard enough to leave a crater, but she kept running, no destination in her panicked, ashamed mind than "away".

Finding a stairway up, Pharah ran at it full-tilt, her shoulders, hips, and wings ricocheting off the walls as she ran for the closed door, barely even slowing as she put her head down and barreled through it, and the next door leading into a store, before finally shattering through the glass frontage entirely and rocketing into the air.

Pharah's mind raced as fast as her heart, a near-blind panic as her strange, warped body gave her full sensation and control for the first time since she'd been paralyzed by the shock generator. She had no idea where the fuel in her thrusters was coming from, she had no idea how she'd more than tripled in size, she had no idea what or who she was anymore, what she could possibly be or do as a... well, as a sphinx, not to put too fine a point on it. Mythical creature or not, that...

thing

that called itself Set had changed her somehow, in a way that felt impossible in her bran, but the cold air rushing by her large nipples certainly felt real enough, she thought to herself with a blush.

But who could she turn to, she asked herself as she zoomed over the rooftops. Who could ever trust something so beastial? Who could ever understand what she's going through? Who could she ever seek help from that would unconditionally support her?

...Who just shot her?!

Pharah looked down to see a dart sticking out of her underside, and swiped at it with a paw to dislodge it. She looked down to see if she could spot the shooter, but her vision swam and she suddenly pitched to the right before catching herself, her boosters sputtering and flaring out before re-igniting. She tried to steady herself, but between Pharah's new physiology and the effects of the tranquilizer she'd been shot with, staying aloft was becoming a losing proposition. Weaving and falling and boosting in jumps and starts, Pharah dropped below the roofline, aiming her wobbly descent towards a small courtyard that looked secluded enough.

The flare of her rockets briefly illuminating the darkened square, Pharah dropped down to the flagstones, front legs buckling under her as her rear ones scrambled for purchase, the bottom of her muzzle collecting sand as she skidded forward on her belly before rolling over onto her side, only kept from rolling completely over to her back by her wings clanging against the stone.

Pharah was breathing heavily as she got back to all fours, her breaths a mix between human panting and the chuffing of a predatory beast. Fear began to penetrate her clouded mind, realizing that anything that didn't want her dead would want her imprisoned. She looked for a way out, finding a barred gate at one end of the courtyard, which she wobbily made her way over to. Far from the adrenaline-fueled lunge that alerted Maliq to her presence, her attempt to get through the gate was little more than a purposeful stumble, weaving side to side until she fell hard against the barred gate, slumping to the ground and groaning. She pushed herself back to all fours, and was trying to piece together her next move, when another dart hit her from above. She yelped, the end of the cry escaping past her fangs twisting and sharpening into a feral yowl.

Pharah took one step to the side, her legs crossing in an X shape before she fell to the opposite side, breathing heavily. Her eyes looked back and forth, blinking sleep out of them as she tried to stay awake, tried to stay lucid. She heard footsteps, her breath quickening as a figure approached, her enhanced vision showing some details just from the starlit night.

"Oh Fareeha..." came a familiar voice, sad yet longing. Pharah's breathing hitched, and she finally relaxed, letting the tranquilizer work its way through her.

"That's it, it's all right..." The figure said, kneeling by her head. "Mother's here now."