One by one, she lifted them from their cockpits—tiny, thrashing, terrified—and placed them on a cloud. Not a prison. A nursery. Soft. White. Disorientingly peaceful.
They called themselves the Ascension Bullies. Clad in chrome and certitude, they had terraformed empathy into a weapon, shrinking dissent with a laugh and a laser. They piloted leviathans that peeled hope like a rind. But now, for the first time, they looked up —and saw her face in the ozone, calm as a murdered star. ascension bullies giantess
The bullies fired everything. Beams that had unzipped planets skittered off her skin like rain off a cathedral dome. She breathed in. Their missiles turned to dandelion seeds. She breathed out. Their armor rusted into kindness. One by one, she lifted them from their
And below, the small world exhaled for the first time in eons, because the bullies were gone—not punished, but promoted. Forced to ascend into something they had never tried: listening. They called themselves the Ascension Bullies