The Process Forum - New TF Story

Kaiyotea's comments inspired me, so I pushed through and finished the next chapter. Here you go! :D
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Katie frowned as she pulled into her apartment complex, seeing the red and blue lights of a police car illuminating the stucco walls of the surrounding buildings. She hoped nobody had gotten seriously hurt. She made her way past the front parking lot, seeing that there were lots of lights; something really serious must have happened.
It wasn't until she rounded the corner into the rear parking lot and saw the vehicles all clustered around her and Mary's building that her heart dropped into her stomach. Katie pulled her car into the first available spot and just stared out her window. They were all crowded around their end of the building, that was for sure. It looked to be four cop cars, and... a SWAT van?
"Good God, sister, what did you do?" Katie asked as she opened her purse and rummaged for her cell phone. She dialed both her number and Mary's, but neither phone even rang, it just gave a "your call cannot be completed as dialed" message. Katie sighed and leaned back in the seat, wondering what she could do. Could she wait it out, maybe check into a hotel? Only for a day or two at most; once she changed back into boobzilla Mary was pretty much the only person who wouldn't run screaming from her. Katie looked at the steering wheel and held her arms up in front of her, realizing that with her monstrous bosom's girth she probably wouldn't even be able to reach the wheel.
"Hrrrraagh..." Katie muttered as she got out of her car, shutting the door softly so as to not attract any attention. How was she going to get into Mary's with the police in front of it? All the doors and windows were front-facing. But then again, Katie thought as she walked between the two buildings, those tentacles were pretty strong- maybe Mary could make her a door or something.

Katie edged her way behind their apartment building, glad to get off the concrete where her heels made a rather conspicuous clicking. She amde her way back across the rear of the building, passing the fist two units before freezing at a man's barked orders. Katie spun to see a man in a bulletproof vest, a shotgun against his shoulder and leveled at her.
"Hands above your head!" The officer barked as he stood near the tree line, and Katie dropped her purse to the ground and raised her hands high.
"Dispatch, got an african-american woman around back of the suspect's complex, please advise," He said into his shoulder-mounted walkie-talkie. The radio sqwaked and some garbled words came out, that rapid-fire stacatto of acronyms and police codes that only Police could seemingly make heads or tails of, though Katie was able to make out the words "detain" and "lieutenant."
"Ten-four, dispatch," The officer said, never taking his eyes off her. "Turn around and get down on your knees!" He yelled, and Katie quickly complied, wodering for the hundredth time what on earth Mary had done to earn this kind of reaction. She worried about what the Body could have done had it taken complete control of Mary; she'd seen Mary at a rather huge size, and given the Flesh's indestructible nature there wasn't a whole lot they could probably do to her.
"Lay down with your hands behind your head!" The officer barked again, and Katie complied, hearing the pine needles crunch under the foosteps of the officer as he approached. Katie was so concerned with Mary that she didn't even protest the indignity of being handcuffed; all she wanted to do was make sure Mary was okay. The police couldn't hurt her, of that she was nearly certain, but the Body, if it somehow took over...
"So is there anything left of you in there? Where's 'Mary'?" Katie heard in her head, fretting about what the answer was now.
"What'cha got?" A voice from her right said, and Katie turned her head to see another officer with a shotgun coming down the treeline towards them.
"Someone sneaking around to the back of the suspect's apartment," The first officer said as he go up off of Katie's back. "Gonna take her to the lieutenant."
"Rodger," The second officer said. "Need help getting her up?"
"Sure, take an arm," The first officer said, transferring his weapon to his other hand. Katie's heart raced as she wound up with the barrel of a twelve-gauge pointing at her spine, but remained still.
"We're gonna pick you up now, all right?" The first officer said. "Get your feet under you."

Katie pulled her legs up to her stomach as the officers hoisted her to her feet, her ankle rolling sligthly as one of her heels slipped off, but the officer on her right caught her before she could slip all the way down.
"...Can you get my purse?" She asked.
"Sure," The second officer said, bending down and snatching her purse up by the straps. They led Katie back around to the parking lot, marching her staight past the police cordon and to the largest knot of officers. Katie saw narly a dozen bulletproof-vest-wearing uniformed officers lined up looking at the apartment uneasily, and another knot of them gathered around the side door of the large van.Poking out above the sea of navy blue uniforms was a single plainclothes officer, wearing a tan suit and a green tie, talking into a telephone whose cord ran back inside the van.
"...and I'm telling you, I don't *care* what protocols or forms you have to go through, just *do* it. There are lives on the line here, if she wanted to talk to Mars I'd have you patch me through to NASA! What? ...Yes, I'll hold."
Katie was brought before the man on the phone, who cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and looked at the first officer. "Who's this?" He asked.
"Caught her creeping around the suspect's place," The officer replied.
"What's your story?" The lieutenant said, more bored than anything else but still visibly on edge. Katie wondered how long he'd been here.
"I-I'm just trying to get back to my apartment," Katie said.
"Got ID on her?" He asked the second officer, who was rummaging through Katie's purse.
"Wallet," The officer replied, handing the lieuteant Katie's wallet as he emptied KAtie's purse an item at a time onto the trunk of a cruiser. The lieutenant flipped the wallet open, finding her driver's license and reading it. He pulled back a bit, looking slightly perplexed, his eyes darting to Katie's.
"Katie Green?" He asked.
"Yes?" Katie replied, hoping it was the right answer.
"Well, you've just become a lot more- Yes, this is lieutenant Jefferies," he said, cutting off in mid-sentance to continue his phone conversation. "Uh huh. Right. Who is that, again?" He asked, looking from his the notepad he had in a shelf in the van to Katie and back. "Take her cuffs off," He whispered to the first officer, and he got his key out and started to work on Katie's cuffs.
"Yes, fine, have them call as soon as possible," He said, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket and flipping it open. As he gave the number to call, Katie rubbed her wrists, glad to be free of them. The lieutenant shut his cell phone and handed it to katie, who for her part just stared at it before looking back up at the Lieutenant. The lieutenant shook the phone at Katie twice, his eyes firey for a split second as he talked on the phone. Katie took the phone and held it cupped in her hands, not sure what she was supposed to do with it.

The lieutenant finally hung up with the phone and walked to the line of police cars, picking up a bullhorn off the hood of one of the cruisers. "Okay, Mary, we've got someone from the CDC on the line. And Katie's here, too, she's gonna bring you the phone!"
Katie's mouth popped open as she looked at her apartment, surprised to hear Mary's voice come out of it.
"Katie? She's here?" her voice yelled out, though slightly muffled and indistinct.
"She's right here, and we're gonna send her right over, but first we need you to send out one of our officers," The lieutenant said. "We've been very patient."
"How do I know Katie's really here?" Mary yelled back.
"She's right here next to me," The lieutenant said. "Just look out your window."
"No, bring her to the door!"
"We can't do that until we know our officers are safe..." The Lieutenant said.
"Fine, just bring her close! If I can see her through the peep-hole, I'll send out an officer!"
The lieutenant dropped the bullhorn and put a hand to his face, his breath fogging in the cool evening air.
"Any luck?" He asked one of the officers standing next to him.
"Nothing," He replied. "Whatever that green stuff is we can't get through it. "The only way we're getting in there is if she lets us."
"What *is* that stuff?" The lieutenant fumed, looking at Katie as if only just noticing she was still there.
"Call's gonna come any minute," he said, looking at his watch. "Okay, you and Nguyen go with her to the door. Try and hang back as far as possible, but do whatever it takes to get that door open." He stared hard at Katie. "And *you*, you do whatever you can to help. If someone dies in there because you try to be cute I'll see to it you're locked away for life." The two officers took positions behind each of Katie's shoulders, and she swallowed hard.
"Go!" The lieutenant hissed.
Katie began to slowly walk towards the apartment, the two SWAT members' submachine guns held beside her. Her awkward one-heeled gait made the journey all the more intimidating, and as she approached the door, the ringing of the cell phone startled her enough to make her nearly drop it.
"Let it ring," Nguyen whispered, never taking his eyes off the front door. "He'll stay on until she picks it up."
Katie nodded and continued on, until the other SWAT member clamped his hand on Katie's shoulder.
"That's far enough," He said. "Call her."
"M-Mary?" Katie called out, her voice squeaking from nervousness. "Mary, honey? You there?"
"Katie?" Mary called out. "Is that you?"
"Yeah, it's me, honey," Katie replied. "Can, uh, can you come to the door? The phone's ringing. I think it's the CDC."
There was no response. Katie looked at the front door, noticing that there were a couple round indentations around the lock, like the door had been pulverized but it hadn't moved an inch.
The constant ringing of the cell phone amid a sea of silence caused Katie to sweat, not knowing what would happen or even what Mary would look like if and when she opened the door.

The door broke into chunks, the sound barely registering before Katie saw a surging mass of tentacles reaching for her, entwining her, and pulling her bodily towards the apartment. She barely heard a "The hell?!" from one of the SWAT members as they dove out of the way, and then she was airborne, thrown onto a mat of green tentacles as the doorway filled again, the individual pieces of door joined back together and sealed tight until it was indistinguishable from the rest of the wall of green tentacles surrounding her.
"M-Mary?" Katie asked as she got to her feet, looking around at what used to be her apartment. What used to be *an* apartment.
"Oh my God, Katie, I'm so glad you're here!" Mary's voice came, though Katie could not see Mary. She had a slight sense of vertigo as she stood there, as the entire room seemed to be pulsating slightly, the floors and walls writhing in a sickening manner.
"Mary?" Katie asked. "Mary, where are you? What the hell happened?"
"I'm right here," Mary replied, and Katie saw a lump of tentacles racing across the ground, coming to the wall and climbing up it without so much as slowing down. It reminded Katie strangely of Bugs Bunny burrowing through the ground, the way the lump seemed to travel under the mat of tentacles without ever slowing down or actually displacing anything.
"Here, where?" Katie pleaded. "It sounds like the whole room is talking!"
The lump paused as it made its way across the ceiling. "Oh... sorry," It said as it began to swell and drip down from the ceiling. It detatched from the ceiling and fell, something vaguely Mary-shaped rising and shaping from the lump on the floor. "I'm still getting used to this."
Katie stared agog at Mary. Her torso was more or less intact, save for the rather large breasts- all four of them- and the four arms coming from her sides. Her actual arms were only humanoid until the elbows, after which they split into three drooping tentacles. Her legs, such as they were, looked like a tangle of creeping ivy, a writhing trunk of flesh. Perhaps most disquieting was her face, though- without mouth, ears, or nose, the only feature on her was her eyes, a pair of pale green orbs looking at her forlornly.
"What the-" Katie started, before Mary darted forward and wrapped herself around Katie, her tentacles twining the two of them together tightly. Katie's first reaction was to pull away, but Mary had wrapped her so tightly she could barely get her hands around to Mary's back.
"Oh, Katie, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do!" Mary yelled, though the question of how she was talking without a mouth passed by Katie without thought, the least disturbing question in a sea of insanity.
"Mary, Mary!" Katie yelled, trying to keep her cool. "What. Happened!" She wriggled her shoulders, trying to get some slack in the tentacle bindings that surrounded her. "And turn human for God's sake, you're freaking me out."
"Oh..." Mary said, withdrawing from Katie and looking down at herself. "I thought I... um, nevermind..." She said as she continued her metamorphosis, her skin turning back into something flesh-colored and her features assembling themselves into something humanoid. "...Is this okay?" She asked.
Katie cocked her head to the side, her brow furrowing. It looked Mary-like, but it was off slightly, her cheekbones a little too pronounced, ber breasts a little too large, her skin a little more tan than normal. "'Okay'?" Katie repeated. "Mary... you're supposed to look like you."
"And this isn't it?" Mary asked, quietly.
Katie blinked and kind of shook her head. "You don't know...?"
"I, uh... kinda forgot..."
"Katie shook her head again. "Honey, what happened here?"

Mary related her meeting with the police, Shandra's kicking, and her subsequent eating the two officers.
"I went out there, and I saw the car, and I heard the radio talking about them, and then I ate it, I just *ate* it, and I went inside and I ate and ate and ate and at some point I just sorta... felt weird."
"Weird?" Katie asked, shaking her head.
"I just, sorta, kept eating, and growing, and the tentacles kept pouring out of me, and they were eating, and at some point everything just sorta got fuzzy, and I wasn't me anymore, I was... everything. I didn't have eyes, or hands, I was just... everywhere."
"Did you really eat... everything?" Katie asked. "Where's Shandra?"
"Oh, *her*," Mary sneered, and Katie saw her teeth lengthen into fangs. "Yeah, she's up there," She said, looking to the writhing ceiling. Katie looked up as well, and gasped as she saw Shandra lowered through the ceiling. Shandra looked as though she'd been crucified by the tentacles, her feet bound together and her wrists lashed to the ceiling. Tentacles held her at her waist and he shoulders, letting her pendulous breasts and gravid belly hand free. Two final tentacles crossed over her mouth and her eyes, leaving her completely immobilized and blind to the world.
"Mary-"
"Don't even think about saying anything on her behalf," Mary said, snapping her gaze down to Katie. "Those two police officers are dead because of her. Her!"
"Mary, calm down, you're hulking out again," Katie said, backing away and putting up her hands.
Mary stopped, looked down at herself, and sighed, reverting back to her almost-Mary form, though the color of her eyes was wrong this time.
"Did- did you eat everything in my room?" Katie asked.
Mary thought for a second. "No, I was too concerned with sealing up the doors and windows. I think there's still a chunk of your room that's clean."
Katie went down the little hallway between her bedroom and bathroom, the corridor of tentacles inspiring a bit of claustrophobia. She edged into her bedroom, which was dimly lit by a kind of phosphoresence radiating off the tentacles on the ceiling. Her bed, her closet, and most of the other fixtures in her room were in the process of being devoured, but her desk remained unmolested, an oasis of normalcy in the maze of tentacles. Katie gingerly stepped off the tentacles, opening the drawer of her desk and pulling out a small frame.
"Here, Mary," She said, handing her the picture. "That's you, remember? That's the *real* you." It was a picture of her and Mary at orientation week, the two of them looking anxious to get started in their careers.
Mary held the picture, her brow furrowing slightly. Gradually, she returned to her old self, every feature the right size and every pigment the right color. Mary let out a shuddering breath and sunk down to the ground, leaning her back against the wall of tentacles.
"What're we gonna do, Katie?" Mary asked, looking up at her friend.
Katie just shook her head at her friend, pulling her desk chair out behind her and sitting down. "I don't have the slightest idea, honey. I mean, I know they teach us to take in new information and process it quickly, you know, figuring out the best angle for a cross, all of that, but this... this is just..." Katie went to lean her elbow on her desk, but jerked back when she set it on top of the fruit pie Mary had gotten her.
"Where-? I don't remember this being here," she mumbled as she pushed it aside.
Mary scoffed. "I got it for you," She said. "That's why I was in here when the police showed up."
Katie looked from Mary to the pie and back again.
"It was meant to be a surprise," Mary said, managing a bitter smile. "A little apology gift for yesterday."
Katie snorted and shook her head. After staring at her lap for a few seconds, she took the fruit pie and opened it.
"You like it?" Mary asked as Katie took a bite.
"Cherry's my favorite, but apple's good, too," She said, managing a weak smile. "Thanks, though."
Mary got to her feet, looking off into the air. "They're trying to get in," she said.
"Where?" Katie asked, whipping her head around so fast a bit of pastry crust flew off her lips.
"The front door," Mary said. "Again."
"What're we gonna do?" Katie asked, standing up.
"...You remember what professor Watson told us about pleas?" Mary said. "She told us, if you manage to convince opposing counsel they can't win, even if they probably can, then you're already halfway there. Even if it goes to trial, if you've convinced them to go in thinking they can't win, they probably won't."
"Yeah...?" Katie asked, a brow arching. "So? What are you planning to do?"
"I'm going to convince them they can't win," Mary said as she made her way back to the front room. "Hopefully I can get them to leave without doing anything stupid."
"Stupid?" Katie echoed.
"Get themselves kiled," Mary said as she walked into the wall of tentacles, passing through the writhing mass as she began to change.

When Mary emerged from the other side, her tentacles finally eating through the outer walls, she was fully embracing one of the "predator" forms the Body had tried to force on her before. Letting it come out fully, she was amazed at the sheer destructive capability she felt welling up inside of her, muscles thickening and bulging with cords of what felt like liquid steel, her hide becoming like reinfocred kevlar, fingernails growing out to be like scythe-blades dangling from her hands. The gathered police and SWAT officers took a few seconds to even register what she was, a stunned confusion stopping all sound save the usual chirping of birds in the forest. Mary walked slowly towards the line of police cars, making her intent obvious but giving them enough time to get scared.
"These prey should be easy to consume," The Body said. "We are pleased you are finally using a more appropriate form."
"I'm not going to kill them," Mary replied. "I'm going to scare them away."
"What?" The Body asked, confused. "Why would you not consume them? Your lair grows hungry, it must feed."
"You saw how consuming two of them brought this many more?" Mary asked. "If we consume these, then that many more will come, and stronger ones after them. We could not hope to consume all of them at once, they would overwhelm us."
"But if we convince them to flee, they will not return?" The Body asked.
"Yeah, and then we can eat all we want somewhere safer. Remember the supermarket?"
"Oh yes, we do, very much so," The Body said eagerly. Mary was certain that if it had a mouth the Body would be saivating at the thought of the grocery store and all the food inside it.
"So let me do this my way, and I'll get you some yummy treats from the store."
"We eagerly await the fleeing of these troubleome prey, then," The Body said, and was silent.

"The hell is that?!" One of the police officers finally yelled out, looking around.
"Fuck should I know?" Another officer said. The SWAT officers were a little more organized, closing in to a defensive firing squad behind one of the vehicles.
"It's coming this way..." One of the SWAT officers said, looking side to side to check on the locations of the rest of their team. "Orders, sir?"
The SWAT commander just shook his head, mouth agape. Mary continued walking, edging closer and closer to the police with every step.
"Orders??" The officer yelled again, looking over his shoulder. Mary roared and swiped at the ground with her claws, the long talons digging furrows in the asphalt and sending a shower of small rocks clanking against the cars and riot shields.
"Fire! Fire! Open fire!" the commander yelled, and Mary was instantly peppered with buckshot and bullets, her huge, hulking form making for a nearly impossible to miss backstop.
"They're bouncing off!" One of the SWAT shooters yelled as their small sub-machinegun bullets impacted against Mary's hide, denting the skin in but not penetrating. "That damn thing is bulletproof!"
Mary paused, thinking quickly. If they couldn't penetrate her, then they'd just bring bigger guns, which meant the army, which was bad. She needed to thin her hide a little, so the bullets would pass into her. As soon as she had given the mental command, her body jerked from the force of the bullets penetrating her flesh, a hundred tiny holes in the span of a few seconds.
"No it isn't!" One of the other offiers shouted. "Keep shooting!"
Mary roared again, now within maybe twenty yards of the phalanx of police vehicles. A few of the officers had backed up from their firing line, still shooting but not wanting to be the one closest to Mary when she got there. For her part, Mary was eating the bullets right after they entered her body, the wounds closing within seconds. She figured one more show of force would be enou-

Mary's vision spun and fragmmented as the sharpshooter's bullet entered the side of her head just below her left temple, her head jerking sideways as the bullet fragmented inside her head, blowing one of her horns off the opposite side as the exit wound spilled green flesh and viscera over the pavement. Stunned, Mary stumbled forward a step and fell over, her half-destroyed face impacting on the ground and leaving her confused. For a second, everything went quiet again. The raucous din of gunshots ceased, a few s\dogs barking their protest at all the sudden noise echoing from far away. Mary felt her face starting to re-form, but stopped it, a moment of dramatic inspiration hitting her. Just as the police began to cheer and clap, Mary got her arms underneath her and pushed herself up to one knee, causing the police, some of whom had begnn to wander over to her 'corpse', to scatter back to their cruisers. Mary looked at the line of terrified officers with her one good eye as she allowed her face to reform, then roared again before leaping the remaiing fifteen yards from where she stood to the top of the nearest police car, caving in the roof as she landed on it. Finally, the desired effect; even the SWAT team broke ranks and fled down the parking lot away from Mary. Mary hardened her skin again; after that stunt with the sniper, she had made her point, and didnn't want to have to deal with re-forming chunks of herself anymore. She jumped down off the cruiser, looking back to make sure the police were still retreating, and walked around to the hood of the cruiser. Taking one claw to the hood, she carved the letters "CDC" into the metal, then walked back to the apartment, absorbing the remnants of her head that had been blown onto the lot back into her as she went.
"So now feeding will be easier, yes?" The Body asked as Mary approached the writhing green wall that used to be the front of her apartment.
"In a manner of speaking," Mary sighed as she passed through the wall and begain waiting for the inevitable response.

New Page, New Post! ^_^

This is officially the start of Act II of Mary's Story- her cover's blown, the world's going to know about her, and she's going to have to find some way to deal with that that keeps her and katie safe while avoiding devouring all life on earth in the process.
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Katie was waiting on the other side of the wall, hands clasped together under her bosom.
"What happened? What'd you do?" She asked, backing away from Mary's hulking form.
"I spooked the cops away," Mary said, the growling timbre in her voice softening as she turned back into her human form. "Managed to convince the Body they'd be better off knowing they couldn't win."
"I heard guns," Katie said, still looking distressed.
"Oh yeah," Mary nodded.
"Did... did it hurt?" She asked.
Mary cocked her head to the side as she headed for Katie's bedroom, looking at her with a wry grin. "You remember the head thing, right? Of course it didn't hurt. Like little lead tic-tacs."
Katie followed Mary into her bedroom, where Mary was pulling the topsheet off of Katie's bed.
"Mind if I borrow this?" Mary said as she wrapped herself in the sheet like a toga. "I'm really starting to get irritated with how many clothes I'm going through..."
"Sure, sure," Katie sad, sitting on the bed as Mary finished cinching her toga. "So, uh, what now?"
Mary shruged. "I don't know. Hopefully they got my message- I carved 'CDC' into the hood of one of their cars," Mary explained at Katie's puzzled loook elicited by he word 'message', "And they'll send somone along soon."
"And if they can't help?"
Mary shook her head. "I've got no idea. I think we're past the point of no return here."
"Well, is there anything you can think of?" Katie asked, "Any way to stop it?"
"There... might be," Mary said, "but given that it hears everything I say I'm not sure it's safe to talk about it."
"Oh yeah..." Katie nodded, scooting back against the headboard of her bed. The two thought in silence for a moment, until Mary's stomach growled.
"Oh, crap," Mary said, putting a hand to her stomach.
"What?" Katie asked, sitting upright.
"I'm hungry. The body's hungry," Mary said.
"Well, I could maybe sneak out and get some snacks from the store real quick..." Katie offered.
Mary shook her head. "No. I'm hungry. Like, all of me. All of *it*," She said, waving an arm at the green mat creeping along the walls and ceiling.
"...All of it?" Katie asked.
Mary nodded. "Gonna need a lot of... something to feed all this, and I don't really know where I'll get it. Especially once it gets a hankering for new 'seeds'..."
"'Seeds'?" Katie repeated, brow arched.
"New DNA strands, new species of stuff," Mary clarified. "I've been satiating it on bugs and forest rodents and crap, but I don't know how long that'll hold out." Mary looked around, seeming to see things that Katie couldn't as she tried to follow her friend's gaze.

"I think I need to go out," Mary said. "I need to get something new to satiate it. I can eat dirt for all the body cares if it just needs food, but it wants new seeds and it's better that I get them before the Body decides to do what it wants with who it wants." She looked at the walls again, her eyes unfocusing, appearing to see through them. "Okay," Mary said, walking into what would have been their kitchen. "All the police are gone from the back of the apartment, I'm gonna go grab something to eat and get back. You stay here and hold down the fort."
"What if someone comes?" Katie asked.
"They're not making it through here," Mary said as she took the toga off over her shoulders and balled it up, handing it to Katie.
"Well, how do I keep this stuff from eating my desk?" Katie continued, tucking the toga under her arm and putting her hands on her hips.
Mary paused at that one, one hand resting on the wall and her head bowed slightly.
"Okay!" She yelled, turning and looking up at the ceiling. "You do what Katie says while I'm gone, got it?!"
Katie looked around a if expecting some sort of answer, but apparently the Body's answer could only be heard by Mary, though it seemed to satisfy her.
"Right," she said, turning back to the wall, "If they get too close to your stuff just yell and they'll back off."
Katie relaxed her arms and nodded.
"Okay, I'll be back as soon as possible," Mary said, pushing into and through the wall.
"...Be safe," Katie said after her friend.

Mary's senses seemed to twirl and flow around her, her body dissolving into a mass of tentacles as she emerged from the wall of her apartment and surged through the underbrush like a gaggle of entwined snakes all moving the same direction. Though she couldn't see or hear in the classic sense, Mary could feel things, sense them. She felt drawn to a cold source, sliding along the forest floor and snatching up any small flora or fauna she wormed over. She could feel the coldness getting closer, and what's more could sense living things inside it. In the back of her mind she could also feel Katie moving around inside of her lair, though it was a minor concern at that point because Mary had just plunged into the river water, the sudden buoyancy throwing her disoriented senses even further into disarray. Mary gasped, water flowing into the mouth that she had subconsiously formed, the submersion instinctually causing her to revert to a more familiar form. Mary shook her head and looked around where she was treading water, panting for air. Her tongue lolled out between her teeth, slapping against her forehead-

Wait, what?

Mary tilted her head back and looked up, seeing the dark green tongue resting on her forehead, sliding up and down as she panted. Mary brought her hands up to her head, and felt a large, bulbous sack hanging off the back of her head, like an over-stuffed nightcap hanging down nearly to the small of her back. At the front of the protrusion was her mouth, though the giant jaws went from nearly where where her ears would be up and over her head to the other ear. She felt the large, triangular, serrated teeth with her tongue and realized she had turned into something predatory. She looked down and saw that she was not treading water by scissoring her legs, but by a large tail-fin, connected to her torso by an odd spiral of tentacles that retracted close to her body and then pushed away, water flowing through the hollow slits in the tentacle-cage and keeping her above the water line. Her arms were no less aquatic, fins running along the insides of her forearms and the outside of her biceps. Her fingers ended in hooked claws, and a thin membrane of webbing stretched between them like the swim gloves she used to have when she was a teenager.
"Well, better get moving," Mary thought as she lowered herself down to the waterline, "before somebody thinks I'm the Loch Ness monster on vacation..."

Mary crawled her way through the water, an odd locomotive conglomerate of paddling with her arms, swinging her tail back and forth, and the octopus-like forward-and-back propulsion through her tentacle-cage that conneted her tail to her torso. She held her breath under the water, surfacing every so often for air, until she realied she was never actually feeling any tightness in her chest before she surfaced. Mary stopped, still under the water, and felt her face. Her mouth was closed, and she didn't have a nose, so what was she breathng through? Mary felt around on her body, finally feeling a trio of gill slits on the lower curve of her neck, near ech of her collarbones.
"...Cool," Mary thought as she sat underwater, breathing air through the lazy river current. A fish passed by Mary's head, and without even really thinking about it she darted forward, catching the fish in her jaws and swallowing it in two bloody chunks.
"Ahh," The body said inside Mary's head. "This is indeed a new and interesting seed."
"Yeah, well, we're only stopping for a couple, so don't get too- whoa!" Mary said, looking down at herself for the first time since her change and being surprised by the increased size of her bosom and stomach, rivaling Shandra's measurements.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Mary yellled in her head, remembering when she'd gotten caught in the rain. "Stop drinking! Stop it!"
"Why?" The Body asked, puzzled. "We have already found many small seeds-"
"Stop blowing me up or I will get out and go home right this instant!" Mary yelled.
Mary felt herself stop drinking in the river water, though now she more resembled a manatee or other such bloated sea mammal than any kind of predatory fish, her buoyant breasts bobbing in the water and her stomach gently undulating from side to side with every swish of her tail.
"Let's get on with this..." Mary grumbled inwardly as she set off down the river in search of food.

A handful of fish, a few different types of lichen, some crawfish, and an unlucky otter later, and Mary had had her fill. Or rather, Mary was convinced the Body had had its fill and it was safe for her to go out again. She swam for the shore, poking her head out and looking around to make sure there weren't any campsites or anthing tucked between the trees. Mary crawled up to the shore, needing to get rid of her tail but not relishing the walk back, especially naked as she was. She felt herself beginning to unravel, to "relax" into the pile of writhing tentacles, but she caught herself, keeping her current form. The feeling of darting around with no eyes, no ears, only the vaguest of senses was somewhat disconcerting. It'd been different when she was doing it in her lair; with so much of herself everywhere it was like touching your fingertips with your eyes closed, the environment was so familiar and the extent so well known it was hardly a challenge.
"What about those legs I used the other day, when it was raining?" Mary thouht to herself, Rembering how she sailed through the forest when she was getting rained on. Now that the sky was clear, she could take her time while still moving pretty quickly.
"Now how did that go...?" Mary thought to herself as her tail split into two legs once more, the long, scythe-like talons splitting away and hardening. "Good grief, is that what those were?" Mary asked herself as she watched her legs thin and harden, feeling the enormous tensile strength in them that had allowed her to bound through the forest with such amazing speed. The fleshy cables of tense, barely-contained strength wound their way up into her torso, and Mary realized as she stood that instead of just the legs, like last time, she was transforming fully into whatever creature her subconsious plea of "go faster!" had made. The claws on her fingers seemed to draw the webbing into them, becoming longer and just as scythe-like as her toes, while her arms seemed to shrivel and wither into spindly, almost sickly-looking appendages. Mary felt as though she hadn't an ounce of fat from her shoulders to her fingertips. She felt a prickle on her back, and looked over her shoulder to see a trio of long, feather-like fins protrude from her back, one each from her shoulderblades and one from the middle of her neck. Mary would have liked to feel them, but as long and sharp as her claws were at the moment, she didn't think she was in much of a position for careful tactile exploration.

Besides which, she had a more pressing irritation, an itch of sorts in her legs, the kinds of pins-and-needles feeling like she'd get when she sat with her legs crossed the wrong way. She picked one of her feet up and kicked it, the tingle being relieved slightly, if only briefly. Mary shook her head, realizing she needed to get back to the apartment and make use of what time the Body was satiated while she could.

Mary was a little more prepared for the sudden lurch this time, but the super-human speed with which she lept through the air was still enough to give her a thrill of fear as she narrowly dodged tree branches and other foliage as she soared through the air. It took a few strides for her to accomodate the heaving stomach and bosom buldging out of her otherwise smooth and taut body, like trying to run with a loose-fitting backpack slung over one's shoulders the wrong way. She pumped her arms, the long, clawed appendages slicing the air in front of her. She felt the long feather-fins traiing behind her, the air passing over them and cooling them; Mary supposed, in a bit of distraction, that were there still blood pumping through those fins that it would be a great way to cool a body down, especially one that could run as fast as this one.

Mary's attention snapped back to the present just as she launched herself right at the trunk of an aldar tree. Reacting purely on instinct, Mary grabbed one of the branches and twisted herself, her feet wrapping around the thin trunk as she landed on it. As the tree bent away from her, Mary used the thin tree as a springboard, launching herself through the air high enough that she could see her apartment complex over the tree line.
"Not exactly discrete..." Mary had time to think before plummeting to earth, her four limbs absorbing the shock and springing off just as quickly, the transition from bipedal to quadrapedal effortless and natural. Well, natural save for the huge, jiggling masses of squishy fat hanging from her abdomen and ribcage. Mary's arms and legs churned the soft ground like a tiller, claws sinking in deep and throwing clods of dirt and pine needles into the air behind her as she lunged forward, pulling the earth underneath and behind her as though she was trying to leapfrog the entire globe. The twists and turns caused great furrows to be torn into the ground, dirt spraying up like the wake from a waterskier as she barreled around thick pines and between small firs.

Mary saw the apartment complex come into view, her feather-fins whipping behind her angular head as she dashedtowards her back wall. She knew she didn't have to go around the front- the walls were pretty much a stucco shell held together by her lair. With a single mighty bound, Mary lurched back into a bipedal stance, aiming for right where she'd exited earlier. Right as she approached, a flash passed into her senses- a police uniform, the start of a surprised "Freeze!" and then she slammed into the wall, all but splattering as she was absorbed into the writhing mass of her lair.

"Whoa!" Katie said as Mary stumbled through the wall, green but otherwise reverted to her human form as her excess curves sloughed off her as tentacles.
"Phew..." Mary panted as she reached for her toga off the table. "Wait a second..." She said, pausing as her toga unfurled in front of her.
"Like what I did with the place?" Katie asked, grinning. Mary looked around, seeing her apartment trasformed into some sort of cubist designer's mistake. There was a square "table" where her small kitchen used to be, little more than a compact green cube of tentacles rising out of he floor, flanked on two sides by small, flat square pilliars meant to serve as chairs. Instead of the pale, suffusing glow that had dimly lit the room when she'd left, there were four evenly-spaced "bulbs" of the bioluminescent tentcles, providing bright if sttill green-tinted light to the apartment. But perhaps the most shocking re-arrangement was seeing Shandra standing in the corner trying to look inconspicuous.
"You!" Mary snarled, her features turning feral as she advanced on Shandra's gravid, cowering form.
"Mary, don't-!" Katie started, before Mary spun at her.
"Not one word, Katie," Mary warned, waving a clawed finger at her. "Not ONE."
Katie frowned and turned her head away, letting Mary turn back and stalk towards Shandra. Mary got to within two paces of her before halting in her tracks, pausing momentarily and then spinning back towards Katie.
"I didn't make you not say anything right now, did I?" She asked, her rage momentarily forgotten. "Like, force you?"
"Uh, no?" Katie replied, briefly confused by the question. "No, I don't think so."
"Okay, good," Mary said, nodding and turning back to Shandra, still angry but at least no longer feral in feature.

"They're dead because of you," Mary said, glaring. "Those two officers died in a way that's too horrible for me to even consider, because of *you*."
"I-if you hadn't-" Shandra started.
"Shut UP." Mary said, her teeth growing slightly into fangs. "It *was* your fault. If you had just kept still and not tried to- to- to be whatever you think you were being, they would have left and none of this would have happened. But no, now they're dead, our cover is blown, and you've endangered all of us, maybe even the entire world, because you're too damned pushy to take orders. I swear to God, if it wasn't for Katie I'd have half a mind to just turn you into a vegetable until this is all over."
Shandra was now backed against the corner, whimpering as Mary's barely contained transformations pushed and pulled at her features, her rage threatening to transmogrify her into a giant of claw and muscle.
"So here's how things are going to work from now on," Mary continued. When I tell you to do something, you wil do *exactly* that, *immediately*. When I tell you not to do something, you will conspicuously avoid doing anything that even resembles the thing I told you not to do, as though your life depended on it. Because believe me, it does."
Shandra slid down the wall a bit as Mary leaned towards her, still scowling. "I- I just-"
"Want to leave?" Mary interrupted. "Fine, go." She waved her hand at the secion of wall where her door used to be, and the tentacles shuffled around a bit, aligning themselves vertically against the wall. "You want to leave, be my guest. Just pull those apart like drapes, and they'll let you through."
Shandra looked from the door to Mary and then back, confued disbelief playing at her features.
"Just remember," Mary said as she turned from Shandra and headed back to the kitchen, "You made me a cop-killer. And remember what cops *do* to cop-killers." She paused, one hand on the table, looking over her shoulder to shandra. "You really think after today they'll stop and consider which green-skinned monster you are before opening fire?"
Shandra looked at the door again, then back to Mary.
"Sure, I can take a bullet to the head and be fine, but as far as I'm aware, you still have a brain in there, despite all evidence to the contrary. You still have a heart that pumps blood. Maybe not, though- it's not like any of us have been to a doctor." Mary sat down and crossed her legs, her recent changes receeding back into her human form as she bent down and picked up her toga from where she'd dropped it on her march over to Shandra. "So, basically... Are you willing to risk it?"
Shandra looked from the door to Mary to Katie and back to the door, mouth quivering for a moment before she slid the rest of the way to the ground, pulling her knees as close to her chest as her stomach allowed and burying her head in her arms before quietly sobbing to herself.