Re: New TF Story
 

Hip-hip-hooray for the next chapter finally coming out!!! Thank you Soy, the 7 month wait was killing me! :D

Re: New TF Story
 

Ah sweet. I was sure you had given up on this story.

Re: New TF Story
 

Yeah, sorry about the wait. The next part will be quicker coming, I promise. I just managed to get through a rather nasty writer's block with Hmmm!'s help, and the next parts should be coming much quicker now.

Re: New TF Story
 

I know what that's like and with 3 stories I'm currently in the middle of, it's trying.

Re: New TF Story
 

Great chapter!
Shandra keeps things interesting by stirring up conflict! Also leaves some room for character development as well.
Keep it up!

Re: New TF Story
 

it's alright it's not heavy.

Re: New TF Story
 

Mary wandered across the parking lot, the black asphalt stained glossy by the morning's dew. The sun wasn't really out yet, not for the pacific northwest anyways, but it was bright enough to be pleasant. Mary saw a pair of birds flying through the sky and thought about going back into the forest, but with the Body's incessant needs for more genetic material it was beginning to feel like work. No, what she needed was some human contact. Not anyone too familiar with her, but just to be around faces that weren't green and voices that didn't come from inside her head.

Mary snugged her sweater against herself, turning towards the southern driveway out of her apartment complex. She decided she'd go to the convenience store just down the street, at the first intersection down from her and Katie's complex. As the brisk wind blew by, Mary smelled something odd on the air, a musky smell, like a wet dog. Concentrating on the smell, she realized she could seperate it out somehow into two seperate dogs- an Irish Wolfhound and a Husky/German Shepherd mix. Mary clamped her hand over her nose, wondering what on earth was going on.
"Are your senses not working properly?" The Body asked, causing Mary to roll her eyes and slump her shoulders as she walked down the sidewalk.
"What did you do to me *now*?" Mary asked.
"We have realized from the other seeds we have taken in that your senses are dull, compared to the other meat in this place. Extensive, perhaps, but dull. We simply sought to improve upon them. Were we in error?"
Mary took her hand away from her mouth and realized the Body was right. The birds she head chirping had to have been a few football fields away, and she could read the names on the streetsigns all the way down the block if she squinted. The Body had given her eagle eyes, a bloodhound's nose, and ears like a bat.
"N-No, it's fine..." Mary replied to the Body. "Uh, thank you, I guess?"
"The Body exists to aid the Mind in the great purpose of the Flesh," the Body said back. It was still rather disconcerting, but any good debate relies on a back-and-forth; if Mary was going to have to make some concessions in her bargian to save humanity, she supposed this was one she could live with pretty easily.

As Mary entered the convenience store, she was relieved to see how normal it was, looking much the same as it always did. No tentacles, no half-eaten countertops, just the same rows of magazines, stacks of brightly-colord candies, and the low hum of a refridgerated soda fountain. Mary leisurely browsed the aisles, taking comfort in all the little eccentricities of the store's unusal inventory, sanitary napkins next to a sunglass rack with a box of "energy supplements" on top of that, every little nick-nack and piece of junk food crammed as tightly into the shelves as it could be. Mary paused and picked up a fruit pie off the shelf; the little single-serving treats were too sweet for her, but Katie loved them, and while not remotely close to actual restitution, Mary hoped Katie would appreciate the gesture nonetheless.

As she passed the hot dog roller, Mary's mouth began to water and she hauled to a stop, looking quizzically at the slowly-sliding hot dogs, glistening with grease and sickly-looking under their heat lamp. Mary felt her hand moving towards the hot dogs of its own accord until she was able to mentally wrest control of her hand back.
"What are you doing?!" Mary shouted inside her head.
"We desire the seeds of that meat," The Body said. "Why do you resist?"
"Because there's a ritual we have to follow if we don't want predators to swarm down upon us!" Mary repeated for what must have been the hundredth time. For a being capable of interstellar flight, the Body seemed amazingly dense at times.
"Oh. Of course," The body said, and Mary felt the creeping sensation of the Body's control fade from her. Mary picked up the tongs and grabbed a hot dog off the rack, grimmacing slightly as it made a kind of greasy velcro sound at being taken off the rollers. She dropped it in a bun, then went over to the free condiments and heaped it high with mustard, ketchup, relish, onions, pickles, and even a dab of the nacho cheese, any thing to mask the taste of an indeterminately-aged conveninece-store hot dog. Mary looked at the heap of artificial chemicals somehow warped into something that could technically be classified as food and grimmaced.
"You sure you want this?" Mary asked.
"Oh yes, very much," The Body eagerly replied. Mary shook her head and paid for her items.

The first bite Mary took felt almost similar to when she'd drank bleach. Her face screwed up as she chewed, knowing that there was nothing that could hurt her but feeling distasteful all the same.
"Oh, this is glorious!" The Body exclaimed. "So many seeds!"
"Seeds?" Mary asked, halting mid-chew.
"Oh yes, much better than those we added to our glory previously," The body said. "And from so many different meats at once! Truly wonderous."
Mary looked at the hot dog, realizing that the "Seeds" the Body was talking about was the dna of all the different micro-organisms living on the hot dog.
"There are even seeds within some of the other seeds," The Body continued. "Why, there are-"
"You know what?" Mary interrupted. "No, stop, no more."
"What?" The Body asked. "You confuse us."
"You like it, that's great, I'm happy for you," Mary said as she took another reluctant bite. "Just spare me the details, I don't want to know."

Mary grimmaced as she approached her old apartment, fishing her key out of her purse. She was sure if she still had a stomach that it would be roiling right then. The ramifications of what the Body apparently found tasty caused her to cringe; what else would it like to sample, a dumpster? Compost? Mary shuddered as she fit the key in the lock and went inside, the warmer apartment air much more inviting than the chill outside air. She shut the door behind her, making her way through the front room and into Katie's bedroom, putting the fruit pie on her desk in front of her computer. A nice little surprise when she got home.

Mary noticed that Katie's computer was still on, and thought back to the CDC e-mail she'd replied to, wondering briefly if they'd replied yet. Certain that Katie wouldn't mind, MAry sat down at Katie's computer and accessed her e-mail client. The CDC hadn't responded, so Mary just delted the few spam messages that had accumulated, then opened the previous CDC e-mail to see if she could glean any new insights from it. She was disappointed that she couldn't send a "sample" of the parasite, but she didn't trust her tentcles outside her immediate vicinity. She didn't know how far her control over them extended, and certainly didn't want to find out what happened to any Flesh without either the Body or the Mind there to control it. What she needed was a dead version, like a fossil or something.

Mary perked up, remembering the meteorite. It might contain enough traces of what the Body originally was! A longshot, to be sure, but as Mary rose from her chair and headed to the kitchen she knew it was the best lead she had at this point. The little crater spiked into her floor was still there, but the fragments of the meteorite was gone. At first Mary wondered if it had dissolved or merged back in with the Flesh or something, but the presence of a broom leaning against the refridgerator posited a much simpler explanation: Katie had swept the pieces up. Mary looked in the trash can, but found it empty, only a breakfast shake in the bottom of the bag. Mary blanched, not about to go searching the outside dumpster for fear the Body might get peckish again. Instead, she got down on her hands and knees, hoping that perhaps Katie's sweeping had been haphazard enough that a sizable enough piece wound up under the refridgerator or the lip of the counter. She crawled up and down the length of the tiny kitchen, finding little more than black specks in the crevices of the counter, so small and indistinct she couldn't be sure if they were particulate from the meteorite or just poppy seeds off of Katie's morning bagels.

There came a sharp knock on the door, and Mary instinctively called out "Coming!" before cringing, having overstayed her welcome in what was ostensibly no longer her apartment. She looked up at the hole in the ceiling, wondering if she could just slip through and leave whatever deliveryman or solicitor waiting until they went away.
"Police!" Barked the officer behind the door, and MAry nearly melted with panic, feeling like she was literally going to unravel in a split second.
"J-Just a second!" She called back, shakily rising to her feet.
"Okay, listen. LISTEN," She said to the Body. "One of the predators has come here- STOP!" She yelled, feeling her fingers pull into claws. "Do NOT attempt to eat them! They will bring more and more and overwhelm us!"
"But our glory-"
"To hell with your glory!" Mary yelled inside her head as she staggered stiffly towards the door. "They don't yet know I'm Prey! If you just let me handle everything, I can get them to leave and never return!" Mary looked through the peephole and saw them, one male and one female officer. She took a few deep breaths, looking to make sure she didn't have any fangs poking out or anything. The officers knocked again as Mary reached to open the door, the male officer's third knock whiffing as she opened it.
"Mary Carver?" The male officer asked.
"Yes?" Mary replied, trying to stay calm. She realized that without an autonomic nervous system that she had no pores to sweat out of, no heartbeat to race, so hoepfully the officers couldn't read any suspicious body language off of her.
"Can we come in?" He asked.
"Oh, you know, it's kind of a mess," Mary said as she began to step outside, "But we can talk out here-"
"Actually, ma'am, it's kinda important that we see inside," The male officer said again. "May we please come inside?"
Mary's mind raced. Not wanting to arouse suspicion by being stubborn, she agreed.
"Doesn't look very messy to me," The officer said as he stepped inside.
"Oh, well, I, ah, was jus trying to be polite," Mary said, faking a nervous laugh. "Really it was the wet shoes, I didn't want you muckhing up the carpet, but I didn't want to hurt your feelings, either."
"I don't mind if you hurt my feelings," The officer said, "Just don't lie to me."
"S-sorry," Mary stammered, almost missing the thumping of her nervous heart, if only to give her some kind of psychic metronome.
"So, you called for Jerod Alogara on the morning of the 23rd, is that correct?" The male officer asked.
"Yes," Mary said, then caught herself. "Well, I mean, that's the repair guy, right?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Oh, and I called the day before. Really quick service for this place," She said, cracking a smile.
"Not fast enough, apparently," He said. "Could you show me what he was supposed to fix?"
"Sure, it's right here," Mary said, gesturing to the kitchen floor."It was that meteor shower earlier in the week, dropped straight through the ceiling."
Both policemen looked up at the hole in the ceiling, and she felt a feral instinct seize her, a desire to slit their throats, rip out their windpipes.
"STOP!" She yelled to the Body. "You're going to get us killed!"
"They're vulnerable!" The body yelled back. "Kill the predators while you've got the chance!"
"That will just bring more of them! STop it! STOP. IT!" Mary yelled, setting her jaw.
"Ma'am, is there a reason you're clenching your fists like that?" The female officer asked, arching an eyebrow at Mary.
"Huh?" Mary asked, before realizing she was squeezing her fists tightly. "Oh, that. Just, typing too long. I was doing a paper this morning," She said, giving a weak chuckle and grabbing one hand in the other, waggling her fingers while she massaged the bones on the back of her hand, or at least where they would be if she had them.
"You're still in school?" The male officer asked.
"Law school," Mary said, still feeling the subtle prickle of the Body's aggression just under her skin. "The one up by the freeway, just off exit-"
Mary was interrupted by a trio of thumps against the ceiling, and not only did she hear them, she'd felt them, as Shandra banged her heel against the floor. A cold tingle of dread raced over Mary's skin as she quickly diverted her attention to her lair, a surge of tentacles tightly immobilizing Shandra in seconds.
"What was that?" The male officer asked, following Mary's gaze.
"Oh, uh, just the neightbor's dog scratching itself probably," Mary said, waving the incident off.
"...You know pets aren't allowed in any of these apartment complexes, right?" The female officer said.
Mary felt her whole body tense, but she fought it back, letting her head droop.
"Ho, geeeze, she's gonna kill me..." Mary said, feigning sorrow.
"You know we're gonna have to tell the landowner when we leave, right?" The female officer said.
"Yeah, okay..." Mary said, shrugging her shoulders. "So what did you want to know about the repairman? What was his name again?"
"Jerod," The male officer said. "Now, when you called-"
"Wait a sec," The female officer said. "Okay?"
"Okay what?" Mary asked.
"Well, you don't sound too upset about your neighbor losing her dog," She said. "Were you two not friendly with one another?"
"Oh no, we're best friends," Mary said, "Since we were freshmen. But what'm I gonna do- stop you?"
"...Do you think she'd mind if we took a look inside?" The female officer asked.
"I dunno, probably not, but she's not home right now..." Mary said, trying to sound casual and innocent
"Well, we can get a key from the super," The male officer said. "Why don't you come with us, in case we forget the unit number?"
Oh God, Mary thought, they're trying to trap me.
"Well here, I'll just write it down on a sticky note," Mary said, opening the closest counter drawer to her but finding it arranged completely differently than she was used to. "Got some around here somewhere..." She went through two more drawers, trying not to appear too frantic in her searches. "Well, anyways, it's 22-D, not hard to remember at all, she said, smiling.
"I'd still like it if you came with us," The female officer said, shifting her stance to face Mary more directly.

Mary knew she shouldn't have said it. It was a terribly rookie mistake, the kind of thing she would groan at watching deposition videos in class, but she said it anyways.
"Do I have to?"
"Ma'am, are you hiding something from us?" The male officer said, also turning to more fully face Mary, the two officers trapping Mary in her small kitchen.
"No!" Mary exclaimed, "Not at all!" But despite the lie, Mary was devoting nearly all her attention and willpower just to keeping the Body in check, it's calls for bloodshed ringing in her ears.
"Then why can't you come with us? Where's the fire?" He asked.
"Well, I mean, I just..." Mary stammered.
"Ma'am, I'm afraid I'm going to have to detain you," The male officer said as he reached for Mary. "Now, you're not under-"

As soon as the officer's hand touched Mary's arm, her own hand whipped around, grabbing the officer's wrist.
"Ow! Hey, leggo! Let go!" The officer said, pulling away. But the Body had the officer's wrist in a vice-like grip, and Mary was pulled clumsily along, grabbing her wrist with her free hand and trying to pull it off.
"Let go!" The officer yelled.
"I can't!" Mary pleaded, trying to pull against herself, leaving her in a bizarre tug of war with the officer.
"Leggo or I'm gonna pepper spray ya!" The officer said. "Leggo!" He repeated.
"I'm trying!" Mary pleaded, trying to wrench her hand free of its grip.
The male officer's partner came around Mary's side, spraying her in the face with her pepper spray, but it might as well have been water for how much Mary reacted to it, causing her to blink briefly but causing no further irritation.
"Spray her!" The male officer yelled as he pulled bakwards, slamming against the wall and dragging Mary along with him.
"I am!" The female officer yelled back. "It's not working!"
"Let go!" The officer yelled again as Mary pulled against him. "Quit resistin'!"
"I'm trying!" Mary pleaded. "Please, you've got to stop!"
"You stop!" The female officer said as she sprayed Mary again.
"I can't!" Mary yelled. "Please, get out of here!"
"LET GO!" The Male officer yelled again, finally drawing his nightstick with his free hand and smacking it against Mary's forearm. Mary could feel the impacts; the officer was obviously swinging with all his might. But it was like the impact didn't *mean* anything to the Flesh, like it had just turned all its nerve endings off. She felt a crack against the back of her skull, and dimly realized the female officer was using her nightstick as well. she jabbed the end of it into Mary's ribs, but Mary's attention was now focused solely on holding back the Body, its howls drowning out any protests she could make, her suppression of its murderous instincts accomplished solely through sheer force of will.
"Taze her!" managed to pierce through her mental maelstrom, and Mary snapped back into the present, the male officer's shoe against her face as he lay back on the couch.
"But it'll get you too!" the female cop yelled as she continued to beat ineffectually against Mary with her nightstick.
"I don't care, just do it!" the male officer said.
"No, wait!" Mary managed to get out before she felt the needles pierce her back and sixty thousand volts charged through the Flesh.

The Body let out a mighty roar, not just in Mary's mind but through her mouth, spinning and throwing the male officer against the opposite wall. She felt her arms change into tentacles as she whipped around, the nearest snaring the female officer's neck and injecting her with so much transformative venom she all but melted into tentacles on the spot, the writhing green mass snaking its way out of her clothes even as Mary continued her spin, her other tentacle lashing around the male officer's leg, piercing the cotton uniform effortlessly. The male officer screamed briefly as his leg swelled and disintegrated before passing out, his remaining mass disentangling into tentacles and leaving two empy police uniforms on the ground.

Mary sunk to her knees, sobbing furiously. She'd killed. She'd killed two policemen. What was she going to do? Where could she go?
"Officer Ramsey, is the suspect in custody? Officer Ramsey? Come in officer Ramsey, please respond!"
Mary looked at the squaking radio still clipped to the shoulder of the empty uniform.
Officer down, she thought. They're going to send more.

Mary rose to her feet, the newly-created mat of tentacles following behind her as she walked to the door, eating the officers' uniforms as they went. Mary went outside and saw the police cruiser parked in front of her apartment. Inside, the radio was blaring out the apartment complex's address, and in the distance her improved ears could hear sirens.

Mary looked at the cruiser. They're sending more, Mary thought. They're going to keep sending more. It's only going to get worse from here.
"I need a way to defend myself..." She said as she approached the rear of the cruiser, claws growing from her hands.

Re: New TF Story
 

Hey, great chapter!

You almost had me thinking the Body would be making a new "friend" out of the female police officer, heh (although that doesn't necessarily leave a female police officer TF out of the question).

Anyways, I'm dying to see how Mary will get out of this one!

Re: New TF Story
 

WHOOHOO! The plot gets interesting...
Great suspense in this chapter Soy, and well done with the story!
Mary's in really really deep crap this time.

Re: New TF Story
 

OMG THAT WAS AWESOME! A sudden change in plot. Those where great transformations, things quickly got intense and now it's going to get insane.

Re: New TF Story
 

I just read the entire thing I hope we get to see a pic of Shandra soon and put up the next chapter as well.

Re: New TF Story
 

Hey all. We're finally getting back to this story a bit, Soy and I. For my part, here's a picture depicting a certain portion of the story. Enjoy! :D

Other pictures I've done for this can be found here:

http://www.process-productions.com/f...&postcount=176

Re: New TF Story
 

This has all been really good so far. Can't wait for more, soy.

Re: New TF Story
 

I love the impossible quandary in which you have put Mary. Shandra points out the huge, gaping holes in Mary's plan. And she is correct. The idea of feeding vague, nebulous information to the CDC in the hope that they can identify a completely alien disease/organism and tell her how to eliminate it *via e-mail* is colossally stupid. Well, perhaps not stupid, but overly optimistic.

But, interestingly, it is the kind of plan that might be plausible in most transformation fiction. I am interested to see how that develops as you have already dispensed with one of the other common tropes of transformation fiction: that when strange/sexy transformations happen everyone either goes along with it or enjoys it. The situation with Shandra is drawing a distinct line in the sand. This is not Sexy Fun Time. Shandra's transformation was, like Katie's, not voluntary and in addition it is embarrassing and humiliating and she is not compliant.

It will never work but either Mary is desperately clinging to this idea as her only hope for preventing an apocalypse or she fully expects that it will not likely work but if she doesn't do *something* then she would be wracked with guilt.

We have seen that there are some parts of this whole thing that Mary likes and she a lot less creeped out now than before. More familiarity means less strange and less strange means less fear. Maybe some part of her doesn't *want* to stop The Flesh and its plan, and these e-mails are her way of "doing something" so she can say "Look at me. I'm making an effort" to avoid crushing guilt for compliance in all this. We don't know yet if Mary has realized that stopping The Flesh will mean her death as well. If she does realize this then maybe she is being halfhearted in her efforts because *she* is afraid of dying as well. If she hasn't yet then I look forward to the moment in the story when she does! Also looking forward to the ramifications of the death of the repairman. I mean she killed someone! Granted she wasn't in control of herself but still...

Though, Mary has a point or two on her side as well. She knows that if The Body ever feels seriously threatened then she will not be able to reason with it or control it, and limit its danger to others. And she has to keep it ignorant for as long as possible. If it ever realized how powerful it is relative to the rest of the planet's inhabitants it would surely enter ENDGAME MODE. And if that happens, say goodbye to every other living thing on the planet.

Have I mentioned how much I love this story yet? The intrinsic conflict is awesome. It's Alien vs Humans and there is no good solution. If the alien wins, then humans go away forever. If humans win then say goodbye to Mary. And Mary is our protagonist. We get her POV. We Identify with her and we want her to come out on top. But if she wins then we loose.

Re: New TF Story
 

Shandra certainly isn't going quietly is she? Though now we know that The Body can be hurt, we just don't know by what yet.

And Mary realizes just how easily she has become accustomed to things like shape shifting and manipulating her "lair" and how that could be a hurdle in fixing this. As well as getting used to the idea of restraining Shandra.

One of the most interesting things about this chapter was the change in attitude from Katie. In the last installment she was angry about the whole "kidnapping the nurse and holding her hostage" thing but after Mary was attacked Katie suddenly sides with Mary against Shandra even though Mary is not hurt in the least. Her friendship must be very strong indeed.

Re: New TF Story
 

Everybody is doing favors in this chapter. Mary buys a fruit pie for Katie and The Body amplifies Mary's senses beyond human capacity. It's the little things.;)

Mary's desperation for a slice of normalcy is turned on its head when the body feeds on a normally less than appetizing hot dog.

It seems that Mary's relationship with The Body is dynamic. The Body can be in control if Mary isn't paying attention but Mary can exert control over The Body, even in high stress situations if she concentrates hard enough.

Hey, and Mary actually has a good idea about the CDC inquiries! But sadly she is interrupted by those pesky questions about where that repairman went...

The inhumanity of Mary is driven home in small ways by not having any physical reactions to mental stress and nervousness. She probably could have used that to her advantage in the interview if she hadn't been so preoccupied with keeping The Body from murdering the two officers on the spot.

The officers did seem a little too eager. They apparently were planning to take her in before they talked to her. I wonder what they were going to charge her with?

But the confrontation revealed several things. That electricity can hurt The Body and just how dangerous it can be in combat. Once the Taser came out The Body dispatched them in seconds. And now there are more on the way. Mary could win in a confrontation but that will only escalate matters. I wonder if she could assume the form of one of the officers and call in a response to head off the backup and then ditch the cruiser somewhere. Things seem to be spiraling out of control at the moment and I hope Mary can calm things down. I am hoping for a lot more story before we reach the climax.

And something makes me suspect that The Body may not trust Mary as much now, with her trying to stop it from killing the "predators".

Will Mary tell Katie about the encounter when she gets back? This is of course assuming that there isn't a phalanx of police cruisers parked outside when she returns to clue her that something is wrong.

Re: New TF Story
 

Wow! Thanks for all the great comments. :D

Yeah, things are getting hairy, and they'll get worse before they get better. Everyone's flying blind on this one, trying to figure out what's happening and why.

Stay tuned! :D

Re: New TF Story
 

Kaiyotea's comments inspired me, so I pushed through and finished the next chapter. Here you go! :D
===================================

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.

Re: New TF Story
 

Another excellent chapter! Well done!

It seems so far that any chance of Mary keeping her "secret" is now gone. I wouldn't be surprised if Mary and and Katie's faces showed up on the news (maybe even shandra's?). Now, save any appearance changes, it seems it would be troublesome to be out in the public without attracting immediate and unwanted attention.

At this point, should Mary choose to remain in the current safety of her apartment/ lair, it seems that eventually the police and /or military would find a way to break in. Good thing the lair is somewhat portable, should the need to move arise.

Aside from hoping to meet with the CDC, it seems from Mary's conversation with the Body that she has a plan to somehow attenuate the severity of the situation. I am looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds.

Re: New TF Story
 

Woah! That was an epic scene - great job Soy!

Maybe to avoid detection, Mary could change her face? After all, The Flesh would be able to do that easily. And Katie would have a really big problem with that, what with Mary's partial loss of "self"... :D

Re: New TF Story
 

Very nice, this story is part of the major reason I keep coming in here.

Personally I can't wait to see what would happen when she figures out that for the most part she's screwed as well as her best friend from the Body. Personally I'm waiting to see the knock-down, drag out fight she'll have to do to at least labotomize it through some mental war or some sort of immune system battle. Then she might not be able to get back to normal, but perhaps could learn to live with it more in an Alex Mercer way, still a horrible abomination but one that can be likeable.

But that's just my view and would love what ever you come up with Orange. Keep on trucking!

Re: New TF Story
 

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.
===========================
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.

Re: New TF Story
 

A couple new forms for Mary, and some pretty important things happening in the story!

I really dig how the form Mary was sprinting in got that itch from standing still. Like it needed to be in movement badly enough to where it tingled if it wasn't in motion. Nice little detail, that. :)

I rather enjoy what Katie did to the apartment while Mary was out. It's fun imagining her trying to build all of that and likely making a wreck of it at first. :p

And man, Mary really gave it to Shandra there at the end, and there's a good mix of feeling sorry for her and feeling angry with her at the same time there.

Prime stuff. Always a joy, Soy!

Re: New TF Story
 

Great read, both alien forms were really nice.
Thanks !
Awaiting patiently for next update...

Re: New TF Story
 

Shandra has been a part of the main cast for some time now, so I thought it appropriate to finally get a picture of her drawn. So here you go. Enjoy. :)

Re: New TF Story
 

Now, here's a pic from when Katie had her unfortunate and sudden transformation at school.

Re: New TF Story
 

So does anyone even look in here? ^_-

Have another picture. This is from when after Shandra's transformed and makes a run for Mary's apartment door. Mary puts a stop to that. :)

Re: New TF Story
 

Awesome work :D

Re: New TF Story
 

Hey soy, what happened to the story? Waiting eagerly for the next chapter of this excellent story. Keep it up! :D

Re: New TF Story
 

Oh, hey.

Sorry, I just kinda back-burnered it since pretty much no one ever said anything. ^^;

I'm still working on it here and there but I'm giving more attention to other projects as of late, most of which don't get posted...

Re: New TF Story
 

That's a shame I do love this story, Started reading it off of Spiralstaircases DA account and just recently read up to the current page on here.

Re: New TF Story
 

...Yeah, that's pretty much my story. Except for me not realising SpiralingStaircase wasn't the author. Sorry about that. Now that I know the truth, I can say, "Nice. This story really is quite good."

I have been enjoying Mary's recent panic - which is to say, I've been enjoying how well it's written, not her ongoing emotional distress. I think Katie really is a rock to Mary. Without her, she rapidly goes to pieces (in every sense), but when she's around even her presence seems to be calming.

In contrast, Shandra seems... ehm, traumatised, most likely. Hopefully she'll be able to manage to take "Physician, heal thyself" literally enough to pull through it. She has managed to cope pretty well so far, all things considered, but maybe that's just shock.

Re: New TF Story
 

"Mary," Katie said, poking the green-skinned tentacle-monster in the stomach. "Mary, wake up. Mary..."
"Wha, hua, what is it?" Mary asked, starting awake and rubbing her eyes with a tentacle. She realized what she was doing and formed the appendage back into a hand.
"We're in trouble," Katie said, stepping back.
"Trouble?" Mary scoffed, sitting up on the squared-off mat of tentacles that served as her bed. "We passed trouble a long time ago." Mary looked down, firming up her legs into a more humanoid shape before standing up. She'd used her toga to make a kind of bedspread, and once again wound it around herself, noting with dismay a few patches that had been eaten through.
"Dammit, you guys!" She said, turning and yelling at the tentacle-bed. "I said no eating the sheets!" In response the mat seemed to compress in on itself, shrinking away from Mary's rebuke.
"...I thought all that stuff was you?" Katie said, cocking her head.
"Yeah, well, I'm being run by committe, remember," Mary said, pointing to her head with an irritated gesture. "Apparently not everyone's on board with the 'don't eat what's left of the furniture' thing."
"Well, we got bigger problems now," Katie said, backing up towards her room.
"Greeeat," Mary said, rubing her eyes with one hand while the other held the knot of her toga. She followed Katie into her room, stopping suddenly when she saw Shandra sitting against the remaining wall of Katie's bedroom. Shandra flinched away as Mary scowled at her, but before things could escalate, Katie's snapping fngers re-focused Mary's attention on her computer screen.
"Your little performance yester-"
"Oh, that's just fan*tas*tic," Mary interrupted as she read the headline on Katie's screen. 'Strange animal confronts police', it said.
"That's not the half of it," Katie said, clicking on the link.

Mary's jaw set as the local anchor's 'serious' voice told the story about a missing persons investigation gone awry, but what made her eyes pop was when she said that a local reporter had recovered a video from an abandoned police cruiser. Mary covered her eyes with her hands as she saw her spiked, hulking form in the grainy dashboard footage, but a new pair of eyes formed on the backs of her hands to continue watching. She heard the sharp retort of the rifle and saw her fall to earth, bouncing on the pavement and laying still for just a few moments, long enough for Mary to distractedly wonder why a form supposedly meant for fighting had such large breasts before she stirred again. Mary watched her recorded version rise up, her face already reconstituting itself as she growled. Then she leapt, and with a great crash and roar the video cut out.
"Now remember," the anchorwoman said, "authorites have confirmed the footage is genuine, but are saying that it is an ongoing investigation and refuse to comment further. However, Channel Eight news has determined that all of the aprtments on the Yorkshire Terrace apartment complexes have been evacuated, and traffic up and down 73rd street is being regulated by officials. Also, the jornalist who recovered the tape from the damaged police car snapped this photo of a crud message carved into the hood of the car," She continued, a photograph of Mary's "CDC" scrawled into front of the caved-in police car appearing on-screen, "Although its meaning or signifigance is not immediately clear. We'll have more on this breaking story as it develops."

"Greeeeat," Mary said, looking up at the ceiling. She turned away from the computer, putting a hand to her head. So what now? Escalation? Could Mary expect to see the national guard on her door by nightfall? Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard Shandra's voice, no more than a whisper, but when half the room was basically one huge sensory organ it was impossible for her to *not* hear.
"K-Katie...?" Shandra whispered, trying to get her attention. "KAtie?"
"What?" Mary asked, turning. Shandra flinched away, curling in as much as her huge stomach allowed. She was still producing new tentacles, each spawn slithering out from the improvised "skirt" she'd made from her lab coat and joining the rest of the mat that covered most of the floor.
"Well, what?" Mary asked, putting her free hand on her hip.
"Nothing!" Shandra said, curling in even tighter.
"Oh, don't give me that," Mary said, losing patience. "What were you going to ask her?"
"I- I'm thirsty," Shandra said, still looking away. "I- I just wanted- can I please have some water?"
"Well what do you need to ask for?" Mary said. "Just go get some from- er..." Mary trailed off as she remembered that in her frenzy the day before she'd eaten the sink and the cupboards and everything inside them. Shandra said nothing, but snuck a glance at Mary. "...Hmmm," Mary said, turning and looking out the bedroom door. "uh..."
"I'm kinda thirsty, too," Katie said, turning in her chair to face Mary. "and I'm not waiting to boobzilla out just to get a drink, that's for sure."
"Hmm..." Mary thought. "Well, I mean, I can't have eaten all the way back to the pumping station. I bet there's a tap-water pipe we can get clean water out of somewhere."

"Just a sec," Mary said to Katie and Shandra, walking back into where her kitchen used to be. She closed her eyes and "felt" around, letting the sensations of the living floor come into focus. She could feel the rough, pebbly surface of the concrete foundation, everything down to the carpet having been stripped away and consumed already. She felt a few cold pieces of metal, but it was the cold, wet sensation of water that finally tipped her off. Opening her eyes, Mary turned to the source of the.water, kneeling down and waving the tentacles away with her hand. As they parted, the seal over the sink pipe released and water began flowing up and out of it once more. Mary immediately noticed the tentacles nearest the pipe began swelling and fattening, just like she had when she'd gotten caught in the rain and when she'd gone swimming. Mary bent down and held her lips just above where the water was coming out and took a drink. She could taste that the water was clean- not pure, but clean enough to be healthy to normal humans- but the action offended her. Bending down like a dog to drink from a broken pipe... she was still civilized, even if she was a monster.

Mary extruded a long tentacle from her arm, wrapping one end around the broken pipe and hollowing it into a tube so the water would flow through. After a short mental command for the tentacle to not "drink" the water that was flowing through it, water began dribbling out of the end of the hollow tentacle.
"Well, it's a start," Mary said to herself as she stood, "But it still looks like I'm drinking out of a booger."
Concentrating on the hollow tentacle, Mary stiffened its outsides somewhat, then darkened the color. Finally, she gave the tentacle a glossy scaled pattern, and with that the tentacle's transformation into a reasonable fascimilie of a garden hose was complete.
"Not Perrier, but a little civilized, at least," Mary said, turning toward the bedroom. "Hey, I found the water!" She called out.
"Is it good to drink?" Katie called back.
"Yeah!" Mary replied, folding the 'hose' at arm's length so the water didn't splash on her toga.
Katie came out first, followed cautiously by shandra. Mary held the hose out to Katie, who took it, and after a moment, turned to Shandra and held it out to her. Shandra looked at Mary nervously, clutching her hands as close to her chest as her enormous stomach and engorged breasts allowed. When Mary turned away, Shandra cautiously approached Katie and took the hose from her.
"Th-thank you," She whispered to Katie, as she brought the hose to her mouth.

Shandra took a few sips without event, but the instant her lips touched the end of the hose it spasmed, darting into her mouth. Shandra reeled back, her eyes going wide, but her head snapped forwards as she reached the end of the hose's length, apparently unable to let go of the hose.
"Mmmph! Mmmm!" She wordlessly screamed as she tried to pull the hose out of her mouth, cheeks buldging with water. She pulled, but it only served to pull her face forward, her brow furrowing in doscomfort. Like some sort of lamprey or barbed tooth, the hose had somehow attached itself to the inside of shandra's mouth.
"Mary!" Katie yelled.
"What?!" Mary shot back, spreading her arms wide. "It's not me!"
"Well, help me get it off!" Katie said, grabbing the tentacle hose and yanking on it. Shandra let out another muffled cry as she was dragged face-first around the kitchen.
"Okay, okay, stop! We're hurting her!" Katie said as she dropped the hose, Shandra waving frantically. The three stopped to take stock of the situations, all that could be heard being the running of the water and Shandra's frantic, rhythmic swallowing.
"Uh, oh..." Mary said, looking down at Shandra's front. Katie and Shandra followed her gaze as handra's already gravid belly seemed to pulsate farther out in front of her with every swallow. The creaking of her pink scrubs indicated that her breasts were following suit, taking up more and more room on the shelf of her swollen abdomen. Shandra looked back up at Mary and Katie with terror in her eyes, and set about trying to kink or bend the tentacle-hose so as to restrict the flow of water. Katie turned to the source of the water, but the tentacle hose was bonded tightly to the pipe. Katie tried shaking the pipe loose, but it was cast right into the foundation- without some sort of tool she'd have no hope of hampering the water's source.
"What? What're you doing?" Mary said, grabbing her head in her hands. "Let her go!"
"Why do you fear?" The Body asked. "We are merely preparing this meat to go long periods without sustenance."
Mary looked at Shandra, frantically struggling as her enormous stomach hung down close to her knees and her breasts threatened to rip the pink scrubs in two. "She's good! She's fine! Knock it off already!"
"This meat exists only to help give birth to the Flesh," the Body said. "We do not need to worry about her defending herself from predators while she remains in the lair."
"So?!"
"So the only thing this meat needs is plenty of sustenance."
"You're going to pop her! She can't get much bigger."
"Nonsense. The Flesh is strong and durable, our glory can take many forms."
Mary looked at Shandra, trying now just to hold herself on her feet as she grew more and more gravid by the second.
"I. Said. STOP!" Mary finally yelled, raising a hand into the air, her fingers lengthening into scythe-like talons as she brought her hand down on the taut hose, severing it cleanly. Shandra stumbled back a step before falling down on her butt against the wall, the mountain of flesh attached to her front nearly completely obscuring her.
"Puh-pleh!" Shandra said, spitting out the tentacle, having finally disengaed it from her mouth as she sat there panting.

Mary and Katie stared at Shandra in shock, her grotesque exaggeration of a figure sloshing and jiggling as she panted. She wa a veritable wall of feminine curves, solid (if pliable) flesh fron her knees to her chin, her breasts actually pressing in against her cheeks as it heaved with each pant, the green flesh billowing up out of the neck of her scrubs, thrust skyward even moreso by the buldge of the enormous abdomen that dominated her silhouette.
"Lord almighty, Mary..." Katie said, shaking her head with a hand to her mouth.
"I said it wasn't me!" Mary exlaimed, still agape at Shandra's size. She had grown bigger before, when she was first transformed, but still, to see the giant mounds of jiggly flesh stacked on top of Shandra's lap like overfilled water balloons was still a sight.
"Well, fix it anyways!" Katie said, gesturing to Shandra with both arms.
"Well- I- how?!" Mary retored.
"I don't know, you put it in her, take it out!"
Mary looked incredulously as her friend and back to Shandra. What, just poke a hole in her and let it drain? She thought sardonically. Well, she thought, looking at Shandra struggling under her own weight, at the very least she could make her comfortable. Mary pulled up the tentacle-floor beneath Shandra, which caused her to start, but she was pressed down into the bowl of the floor as it rose and shaped, turning into what was essentially a living papasan chair, supporting Shandra's head and legs while still allowing space for her enormous breasts and stomach to sit comfortably.
"What, you're redecorating?" Katie asked.
"Look, she got this way because I was trying to 'help' in the first place. The less I get- the less the *body* gets involved- the better."
Katie looked at Shandra, who had thankfully moved past panting and was now moaning like an over-stuffed Thanksgiving diner, running her hands over what parts of her engorged stomach she could reach.
"...You think so?" Katie asked, looking back to Mary.
Mary shook her head slightly. "*You* wanna risk it?"
Katie grimmaced, then approached the little seat, looking down at Shandra. "Mary," She asked, brushing her hand over Shandra's forehead, "You can turn into just about anything, right?"
Mary cocked her head, looking at her friend. "...I think so," she said, "why?"
"Could you turn into a guy?" Katie asked, looking at her friend.
"Do what?" Mary retorted, flinching as though she'd been struck. "I mean, what?"
"I've been... pretty understanding, I think," She said, taking a step towards Mary, "But I think if I keep this bottled up anymore it's gonna split me in half."
"What? What's bottled?" Mary asked, taking a step back.
"Anger," Katie said, "Anger at this whole rotten situation! Anger at being turned into boobzilla, anger at that dead repairman, the two dead cops, anger that you've been basically hijaced at the cellular level and I can't even really hate it because it's *you*!"
Mary shook her head and put her hands up as she backed up another step. "And- And so you want to...?"
Katie looked Mary straight in the eyes and squared her jaw. "I want to hit the Body. Just once. *Hard*."
"Katie, it's not- I mean, there isn't-"
"I *know*, which is why I asked if you could turn into a guy. Turn into him. It. Whatever." Katie looked to the side, scowling. "I want to vent my frustration at something that doesn't have your face, okay?"
Mary's brow furrowed. The request was bizarre, but it was a bizzarre circumstance, and if this was what Katie needed to keep sane in such an insane situation...
"So... what, just any guy?" Mary asked.
"I dunno- Just, what the hell does the Body look like?"
Mary actually laughed a bit. "It doesn't look like anything, KAtie. I mean, that first night, when it did whatever it did to me, it was like this light green light that went on forever, and it was just this voice talking to me. It's not a guy; it's not even a person. It's just... it."
"Well, okay," Katie said, putting her hands up. "How about this; make it look as little like you as possible, okay? Like I said, I don't wanna see your face when I do this."
"Okay, okay," Mary said, turning away from Katie. She'd turned into lots of things so far, but they were all female at least, sometimes embarrassingly so. Even the alien shapes of the mermaid-like swimming creature and the scythe-taloned sprinter didn't seem as strange to her as trying to be a man.
"Um... you mind turning around?" Mary asked, blushing.
"You're gonna take off your toga?" Katie asked back, her expression twisting.
"No, no!" Mary replied, eyes popping wide. "I just... this is really weird, you know?"
"The whole reason I'm asking for this is because I've been swimming in wierd all week," Katie retorted as she turned. "You'll have to excuse me for not differentiating between the flavors."
Mary smiled, but she was more concerned with the canvas she was staring at, the familiar shapes and colors needing to be redrawn. "Hoo-kay," She said, exhaling. Let's take away before we add, she thought to herself. Closing her eyes, she began willing away all the things that she consedered feminine about herself, drawing in her hips, shortening her hair, flattening her breasts to nearly nothing, the sensations odd and disquieting. It was only a few moments and Mary had reduced herself to something that could hardly be discerned as a man or a woman at first glance.
"Ready?" Katie asked.
"No, I'm done taking away," Mary replied, "Now I have to... add."
Katie snorted. "I almost wanna watch."
"Katie, gross," Mary grimmaced as she willed her shoulders a little wider, fingers a little thicker, jaw a little squared off.
"Look, I'll take all the laughs I can get, okay?" Katie said, cracking her knuckles.
"All right, okay," Mary said, flattening her nose, changing her hair and eye color, and giving herself a few inches of height just for the heck of it. "Okay," Mary said, buldging her muscles just a bit all over, "I think I'm done."

Katie turned, recoiling a bit at the different person standing in front of her before her face scrunched up in rage and she belted Mary right across the jaw. It was the speed that caught her off guard the most, the blow delivered so quickly and with such force Mary didn't even have the time to tense up. Mary spun around, tossed off her balance as her feet tangled aound each other. She landed on her stomach, catching her face before it slammed into the ground, and even as she hit she felt the Body react with anger and fear.
"The Meat attacks us?! Why does it do this thing?!"
"Stop, stop!" Mary yelled inside her head. "She didn't mean anything by it!"
"It attacked! The meat attacked us!" The Body retorted, trying to slip into the muscular "defensive" form Mary had been turned into before.
"It wasn't realy!" Mary insisted, trying to keep the muscles down. "She- it was practice! PRactie against, others, other, uh, prey!"
"Prey?" The Body said, stopping. MAry let out her breath and forced herself normal again, or at least as normal as she got.
"Yes..." The Body said, Mary sensing something akin to pride in its voice. "Yes, the Meat that serves the Flesh may not always be within the lair," it said. "It should know how to defend itself from predators. This pleases us."
MAry exhaled as she rose to her feet again. Another bullet dodged, another bomb defused...
"Another day in paradise," Mary muttered as she stood, shaking her head as she regarded her friend. "Feel better?" She asked, ruvbbing her jaw.
"...yeah, actually," Katie repied, her features softening. "Sorry, did it hurt?"
Mary chuckled and shook her head. "Nah. Pretty surprising, though, where'd you learn to punch that fast?"
"I couldn't tell you," Katie said. "It just came so quick, all the stuff I've been bottling up just shooting into my fist."
"Well, believe me, no one wants it gone more than me," Mary said.
Katie nodded, smiling slightly. "You know, for a split second I was thinking maybe I'd kick you right in the dangly bits."
Mary laughed at that one, putting a hand to her mouth and wincing. "WOuldn't've done any good, I'm afraid," Mary said, "Nothing down there."
"Back when you were a guy?" Katie asked, eyes widening slightly.
"I'll change the wallpaper all you want," Mary said, putting a hand up, "But no way am I re-doing the plumbing. Even I've got my limits."
Katie blushed and turned to the side, putting a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. "Okay, okay. So now that we've got that little detour settled, what do we do about her?" She asked, pointing with her thumb to the tentacle-recliner and the gravid form atop it. Mary watched as another long tentacle slid out of Shandra's skirt, falling off the makeshift recliner and absorbing into the floor.
Mary walked up next to Shandra, who was still moaning and slowly rubbing the sides of her stomach, as much of it as she could reach around the sides of her drastically swollen breasts.
"Geeze, she's almost as big as me when I go all boobzilla," Katie said.
Mary shook her head again. "I really don't think there's anything for us to do," she said. "Just let her process it all."
"You think you could give her one of your shots? Like you do to me?" Katie asked.
"No," Mary answered, shaking her head. "Not like this. You remember how short it lasted when you were full of milk, right? If I did it to her now, like this, I doubt it'd last an hour."
"So just leave her?"
"You got any better ideas?"
Katie put her hands on her hips, biting her lower lip as she slowly shook her head. "Just hate to see her like this," She said.
"I know," Mary nodded, "Me too."
For a little while the pair of friends stood in silence, looking at the horrendously-bloated nurse in her strange, fleshy chair.

Re: New TF Story
 

So, my first ever TG. It wasn't even really planned, Katie's off-hand comment about wanting to nut the Body a few chapters back coming to fruition. ^^;

Re: New TF Story
 

Katie suddenly spun to Mary, grabbing her by the arm. "The phone!" She exclaimed.
"Phone?" Mary echoed, "What phone? Where?"
"In the bushes!" Katie said, heading for the front of the apartment. That cop gave it to me right before you snagged me, he said the CDC was on the line."
"The CDC?" Mary asked, brows raising as she followed Katie to where the door of the apartment used to be.
"Yeah, he had somehow gotten a line patched through to the phone I was carrying." Katie patted the wall of tentacles. "Any chance I can get through?" She asked, looking over her shoulder at Mary. "I think if I can get the phone, we can call the number back. Sure it's flimsy, but what else we got to go on right now?"
Mary thought for a moment, putting a finger up at Katie. "One sec," She said, "lemme check first." She looked up towards the ceiling and closed her eyes, her vision blinking back open on one of the exterior walls of the apartment, the tentacles that had wrapped around the outsides of the windows and door sprouting eyes to allow her the see all around outside their unit. It was early morning still, a heavy fog blanketing the parking lot. The silence unnerved her at first, until she realized she was still only listening through the ears on her physical head. A short mental nudge and she could hear the birds chirping and other early-morning sounds.
Mary opened her eyes and shook her head as her senses returned to her original set, blinking her eyes.
"Okay, looks like you're all clear," Mary said. "You remember where you put it?"
"I didn't 'put it' anywhere," Katie said. "You grabbed me through the door and the thing went flying. I'm betting it landed in the shrubs between here and Mrs. O'Rourke's place."
"Oh. Okay," Mary replied, stepping up to the door. "Actually, here, let me," She said, sticking her arm into the door, the appendage exiting out the other side as a lengthening tentacle winding its way through the air towards the bushes on either side of the walkway leading up to the two apartments. "Now lesse..." Mary said, biting her tongue in concentration as she sensed through the tentacle, looking between the leaves and branches of the shrubs for a cell phone.
"I'd ask what you're doing, but I'm not sure I want to know," Katie said, hands on her hips.
"I'm looking for the phone," Mary said, her tentacle now slithering snake-like along the ground, worming its way between the branches and roots of the foliage. "Oooh, spider. Bonus," She continued as her tentacle snared and consumed a small spider whose web she went through.
"Spider?" Katie asked, brow furrowing at her friend.
"Hey, anything that will keep the body satiated a little longer is all right with me..." Mary replied. "Ah! There!" She exclaimed, pulling away from the door, er arm stretching like a rubber band until it snapped back through the wall, the phone that she'd entwined in her tentacle now being held in her hand. KAtie's eyes popped wide, amazed.
"You know, if you could ever get the Body under control, you could make bank as a magician," Katie said, grinning slightly.
"Yeah, yeah, nothing up my sleeve," Mary said as she flipped open the cell phone. Mary raised an eyebrow at the picture on the phone's background, an athletic and attractive redheaded woman, looking to be in her thirties. "Whose phone is this, again?"
"The detective, uh, the guy on the bullhorn," Katie said, scratching her head. "You know, from yesterday."
"Right," Mary replied, wandering over to the "table" Katie had made in the middle of the room as she fiddled through the cell phone's menus. "Okay, 'call log'... 'incoming calls'... there we go." Mary looked up at her friend. "So, it looks like I can just call back and talk to whoever was supposed to talk to me."
"Worth a shot," Katie said, "Though I have to wonder why we went with the cloak-and-dagger vagueness before and now we're just calling them up?"
"We're unfortunately past the point of subtlety," Mary said as she dialed. "If it wasn't for those two cops- wasn't for *her*- this would still be an annoying carpet in the upstairs apartment." She put the phone up to her ear, tossing her hair away from her head. "Back then I could afford to go slow enough that people wouldn't think I was crazy. Now that the whole world's seen me get half my head blown off, I can't afford- yes, hello!" She said as someone on the other end picked up.
"Hello?" A woman asked, sounding confused.
"Yes, is this the Center for Disease Control?" MAry asked.
"What?" Came the confused reply. "No."
"Oh!" MAry said, blushing, "I'm sorry, I must have the wrong-"
"Where did you get this number?" The woman asked. "And where'd you get that phone?"
"I, uh, sorry, wrong number!" Mary said, clapping the phone shut.
"...What was that all about?" Katie asked, cocking her head to the side.
"Wrong number," Mary simply said, blushing.
"Wrong number?" Katie echoed. "Who did you call?"
"I dunno," Mary said, though she had he suspicions as she opneed up the cell phone again and saw the wallpaper of the thirty-something blonde. "But whoever it was I should have known a 503 area code wasn't the CDC." She scrolled up therought the incoming calls again, this time not picking the most recent number but one from the most alien area code. If it wasn't one she'd ever heard of, it was probably to an area she'd never called, which Atlanta, Georgia certainly was. Finding a 404 area code, she hit the "dial" button and put the phone back to her ear, shooting a glance at KAtie and Shandra. Katie was pretty due for a shot, though Mary knew the best thing would be for her to get rid of all her milk first. It still seemed gross to be drinking her best friedn's breast milk, but if it kept the Body happy she couldn't really complain, especially with how ghastly the alternative was.

"Center For Disease Control Main Switchboard, how may I direct your call?"
Mary let out a silent snarl as she staped her foot. Of course the call would go back into the switchboard!
"Uh, hi, yes, my name is Mary Carver, and I'm calling on behalf of uh, Oregon State Police... Officer..." Mary looked at Katie and nodded urgently.
"Uh... uhh... Jefferies! Lieutenant Jefferies!" She whispered.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant Jefferies," Mary said into the cell phone. "We contacted one of your researchers yesterday and I seem to have lost their name."
"Hmm... One moment please," The receptionist said, putting Mary on hold.
"Anything else you can tell me that might help me fake my way through this?" Mary whispered to Katie as she wrapped the hand around the lower half of the phone.
"Got nothin'," Katie said, spreading her hands.
Mary frowned and just hoped the receptionist would be easy to deal with.
"Yes, hello," The receptionist came back on, "I can't seem to find who you're looking for- do you remember what department the doctor you talked to was from?"
"Uh... Parasitic infections?" Mary ventured. "Er, Parasites and, uh..."
"Parasitology?" The operator suggested.
"Yeah, that's it," Mary replied. "Thanks."
"No problem, ma'am, I'll transfer you now. You have a nice day, now."
I don't think anyone calls the CDC when they're having a nice day, Mary thought.

"Parasitology," A man's voiced came over the phone a few seconds later.
"Yes, hello," Mary said, pacing the floor as she talked. "My name is Mary Carver, and I need one of you guys to come to Eugene, Oregon, because I've found an extremely lethal parasite that needs to be-"
"Wait, wait, how'd you get this number?" The man said.
"It doesn't matter!" Mary exclaimed. "Listen, two people are dead already, three more are infected, and there will be a lot more if somebody doesn't come down to contain this it's going to get a hell of alot worse!"
"Okay, okay," The man said, "Just calm down. Now, are you sure it's a parasite?"
Mary looked up at the ceiling, the mat of tentacles slowly pulsating and undulating. "Oh yeah, definitely."
"And you're sure this parasite you're seeing is harmful to humans?"
"Look, I've watched these things be born, enter a host, kill it, and emerge from the corpse tenfold more. These things are *lethal*."
"Okay..." The man said, now sounding a bit more curious. "And where are these parasites located?"
"They're in my apartment."
"And where are you now?"
"In my apartment still."
"But how-"
"Believe me, it's where you want me," Mary continued, anticipating his question. "I seem to be immune myself, for the most part, but the people I've come into contact with have had... *very* adverse reactions. I'm asymptomatic but extremely contaigous." Mary paused for a second, biting her lip. "Look, all I'm saying is that when you guys get down here, you need to be wearing full-bore haz-mat suits. This thing can go airborne, it can go through the skin... If any part of your body gets exposed to this stuff you can get infected."
There was a long silence on the phone. Mary wondered if she was coming off as insane.
"...How many dead so far?" He asked.
"Two dead, three infected, and this thing looks like it's not gonna stop spreading any time soon. You guys really need to get down here as soon as you can and quarantine this whole area."
"And have you seen a doctor locally or anything?"
"Are you kidding? One foot inside a doctor's office and you'd have a dozen more cases by the end of the day, if you're *lucky*."
"Well, I can't just order a full quarantine-"
"Listen!" Mary snapped, bending down as if attempting to physically crush the conversation. "People. Are. Dying! Send someone to 2330 Rosewood Park, Apartment D-6, right now, or else these damn things are going to kill everyone they can get their hands on!"
"All right, all right! Calm down!"
"No! No I won't be calm until you send someone down here in a haz-mat suit to take care of this! I don't want to see anyone else dead because of this and we need your help! Rrrgh!"
Mary clapped the phone shut in her hands and threw it across the room, a quick lurch and catch from Katie the only thing keeping the phone from shattering against the far wall.
"...What was *that*?" Katie asked as Mary dropped to her knees, putting her face in her hands. After a few moments of silence, Katie took a step towards her friend, brow furrowing. "Mary? You okay, honey?"
"...You know, it kinda sucks being all emotionally strung out and not being able to cry because tentacles don't have tear ducts," Mary said as she rubbed her palms in her eyes and stood.
"Honey, what was that back there? What got into you?"
Mary shook her head. "I dunno. I guess I'd just been placing so much hope in the CDC, like they were some sort of genie who would swoop down in here and figure everything out in a puff of smoke. To just hear them talk to me like a nut or something..." Mary shook her head. "Well hey," She continued, turning to look at Katie, "At least when I blew up I didn't have to hit anyone."
"Oh, hush," Katie said, holding the phone back out to Mary. "You wanna call back?"
MAry thought for a second, then shook her head. "Nah. I think this might actually be the better way. They'll come. They can't afford not to. Sure, the first guy might just be checking it out, but one demonstration of the 'parasite's' effects and they'll give me the attention I deserve."

Re: New TF Story
 

I'm apparently on a roll. Enjoy! :D

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Hmm... Things seem to be coming to a head. What with all the news reports and everything there's bound to be some CDC attention on the Body sooner or later.

I'm reckoning the CDC won't be able to do much but maintain a ceasefire, though, probably after enraging the body a few times. No, I believe the ultimate resolution of this story will be Mary's doing. The Body is not a pleasant debate partner, but given a few lucky breaks she seems to be able to run rings around it, intellectually.

On an unrelated note, I wonder how good the body is at photosynthesis? I suppose a fair few of the alien words it's visited would have had some life form or other that got its energy from a sun. Maybe that's how the body avoids starving to death once it's eaten a world?

I just thought of something. Given the body's highly adaptive nature and its method of spreading via extreme long range interplanetary seeding, there's a fair chance that Mary's Body would be quite different to other versions of the Body found elsewhere, depending on their individual migration paths. What would happen if two different branches of the evolutionary tree met? Fight-to-the-death? Mutual seed sharing? Some kind of slime merge? And how would the minds come into it?

Re: New TF Story
 

You're right that a lot of the higher-order intellectual tasks are beyond the Body's comprehension, and MAry's going to use that to her advantage later on.

Yes, the Flesh can sustain itself via photosynthesis, but only just. It needs to eat something in order to grow larger. That's how the meteorite "seeds" stay alive, first by devolving to an extremely primitive form and second by surviving just off of photosynthesis.

As to what would happen were two seeds ever to cross paths on the same planet, I will say the The Body is the same wherever it goes. It's knowledge of various DNA strands might differ,but the core personality and drive would be identical, and in point of fact the two "Bodies" would probably merge together and not even know the difference- one Flesh is all Flesh, after all.

Whatever poor victims the "Mind" might be, however, is quite another matter... ^^;

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I would like to see that idea come to fruition sometime. After Mary's identity crisis of course. I get that vibe coming from her on occasion. Besides, The Flesh haven't been stopped yet and who knows how many solar systems its eaten. What's another seed on earth gonna do besides speed up the process?

Re: New TF Story
 

True, but then it's not "Mary's Story", and that's what the whole thing's focused on. Maybe after this one's done I can maybe do a side-story about another world where two seeds meet.

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If you could do that, I for one would greatly appreciate it. Back to Mary though, things are going to get blown way out of proportion. Military of every sort will try everything in their power to understand or destroy The Flesh. Meanwhile poor Mary runs intelectual loops around the Body to keep it from eating everything. Katie is having a harder time dealing with the Body as it is and Shandra has to be careful not to upset Mary while still trying to escape from her. Mary's stress level will be tested in the near future, no doubt about it. At least I think so.

I've been wondering though. The lair is somewhat mobile, right? Could Mary absorb all the tentacles that make up her lair and move to a secluded place? Away from the eyes of the innocent public. Making her a giant for a short period of time of course.

Re: New TF Story
 

While it's definitely mobile, I doubt it'd be able to move very stealthily, mainly because it's too damn big. The weight alone would probably put a dent in the pavement. If it's distributed over a wide area, then it becomes harder to hide.

I guess it could split into dozens of tiny creatures, but I doubt Mary'd go for it. THe more complex the body gets the less control she seems to have over minor parts of it... and I doubt she'd want the flesh to drive.

On the other hand, moving to, say, under a large body of water might be sensible. I can just imagine Mary's apartment building crawling its way down the highway to the beach (cue backing vocals)...

Re: New TF Story
 

Oh, do please write us this story, Mr. Orange! When you're not busy, of course.

Actually, assuming Mary's Story doesn't end badly for either us or her, a seed meeting story might be an interesting sequel. Then again, it might be impossible.

Hmm... Actually, I wonder how common alien life is in the Mary's Story universe? Particularly intelligent life. The Body seems to find Mary's thought processes strange, but that might just be the psycological equivilent of human thought being jury-rigged by an amateur electrician.
Come to think of it, maybe the Flesh explains the Fermi paradox.

Ah, I feel sorry for all the previous minds of the body... I imagine most of them would feel trapped in the flesh, immobile, virtually immortal lifeforms stretched over the entire surface of their planets, only the Body for company, waiting out the long eternity 'till death from starvation or supernova... Even for a creature with sub-human intelligence it'd be mind-cracking torture.
Then again... the body seems to have some kind of wierd telepathic (radio?) tentacle control thing going on. Maybe with a large enough (i.e. planet-sized) 'antenna' there could be some communication with other Minds, or something. Or maybe contacting alien brains via the body would be the last straw so far as sanity was concerned...

Re: New TF Story
 

Latin chanting. Or would that be best for The Final Battle?

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Or they could move the lair through the sewers, or even live in them !
The Body would love to eat sweet crocodiles...

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Is this story over or just forgoten?

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Forgotten by everyone here, I guess- no one ever comments on it. ^^;

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My arse! this is one of the best on-going storys here. More I say! \o/

Re: New TF Story
 

I'd comment on it... but I'm not very creative. I already said a few comments after the last time it updated, and haven't thought of anything new to say since.

I look to see if the thread has been updated... well, once every three days or so. Perhaps more, depending on my mood. It's a great story with interesting character development, and I'm eager to see how things continue to develop.

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I'm just waiting to see it finish before I give significant commentary. Still, looking forward to more!

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Great story so far, please write more and don't leave it hanging like this!

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I'm always waiting for more, I just forget to post when a new version is available, as I'm too excited to read it !

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I get the feeling people are just being polite and don't want to nag you about new chapters. I'm eagerly awaiting more from all these stories, especially working girl. That's my favorite of the four you're working on.

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I'm going to be polite and nag you at the same time - please continue! :)

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Always good to hear things like this. It can be a little disheartening to put so much work into this stuff and not hear a peep, so nag away. :)

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I can't speak for everyone on the internet (and frankly, the possibility scares me), but I know that I'm greedy, cheap, and lazy, and will leap at the chance of free entertainment. But because I really hate to see an author put off their craft (and because I haven't actually done anything to earn the stories I read), I try not to nag.

I've seen too many on-line authors get sick of being nagged and refuse to make more updates. Sure, some of the time either the writer or their readers are overreacting. However, in many cases the author simply comes to the realisation that feeling obligated to a greedy audience is frustrating, time-consuming and/or unrewarding, and decides to end the arrangement before they go insane.

Well, that's what I think, anyway.

Re: New TF Story
 

Well, believe me, you don't have to worry about that; I've never felt obligated to anyone but me and Hmm! to write. We do this for ourselves; that other people like it is a pleasant bonus. Other people commenting on our work lets us know we should bother posting instead of just sharing it with each other. :)

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Well then, if we could have the continuation to the story it would be great !

Re: New TF Story
 

Yeah, I'll work on it some more. Got four other projects going, but I'll give Mary's Story it's due, I promise. :)

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I would love to see more of this, but I am dieing to know, whats going on with the new pageant; are the characters picked out yet? is the storyline setup? has the comic begun to be illustrated? is it still going to be in comic form?