This is what I've been up to while waiting for the final tally for Super Slime Saga!
You might remember Amazing Fiction #i (
http://www.process-productions.com/f...ad.php?t=31385), a one-shot comic book-like story about an Interpol agent who becomes entangled in a series of events that culminates with her transformation into a hybrid between a human and a scorpion, and gaining super-human abilities in the process.
Last we heard of Agent Charlotte Richards, or "Charlie", she was headed back to Interpol HQ, her mission only half-complete, and with a more than interesting report to fill. What other adventure awaits her? Let us see!
Part 1.
Charlie ducked to avoid a large metallic arm coming at her. She instantly sprang up, wrapping herself against it before it went back to its launcher, "Got'cha!" she exclaimed, sticking one of her sharp-clawed feet out, using the momentum of the arm being brought back at top speed to kick through the head of the Brawler unit.
"Woo! One more down..." the black haired scorpion girl pumped a fist in the air. She frowned as beeping behind her alerted her, "All of you to go!"
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"We're receiving positive results from this test, as well, Dr. Masters," one of the researchers brought up a clipboard with statistic data recorded on its sheets. "Subject is not tiring even after having fought two dozen Brawlers."
"I see. Send in the fast ones."
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"Ah!" Charlie gasped as she narrowly avoided a pair of arms coming her way, bouncing off of one them to bring herself to the ceiling where she hung to with her powerful limbs. She looked down, narrowing her dark eyes, "You could try to sing a song if you'd really like to reach out to me."
A Brawler unit lashed one of its arms out at her, Charlie grunted and swiped back at it with her tail. "No touching!" she grinned, then flung herself at the lone Brawler in front of the others. "TAG!" she yelled, bringing her arms back before she literally smashed through with her fists. "You're it."
As the Brawler fell, the others seemed to back away. Two doors opened on either side of the warehouse and two Wheelers made their way in. Unlike the Brawlers that worked on a single wheel for movement and used their arms for long-range attacks, the Wheelers were towering but agile bots built for roller-skating speed slashing mayhem.
Charlie looked to either side and watched their arms pop large rotary blades out. "Oh, okay, okay. I'm it then?" her eyes widened as the wheelers sped down the lane towards her, sticking out their rotary blades to get her from opposite sides. "Pincer attacks? I do pincer attacks!"
Charlie crouched, waiting for the right moment before she sprung up. The Wheelers struck out with their blades as they came to melee distance, but Charlie's legs allowed her fantastical jumps. She came back down on the other Wheeler, but the bot was way more agile than a Brawler. Charlie would've been in trouble were it not for her own 'weapons' of choice.
Balling her clawed hands into fists, the pouches on her forearm opened to protude two large incisors that extended and snapped together at will. "Hiiiyah!" she drove her right pincer down, snapping it around the rotary blade. "Got your arm!" she grinned. The bot attempted to struggle to free its arm, but Charlie's grip was incredibly strong.
The other Wheeler tried to sneak up on Charlie, but she knew where it was coming from. There wasn' much space for hiding in the warehouse. "Nngh!" she groaned, sticking her free pincer out to snap around and catch the Wheeler's blade just in time. "You boys don't need to fight over me. Just..."
Charlie growled, starting to pull with all her strength, the bots starting to lift off the floor as she used her pincers to drag them together until their rotary blades made contact with one another. "...befriend each other!" she grinned, sparks flying as the blades cut through the steel armor and the Wheelers were forced to butcher each other.
Charlie leaped back, panting a bit. She had been fighting for over an hour, and even though she had a lot of endurance, the relentless attacks by the robots had worn her down. "That... all you got...?" she said between gasps, her mask having retracted to allow her to take generous gulps of much needed air.
With her attention having dwindled though, it took her that split second for a third Wheeler to ambush her. Fortunately for Charlie, the wheelers made a lot more noise than the Brawlers. "Gah!" Charlie turned only to have to throw herself to the ground, her claws digging into the floor with adrenaline powered strength, cracking it. The buzzing rotary blade had missed only by an inch, taking only a few strands of hair from her long dark mane.
Charlie hoped to make a recovery and strike back, but she started to feel the tax of her body's exertion. Her speed wasn't the same as one hour ago, and the Wheeler, seeing her there, slammed its blade down. "Shit!" she cursed, narrowly rolling away in time.
Before she could stand and make it very far though, she bumped against a fourth wheeler, and as she sprang to her feet she ducked and backed away as fast as she could to avoid. "Damnit!" she cursed louder, but bumped her back into a fifth wheeler that put its blade a very small distance from her neck. "Okay okay! I'll take you guys to a double date, make it a quintuple date!"
Charlie shut her eyes, bracing herself. Moments passed, but nothing happened to her. She popped one eye open, and noticed every bot had powered down. The lights of the warehouse came back on. "Oh boy..." she blinked, slowly moving away from the fifth Wheeler which had been moments from beheading her. Once she was safe, she inspected the five bots and scratched her head, "Heard of leaving the audience cold with bad jokes but..."
Two well blended double doors on a wall opened and two people in a labcoat entered the area. The woman ahead of the man Charlie recognized as Dr. Lexine Masters, an eccentric russian scientist with an attitude, and the other one must have been her aide. She had trouble remembering their names, Dr. Masters seemed to go through aides like coffee in the morning.
Masters clapped in a dull way as she approached Charlie.
"Finally some recognition," Charlie stretched a bit before resting her claws on her wide hips, "Coming from you, doc, makes it ever more gratifying!"
"Skip the sarcasm Ms. Richards. The combat data you've supplied us with, while valuable, is far from complete."
"Well sorry, maybe next time I should fight your endless waves of robots for twenty four hours straight next time, huh?"
Masters gave a soft smile as she adjusted her glasses, "Ah, is that a proposal, Ms. Richards?"
"I thought you were the sarcasm detector," Charlie replied with a flat stare. "So are you about ready to cure me?"
"Not quite. There is a lot more testing left to do, Ms. Richards."
"But it's already been one month!" Charlie impatiently said, "How much longer do I have to keep
playing circus freak for you?"
"Until I deem it no longer necessary, my little harlequin," the doctor replied with a snide smile. Charlie was about to fly off the handle with her pent up anger, but tiredness and fear of
potentially punching the woman's head off stopped her.
She then sighed, "Think I can go have a rest now? I've only had breakfast and you kinda woke me up at FOUR IN THE MORNING."
"Go. I need this placed cleaned for our NEXT session after all," Masters said.
"Finally, sleepy time," Charlie groaned and stretched, the black armor pieces for natural protection starting to retract and hide. Of course, she kept the ones that hid her privates on. The aide couldn't help himself but stare at Charlie's voluminous chest. With everyone distracted by either statistics, exhaustion or boobs, they were unaware of two beady eyes staring from afar, observing.
The observer swept down, wings extending, the initial fluttering catching everyone off-guard. After it shrieked, the aide and Charlie especially gasped in surprise, with the latter activating her protection and mask in case it was a hostile.
But the creature revealed to be just a bat. A large one at that, but merely that. It glided over and finally perched itself on Dr. Masters's shoulder.
"Animal person?" was Charlie's first thought, which she voiced out loud of course.
"Ah, Sirey, so that's where you'd gone off to," Masters greeted, patting the bat on her shoulder as if it was a companion pet bird.
"Not gonna introduce us? I mean, I usually want to know about things that can cause me heart attacks. Or heart bleeding. Or whatever bats do that leave people without blood in their bodies!"
Masters looked over at Charlie, "Sirey does not attack, Ms. Richards. He is a fruit bat."
"Huh? So he won't go in a bloody campaign to drain everyone of their fluids and then turn into a hot guy wanting to bone pretty and defenseless ladies like me?"
Masters blinked, "Ms. Richards, I'm not sure what TV programs you've been watching, but I advice next time you're using the facilities's computer, that you research bats."
"I could, but that one's pretty interesting. So, fruit bat huh?"
"It is. A cross-species actually, of my design."
"Cross-species?" Charlie raised an eyebrow.
"Genetically engineered to combine the natural traits and physical attributes of both minichiroptera and megachiroptera. It is big and strong, it sees particularly well, yet it still may use echolocation for whenever it is in a situation where eyes do not help it."
Charlie seemed confusing. "Head's starting to hurt. Mega... mini... chrisopedia?"
Masters's eyebrows furrowed, a mental facesmack occuring in her mind. "I did not expect a brute like you to understand. Please make yourself scarce, I give you leave," she turned to her assistant, "Come, there is much for us to do."
As the two left, Charlie was left wondering about the new, trivial information. The tiredness and new data though had also slown her random quip generation time, "Well sorry I don't have Ph.D on reading wikipedia arti- oh forget it."
With that, the lonely scorpion gal once more retracted her natural armor pieces and went out to the halls.
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"She's fascinating," Dr. Masters mused out loud as she made her way to her office, her aide following behind.
"Ah, she is. And fascinating in more ways than one."
"Agreed. It's too bad that she insists in giving up what has been given to her," Dr. Masters sighed, unaware of the perverted sense her aide's words hid. "But I suppose that won't matter soon. Hurry up now, we must document the data and compare it to projections."
"Y-yes, doctor," the aide snapped out and walked by Dr. Masters, following her lead.
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Charlie scratched her head a bit, frowning as she was still tired and grumpy from the earlier session. "Ugh, I'm so damn tired..." she grunted, about to complain about the doctor once again before she began to hear footsteps and chatter. Before she could think again, she had jumped to the wall and bounced up to the ceiling where she could hang from freely thanks to her adherent claws and talons.
She sighed to herself as the security guards passed underneath her and luckily she remained undetected. "Fuck me, I forgot my clothes back at the training room... ugh, and let me guess..." she began to crawl on the ceiling all the way forwards until she could see the bustling agency. "Nnngh, don't these guys ever take a rest either? Interpol was 24/7 but sheesh!" She said, deflated.
Turning to the side, she grimaced at the sight of one of the wall vents. "Not again... They've the technology to keep me fighting against murderous robots for hours but I don't have a secret passage to my room yet."
Charlie cursed her situation. Ever since she had come back to HQ, it had been decided that her 'condition' had to be kept a secret, or at least its knowledge had to be controlled to a small network of confidentiality. As a result, she had been sent over to a privately funded security organization. Low-level cleared co-workers or partners outside of the circle of trust could not know of her, so she had been issued a small change in identity.
Everyone still knew her as Charlotte Richards, or Agent Richards as her superiors called her, or Charlie, as her new partners did. But her situation had changed. The clothes Charlie mentioned were actually an elaborate disguise to keep suspicion of her inhuman form down.
"If any one of those guys had seen me the chief would already be chewing me out..."
Charlie pulled the vent out, slowly heading inside as she recalled the humiliation of her 'official change in status' the chief had ordered her to adopt. Long jogging pants and a big shirt were used to cover most of her; Charlie had to wrap her tail around her waist to hide it, and at the same time it made her look like she had put on considerable weight. This look worked thanks to her transformation's bust and hip size enlargement, so everyone believed she had just gone into too much junk food.
With her pure dark eyes, Charlie would stick out no matter what, but sunnies were used to conceal them. She had to tell them her eyes had become painfully sensitive to any form of light so she had to keep them on at all times. Finally by keeping her claws and talons within the baggy clothes's arms and legs, she was able to just pass it up as her being very cold.
Without the clothes she had left behind ten rooms ago however, she was just going to have to take the way around to her room. "Still, what does he expect? I already have this cool armor thing keeping me decent enough- he's asking me to play a fatty that's irritable by light and wears clothes as if it was winter every day. No wonder they've stopped inviting me to parties!" she grumbled, smacking the vent back into place.
Aside the bent metal, it looked quite alright. Charlie giggled nervously, reminding herself to control her own strength, especially when she was mad. This vent was really high up though, no one would notice, hopefully...
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"Doctor, the data suggests an almost perfect fusion rate between Agent Richard's DNA and scorpion DNA," the aide said after having run the numbers in his computer.
"Splendid. Her physical abilities have already astound me, but from the data we have recorded and my projections, I can be fully sure now that they are all natural as well as permanent. I was right since the day I saw her perform; every ability and trait a scorpion has she can duplicate but up to scale with her size, with almost perfect execution," Masters was intently re-reading her own data, comparing it to the actual combat, psychological and physical examinations.
"Yeah, Dr. Mattheus's recombinant has done a perfect job!" the aide exclaimed with reverencial excitement, "I read the theory behind it and its potential... I mean, I doubt anyone ever considered something like this was possible with the bacteria, and it already had so many tested applications. This must make Dr. Mattheus the genius of our century!" he grinned.
Masters slammed her palm on her desk, the wireless mouse for her machine bouncing. "Mattheus, a genius?" her eyes narrowed as she stood up.
"Doctor...?"
"Mattheus, a genius?" she repeated, this time emphasizing on the last word.
The bat Sirey, perched on the ceiling, was fluttering its wings and shrieking, as if it sensed the tense atmosphere. The aide had already found the big animal unnerving, but now it was borderline tetrical how it seemed to back its master up.
The female scientist began to approach her aide, "What that man excelled at was stealing others' work. He and his 'miracle team' are nothing more than a group of scumbags who plagiarised the work of a respectable scientist and then oh so unfortunately had it stolen from them."
"I uh..." Masters was had already cornered him. The way she was talking it was like the aide was between the wall and a lioness protecting her family rather than a woman defending an idol.
"They perversed that man's honest work. Mattheus, a genius? Don't make me laugh."
"No, doctor, of course not."
"Next time you want to name that despicable man's accomplishments, it better be his title of vile vulture, and nothing else!" she snapped, tapping the poor man's chest with her index in a demanding gesture.
"Y-yes, doctor."
"Hmph... next time, do your research before following so foolishly into deceit." Lexine Masters wasn't a woman of patience. Having to work with new aides every few days because the old ones failed to show up the following date was annoying. But, she had no choice, she had to go on. Softening her glare, she finally stepped away from her aide, Sirey the bat perching itself on her shoulder once more as she passed by one of the drawboards. "Enough discussion on unimportant people. Let's go to the testing labs, I have something I must verify right now, and I need you to make it work."
"Unimportant? She was this close of gouging my eyes out with her fingers alone!" the aide thought, gulped, and tried to calm himself down. Finally, he nodded, "O-Of course, doctor."
The two then left to the annexed laboratory for further testing.
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"ATISHOO!" Charlie sneezed, "Ugh, you don't need to have wall-crawling powers to know these vents need cleaning every now and then!" she tossed and gagged a bit from the dusty passage, "I definitely am going to convince the chief to build me a secret passage in this sucky place if he wants me to keep hiding from sight. I can even name it: "Charlie's Awesome Tunnel!" Hmm, I might need help with naming it."
Using the connected vents, Charlie oriented herself towards the area of her private quarters. "Join interpol they said, see the world they said, fight crime and help people they said. Well, I did all that, but why didn't they mention the dangerous mutations and dusty vent crawling in the ad?! That's so evil marketing."
Frowning, Charlie's mind flashed back to her last mission. She had been charged with recovering the only sample of a recombinant bacteria capable of acting as an important component in the production of super vaccines. A black market auction house had taken ahold of it in an asian desert city. Recovering the sample wasn't any difficult. Escaping with it proved rather cumbersome.
In a twist of events, after a dangerous chase around the sands, Charlie found herself trapped and wounded, as well as envenomed by scorpions, in an underground tunnel. To her fortune, a man calling himself Pierre saved her life. It turns out he had stationed within a secret lab after retiring from interpol, and was there conducting his own private research. An adept at medicine, treating Charlie had been no problem.
But as she was resting, Charlie's persecutors appeared, and through a misunderstanding, Charlie was injected with the bacteria she had been sent to recover. As a result, the recombinant agent merged Charlie's human DNA with the remnant foreign genetic material encountered in the venom residue within her blood stream.
Thus, Charlie's body began to change starting from that very moment. Her skin paled, her curves expanded. Her hair lengthened and became darker than ever. The entirety of her eyes turned black, like staring into a void. Dark chitinous material as hard as steel formed in strategical places on her body: the most prominent of it started at her flanks and covered her chest and abdomen, as well as her privates in her crotch area. Her legs had hardened with new muscle but were covered in a permanent hardened armor. Feet and hands had turned to talons and claws which had surface adhering capabilities. Perharps the wildest change in her was the six foot long segmented, stinger-tipped tail that had protuded from her back; it had become just another limb to her by now. Two black pouches on her cheeks hid powerful mandibles she could use for surprise attacks at close range, and two additional pairs at her arms hid very strong pincers she could use as weapons as well as tools.
Other aesthetic changes included a black face mask made of the same chitinous material as her armor. It blocked her breathing and also acted as a special natural filter as well as for physical protection.
"I look hideous, probably. But I can't complain about certain improvements," she mumbled to herself, suddenly gronaning as she pulled out of a particularly tight path, her boobs brushing against her chin as they bounced from their pressed-down position against the shaft. "Then again..." she grumbled slightly. Getting stuck in small places because of her big breasts was something even she didn't want to joke about.
Ignoring that, she continued down the memory lane. "I developed really strange powers. I'm now really strong, really really strong. Doc first had me start with small dumbells to test but we had to move to really big barbells quickly because I didn't feel their weight," she grinned slightly, "Wonder what Samson's face would look like if he saw me playing with two barbells loaded to max capacity as if they were dumbells," she giggled a bit, looking at her feminine arms. Biceps were noticeable, but she wasn't ripped by any means.
"I'm also fast. So fast that even I don't know how I manage half the things I do. Reflexes, agility... it might also have come from the scorpion DNA, the doc said. Wish she spent more time trying to return me to normal than measuring my tits to see if their size also are going to give her a nobel prize, though."
She then sighed, depressed. Then she stopped above a vent, still pensive. "I don't like that woman... She's so creepy. Dr. Soviet FunnyAccent," she said in a mocking voice, narrowing her eyes. "With her studies and her lackeys and her giant fruit bats... what a wackjob. If the chief hadn't told me she was going to find me a cure I... Oh I'm home," she smiled, looking down the bent grill that overlooked her room. "Teehee, easy access."
Easily removing the grill she crawled out onto the ceiling and easily repositioned it before she dropped down onto her cushy bed. "Finally..." she sighed, relaxing on her room. "Might be inconvenient as hell, but this place sure knows how to please an arachnid with beddings! Hmm, might not want to use that as a slogan in case they suddenly get the urge to turn it into a..." she yawned, "ahh... hotel or... something..."
With that, Charlie had finally talked herself to sleep.
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Dr. Masters's laboratory wasn't gigantic like one would expect, but it surely was packed with advanced technology. She was the head of the research & development team for the secret department of biological studies and applications within the organization. With a degree in microbiology as well as medicine and psychology, Lexine Masters was her own team of scientists. Her demands were always high, but the return was always a match.
Several bioterrorist attacks had been stopped dead in their tracks thanks to her expertise, so she was a very valuable asset to the organization. The nature of her research was as demanding as she was, and sometimes went past certain moral limitations. In the name of science and progress, however, Masters was willing to compromise, especially after having seen what people are capable of doing with their hands on bioweapons. Sometimes, sacrifices had to be made to help many. Sometimes, these sacrifices had to be made without letting anyone know.
"Doctor! What is the... gaak!" the aide groaned, "...meaning of this?!" he shouted, holding by his neck. Dr. Masters had an empty vial in her hand. The aide gasped as suddenly moaning and writhing could be heard coming from large cloaked cages. Startled, the poor man hit his head against one of the cages while stepping back and knocked himself out.
Dr. Masters simply stared, disposing of the empty vial in an incinerator on the wall. "Subject #27 has been administered compound #19," she said to her recorder.
The aide began to writhe and squirm while unconscious, his clothes starting to rip as his body mass increased. Several other changes began to manifest all of a sudden. His arms and face began to grow hair in excess, turning into a coat of fur over his mutating skin. "Compound #19 appears to be successful. Changes are slow but constant. Subject's unconscious state appears to have slowed the process."
A fluffy tail began to make its way out of the ex-aide's lab coat, his shredded shoes making way to thick toes with claws. "The reverse-engineered recombinant agent substracted from Subject Alpha has proved difficult to manage. Subjects #s 1 through 18 have shown a rapid loss of intelligence as well as violent reactions to just about anything. They had to be put down. The rest have so far adapted to their conditions and have started to cooperate..."
Masters lowered the cloak that concealed the 'cages' which were in fact a series of reinforced transparent windows to a big, artificial meadow. Her subjects had been gathered there, and were provided with food and water spiked with memory suppressants. They had the intelligence of humans, the instincts of an animal, and the body of both.
They were Lexine Masters's creations.
To Be Continued...