The Brittle Unbreakables - chapter 2
Story by Cieran on SoFurry
Imported from SF2 with no description.
Lamia had committed unspeakable and unnatural crimes in her quest to understand the biology of the supernatural, often at the Serpent Guy's expense. The Serpent Guy forgave her, but there was someone who couldn't: another villain, Dr. Strix, watched her and her achievements, and grew deeply jealous.
When Lamia stole a sample from the Serpent Guy, she isolated the essence of his ophidian powers. They had distilled through many generations since his ancestor had slain a dragon, and drank its blood. She replicated it, and gave herself similar abilities - a scaly second form, venom, new senses. Her own serpent form had more of an emphasis on venom than the plebeian grappling S.G. was so fond of.
A similar and aspiring villain, Dr. Strix, appeared to bother the Cuckoo on about the fourth or fifth time the feathered fiend tried to reform. Strix was skilled. She knew the totems Cuckoo was channelling. She knew the spirit and the genius and the demon of the bird perfectly.
She stole a sample from Cuckoo to try to do what Lamia had done, only to find the thief was a normal human person. A bit overcaffeinated, certainly resourceful, but no trace of the supernatural.
Strix seethed further as, from a sample, Lamia cloned the Serpent Guy, producing the strange Doubleworm. Doubleworm started out life much like S.G. had been in adolescence, but quickly developed - evolved? devolved? into something draconic. He was a huge and tragic leap for mad science.
Cloning Cuckoo wouldn't accomplish anything, so Strix got the DNA of a fabled Roc instead, and tried to grow her own. Unfortunately, Cuckoo had stolen his own sample, messed with Strix's equipment, and the Roc egg gestated a clone of the Cuckoo anyway. This clone he then stole, and gave to a childless couple.
All of Strix's anger at this affront was directed, for some reason, at Lamia.
She, for her part, had still never heard of Strix.
They had a mutual friend, successful demonological villain Dr. Lilitu, who attempted to arrange a meeting. A nice lunch and a chat in the garden, Lilitu thought, would settle any feud. After all, the right blend of smoked fish and wine got the archdemons of flood and drought to come and work together in peace. Why wouldn't it do the same for very similar humans?
Sadly, Lamia got lost on the way to Lilitu's place.
This was the last damn straw for Strix, and she swore dark vengeance.
"Fine," she said. "Fucking fine. She wants to shit on my life's work so much, I'll shit on hers. I'll smear god fucking damn shit on all of it. You like snakes, you little charlatan?"
"Strix, please have some food," Lilitu said, but it was too late.
"Fine. Anyone can fucking clone a snake. Anyone can fucking engineer a dragon." With her bronze-clawed gloves rattling, Strix swore to the absent Lamia, "I'll make something greater than you ever did. I'll make something greater than you're even capable of imagining."
And she did.