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The Latex Flood

Part 5

Sponsored by Sanmer

by Draconicon

After Wesley got her the water she asked for, the hippo felt slightly better. That slight improvement, however, wasn't enough to get her the energy that she needed to leave the apartment and stay ahead of trouble. Reluctantly, Margaret acquiesced to the idea of staying in the apartment for a short time and getting some rest. But not in the bedroom. Good as the bull had been, she didn't want to be in someone else's bed.

She had him take her to the bathroom, and as soon as she reached the tub, she collapsed. The cohesion that held her body together by sheer force of will since her transformation collapsed, and she turned into nothing more than liquid latex. She felt the vibrations of a shocked yelp, and she forced herself to form a mouth and pair of eyes on top of the puddle that she became. Looking at someone from a truly flat surface rather than the slight curve that a face had made her vision a bit off until she fixed that, flattening her eyes slightly to fit with their support. Her mouth moved, her voice bubbling through the flat gash in the surface of her liquid body.

"I'm going to rest. You insisted, I'm doing it."

"I...didn't know you could..."

"Everything's damaged, so I need to take care of the whole thing. No solid forms for a while. You want me to recover, this is what I gotta do."

"You're not hurting like this?"

"Not as much."

"Better than nothing. I got some, uh..."

"Let's not test painkillers."

"Yeah, probably...fuck..."

"You can go, you know. I don't need you to stick around, watching."

Besides, he was obviously uncomfortable. Wesley might have gotten better since their little conversation when they first met, and he'd gotten much better since threatening to throw her out of his club for being a super, but he just as obviously hadn't gotten any better at dealing with seeing someone using their powers. She could rest better if she didn't have someone that was uncomfortable with her being what she was staring at her the whole time.

Eventually, the bull nodded, walking out of the bathroom and closing the door behind him. She extended one tendril with a hiss of discomfort and locked the door. At least that way, she'd hear him coming if he was coming back.

As soon as she drew it back, she closed off all of her senses but the sense of touch. Without sight, sound, or anything else but the sensation of touch, she could focus on what was damaged, what needed to be fixed, and what needed to be left the hell alone to fix itself. It was not a comfortable feeling going over her body like that; she had fought Sunspark in the nude, as she had been doing everything of late out of sheer convenience, and that meant that some of the burns had hit rather intimate parts.

Better not leave a fucking scar down there...

Margaret shook her head. She had bigger worries of whether she'd get a scar on her breasts or her clit. There was all kinds of damage done to her latex, damage that far exceeded anything that had happened when working with the company during her initial training and missions. If she was going to make it, either as a villain or as a super in general, she needed to learn both how to fight other supers, and how to take care of herself when she took injuries like this. First, she needed to figure out what to do when she was drained, and whether she would regenerate on her own.

Her latex was...drained, to put it mildly. She'd extended a lot against Sunspark, and even after pulling some of the latex in from the rest of the club to reinforce herself during the escape, she had still burned through something around...70% or so of what she felt she could create without actually hurting herself. Considering that her body still ached and hadn't recovered the way that it normally did, however, she wasn't sure if she was right.

The liquid form eased the pain quite a bit, but it wasn't entirely healing her. All it did was remove the tension around her body, allowing the different parts to all fall into a soup that didn't have the same sort of nerves. It was less conductive in that way, and that meant that what pain was still there was diffused through her, more of an all-over ache than a concentrated agony.

Not great, but not as bad, either. She pushed, seeing if she could create a little more latex, a little more liquid to fill the tub. She felt herself rising, her body growing inside of the tub, and the rim was a bit closer to the surface layer than it had been. She held that, seeing if it was making her feel any better.

There was a slight pulse, a slight easing. For a moment, the ache seemed to fade, but then it came back, about as strong. About, perhaps slightly better, perhaps not. It was hard to tell.

Okay...trial and error...bit by bit...

Margaret took a deep breath, and then focused her attention on testing. She had done a lot of that in the old job, and she was fine with doing that again. Time to collect some data.

An hour later, she had some data charts in her head, some of which surprised her. She had expected to find that she was good at regenerating, that she had the power to just pad her wounds, and she was partially right. The rest, however, was a little more interesting than just regeneration.

As she was made of latex, that meant that anytime that she created some of it, she was doing the equivalent of cloning herself. Not on the huge scale, but at least on the minor scale, rapidly cloning the different molecules and atoms that made up the constituent tiny pieces of her body. That, in turn, meant that she was creating a miniature hive mind, as far as she was aware, with her own thoughts at the very top of the heap, allowing her to maintain a sense of individuality with all the different bits and pieces that she created. It was why she was able to control it so well; it was all a bunch of mini-hers, allowing her to direct them as if she was directing herself.

That, in turn, meant that she could clone those parts of her, and then apply them to her wounds. More to the point, she could have them feel the pain that was left from the injuries, giving them the pain to deal with, so that she didn't have to think about the hurt. It wasn't a good thing to do, of course. If they were proper beings, if her hypothesis was right regarding why she didn't feel the pain - because the injury was still there, just patched over rather than actually healed, and there should have been some pain - then she was just shuffling the pain off to someone else and making them suffer. Another her, admittedly, and a her that had no purpose other than what she gave it, but still a her.

Don't think about that right now, the half-assembled hippo thought, sitting with her top half solid again, and her bottom half still liquid in the bottom of the tub. For now, just make it work, and you can figure out what all the gobbledygook means when you get the hell out of here.

Wesley hadn't returned, and she hoped that meant that he had gone to bed. For her, that meant that she'd been left alone to experiment, and more to the point, she'd been allowed to build herself back up again. That, in and of itself, was more than worth the time staying here. She didn't hurt as much from the waist up, and she felt like she could walk when she finished patching the burns and sears down between her legs and further down her lower limbs.

In the meantime, while she was building up the stamina to do that, she reached out through the piping in the bathroom. The plumbing was clean enough, considering that it hadn't been used for hours, but she found multiple little rips and tears through the pipes. The whole apartment felt like it was falling apart, which was probably why Wesley was staying here rather than somewhere else in the city. He was probably getting an amazing deal here considering that the whole place was on its last legs and was threatening to come down on him.

She shook her head, applying some of her substance to it. The latex would plug the holes, at least, and considering how strong she could make it, it would probably prop up the walls better than the amateur repairs that had been done over the years. She sighed as she felt the connection that she had to her own substance, hoping that she was wrong with her hypothesis about cloning herself and creating hive minds as she severed each individual piece. She didn't want to be leaving pieces of herself, thinking pieces of herself, all over the city, but that might not be avoidable. Not anymore.

Eventually, the pipes were fixed, and she had all but her feet back. She sat on the edge of the tub, rubbing her hands along her body, feeling where the padding of new pieces had been applied. Things were working more or less the way that they were supposed to, even down to the space between her legs. She could feel that the padding of the latex down there was a little artificial - her clit pushed forward more than it should, and she felt like she could almost pull it off like a sucker pad - but it did have a little more tug to it than when she had initially shaped the padding down there. It was gradually molding itself to her body, and that was all that she could hope for right then.

Okay. New point to my power. Not just partially invulnerable, but regeneration involves re-molding while healing. I could look entirely different, if I wanted...

Which she could do already, but that was down to holding an image in her head of what she wanted to look like. The minute that faded, she went back to her normal sense of self. But if she was healed this way...

Well, it looked like the new parts would take precedence over her old sense of self. If she ever needed a disguise, then, she just needed to completely obliterate her old body and then start working on regenerating and healing herself in a new mold. Lovely. Painful. Horrible.

Shaking her head, she drew her legs up, the latex finally forming into proper feet for her to walk on. She lifted them out of the tub and stood up, making her way to the bathroom door. She pressed her ear to the door, making sure that she couldn't hear anyone else out there besides Wesley - he was awake, she realized, if only because he wasn't snoring - and she opened the door. He was leaning against the wall just across the hall, and he jumped as soon as she poked her head out.

"I want the phone now," she said.

"You're better already?"

"As good as I'm going to be."

"What happened? I thought...I thought that you needed more rest than that."

"So did I. I got lucky. Now, phone. Please."

She was trying to be nice, but it was hard to hold onto politeness when she was all too aware of the fact that the Heroes' Union was going to be chasing her down for what she did to Sunspark, not to mention getting away from them in the first place. She honestly felt lucky that they hadn't come here already and kicked down Wesley's door. She wanted to get out of here before he got hurt for what happened to her, and that meant getting a connection to the V. G.

He hesitated, but handed over the phone. She tapped two buttons, one to unlock it, the other to call them back at the number they'd called from before. Hopefully it was still connected.

It was.

"Well, well. I thought that you'd be waiting the full week, girl, but looks like you have a good head on your shoulders, after all."

"The heroes already know where I am. I need a way out."

"Hmm, that's a shame. I guess our leverage was lost, hmm?"

"More like you're the only good option that I have left. Now, what's next?"

"Oh, that's simple. We set up a pick-up, and if you make it, you're in."

"And where's the pick-up?"

"One second."

There was a soft beep, and she hoped that it was just being put on hold rather than being disconnected. She held her finger over the mouth receiver, turning to Wesley.

"You're never going to tell anyone about this. Understand?"

"You think I want anyone to know about this?"

"I doubt it, but point stands."

"Trust me, I'm not talking about this. Ever."

"Take a few shots of vodka. It'll help it pass."

"Heh...I just might."

The phone beeped, and the V. G. were back on the line. She pressed the phone closer to her ear.

"Alright. Here's what you need to do. There's a late-night carnival going on at Lightning Square. We'll have a pick-up waiting for you on the north side, just behind the chain-link fence."

"What'll they look like?"

"Doesn't matter. They'll know you."

"Not if I'm doing this right, they won't. You want them to recognize me? So will every hero in the area. Tell me who I'm looking for."

Wesley bit his lip as he listened to her, and she was not that far from doing it herself. The V. G. were not as out and out stupid-dangerous as the heroes, but they weren't necessarily good people, either. They were just more accountable in some cases. At least, as far as she heard. Pissing them off was still a bad idea, and demanding things like this might just push them towards that point.

The phone was silent for a total of sixty seconds, and just when she was starting to think that she had fucked her only way out, she heard a chuckle on the other end of the line.

"I guess you have a point. We can take care of that, if needed, but if you can stay hidden, that's all for the better. You'll be looking for a bat."

"Anything more specific than that?"

"She'll be hiding in the dark. And you probably won't see her without night vision goggles, but you won't be carrying those, I imagine."

"Don't underestimate what I can carry. I'll be there soon."

"You have thirty minutes."

She looked at the wall-mounted clock. Lightning Park was a good five miles away, a little too far for her to want to walk, or even run. She glanced at Wesley, and he nodded, almost like he had already guessed what she needed. Taking a deep breath, she nodded.

"I'll be there."

"I'd hope so. If you're not, then you won't be getting in, and we both know what happens to the neutrals."

"I'll be there."

"See you soon."

Click. The phone went dead, and she looked at it as the markers for service just disappeared. So, the phone was useless now, not even something that she could use to get a map if she needed. Probably a security measure that the V. G. put out to make sure that nobody could track them from place to place. She would have admired that if it wasn't so inconvenient for her at that moment.

"So, this is it?" Wesley asked.

"I guess."

"I kinda wish it wasn't going this way."

"Yeah, well, so do I. Not much I can do about it, though."

"Will you come back, you think?"

"If I can keep myself from getting arrested in the first couple weeks, probably."

"...I'll keep a chair out for you."

That was more than she ever expected from the bull, but it was a bit heartwarming to hear it. She smiled despite herself, and patted his arm.

"You're a better man than I thought."

"Yeah, well, still not happy about the super stuff, but...living out here, what the hell am I supposed to do, huh?"

"That's one way to look at it. Now...let's get the hell out of here."

They took the bull's car down to Lightning Park, which saved them a good twenty minutes compared to how long it would have taken her to run it. Not something that she would have wanted to do when she was normal, but with the latex powers, she felt like she might have just about managed it. The problem, then, would have been shaking off all the heroes on the way to the meeting point.

Once they arrived, Wesley had her stay in the car. He walked around back, pulled something out of the trunk, and then wheeled it over to her side of the vehicle. She stared at the wheelbarrow that he had pulled out, and then looked at him.

"Just go liquid again. I'll roll you around to the north side."

"Why?"

"Because it keeps you from looking obvious."

"...You're going to get in trouble if anyone sees you."

"Then we better do it fucking fast, then, if we want to avoid that."

She nodded, having no argument against that. Shifting into her more liquid form, she poured herself out of the car and into the wheelbarrow. It didn't take long for it to fill to the brim, and she had to stuff herself down just a bit. Some of the possessions that she brought along bubbled to the surface. She pushed most of them back down, but one she kept propped against the side of the wheelbarrow, hiding the little eyes that she formed just under them.

"...Are those night-vision goggles?" Wesley muttered.

"Yep."

"Where did you -"

"I borrowed them from your house."

"...You know, I have a perfectly legit reason for having those."

"Yeah, probably staring across the window at your neighbor across the street, considering where I found them."

"Oh, um..."

"She's hot, I get it." Margaret chuckled. "But you better be careful. She was putting on a show when I looked."

"What?!"

"She knows when someone's watching. Might as well get something out of it. Let her know or something. But for now...push."

They didn't have much time, after all, and she didn't want to waste it by being stuck by the car rather than keeping on the move. Soon, they were making their way around the well-lit carnival, heading around the south and east side of the park and making their way to the north side. She expected there to be greater darkness, and she was not disappointed.

The entire north side of the chain-link fence surrounding the carnival was shrouded in darkness. The street lights nearby had either been busted out or had been completely flooded with some sort of shadow, and the lights of the carnival didn't extend nearly as far as they should have for the time of night. She shifted the goggles to look more in that direction, sweeping her tiny, barely-there head back and forth.

Eventually, she spotted their contact. There was a bat hiding in the depths of shadow, so deep in the darkness that even the night-vision goggles didn't entirely pick her out. It was more that there was something to reflect light rather than swallow it in the depths of the shadow, and that meant that there was a shape for her to pick out. She extended a tendril upwards, tapping Wesley on the hand.

"Turn left. Just a bit. Aim for the spot about six feet from the corner."

"You can see her?"

"Barely. She's hiding really well."

"Yeah, no shit."

They approached quietly, coming to the meeting spot with ten minutes to spare. The bat didn't speak as they approached, and Margaret hoped that she wasn't making a mistake. This was all kinds of theatrical, and she had every reason to believe that the villains could be playing her, pushing her to reveal herself so that they could get the heroes off their back. At the same time, she knew, she knew, that she could be useful to them, and that meant that she needed to show off just a bit to keep getting their attention.

In for a penny...

Taking a deep breath, she gathered herself together and 'leaped' from the wheelbarrow. She lunged into the air, forming a spiraling line of semi-solid latex, and then hit the ground, reforming as she went. She appeared as the naked hippo shape that she had been using for a while, stretching her arms over her head in a show of not being that bothered. Something went pop, and something else went crack, but that was all that she heard.

"I'm the one that you're looking for," she said. "And I know you're there."

"...I'm surprised that you brought goggles," the bat said, shaking her head as the darkness faded slightly. A brown-furred bat with long ears and a punched-in face stepped out from the darkness, a slight smile forming under her flattened muzzle. "Glad to find someone that's got a good head on her shoulders."

"Glad to find someone that's not trying to kill me yet."

"So, what's the story with the bull there?" the bat asked, nodding over the hippo's shoulder. "Minion of yours?"

"More like an old boss that's doing me a favor."

"He's not controlled?" the bat asked, her voice dropping, her hand twitching.

"He doesn't need to be." Margaret took a step sideways, putting herself between Wesley and the villain. "And he's not going to remember this."

"..."

"Keep in mind, I'm not afraid of the dark, honey," Margaret said, shaking her head. "You don't want to piss me off."

"Leaving him here is a bad idea."

"Hey. You going to tell anyone about this?" she asked without breaking eye contact with the bat.

"Not a chance in Hell. I say anything, and the Union will throw me in jail. That's if they don't blow me up, first."

"See? No problem."

"...The boss is just gonna love this..." The bat sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Fine. This time. But we hear anything, bull, and we'll come for you before you can say anything."

"Enough of the threats. Let's get out of here before someone notices us. How are we getting out?"

"Ever taken a trip by shadow?" the bat asked, and Margaret shook her head. "Hehehe, oh, you're going to have a good time with this one. Come here."

Margaret nodded. She and Wesley had already said their goodbyes, both at the apartment and in the car, and even in the wheelbarrow to some extent. There was no point in dragging it out further. She glanced over her shoulder at the bull, gave him a nod of thanks and farewell, and then walked over to the bat. She took the other woman's hand, only for the darkness to swirl up and over the both of them. She had a moment to think that it was probably how Sunspark had felt when she had surrounded him in her latex before the world dropped out from under her.

It felt like she was falling, and falling forever as no ground appeared beneath her. There was no feeling of flying, of being directed, but more like total free-fall. The bat chuckled, her voice all over the place, omnipresent, but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was all the other voices she could hear. Dozens, hundreds of voices all around her, coming from open mouths with no eyes. Darkness reigned in the emptiness, and she hissed, closing her eyes.

The fall continued for almost a minute before the feeling stopped with a sudden thump of something solid under her feet. It wasn't like a landing, but more like something had been shuffled beneath her so that she was standing rather than falling. It was almost like that feeling of running too fast for too long before suddenly coming to a stop, and the hippo nearly went tumbling head over heels as the world returned.

"Hehehe, I love that," the bat said, shaking her head. "Nothing like flying through the shadows of the night."

"One...second."

She held a hand over her mouth, her eyes still closed as she tried to find her center of balance. Her stomach heaved up, then down, then up again before she got a good grip on just how nauseated she was. When she managed to swallow it all back down, she huffed twice to make sure that it was all going to stay there, and then opened her eyes.

They were in some sort of safe house, a shed-like structure with a metal cylinder in the center of the floor. It was clearly the elevator down and into a different establishment, which made her think that either there was going to be a final interview here on the surface, or that the bat's powers couldn't penetrate into the underground, either through a natural reason or because there was some sort of super-blocker between the underground and the surface. Either way, it was an interesting little limitation to know.

The bat stepped out from behind her, walking to the standing cylinder and knocking on it. It swiveled open, revealing a key-pad that was mounted to a glass barrier. Margarent cocked her head to the side.

"I'm guessing that there's a self-destruct mechanism if you put in the wrong code?" she asked.

"Something like that. You don't want to put in a bad one, though, let me just put it that way."

"Lovely."

"Hey, we protect ourselves. Anyone that comes here looking for us? They're probably not on our good list, anyway."

"Unless they're someone like me that was trying to find help."

"Help?" The bat turned with an eyebrow raised. "We're the villains. We don't help."

"...Obviously."

"Now, quiet, so I can remember the right combination."

Not wanting to risk imploding the little structure that they were in, Margaret fell silent. She looked around, a little surprised at the rustic wood cabin look all around them. It was like she had been transported to some forest retreat or something like that, complete with a window without a glass pane in it. She glanced outside, saw that there was nothing to see but trees in every direction, and wondered just where they'd gone. Supers were restricted to the city, and that restriction was enforced hard. Not just by the military holding a cordon outside the city limits, but by an actual barrier that scientists had constructed to repel super abilities back towards the city when they were trying to escape. If you were going to get out, you had to do it the old-fashioned way, by breaking through the blockade.

So, how had they gotten somewhere with woodlands around? She would guess that they hadn't, and that this was just some sort of illusion meant to fool people. Margaret slowly extended her hand towards the window, then oozed out a tendril from her palm.

And just as she touched it, she got confirmation as something that wasn't there gave her tendril a warning slap, knocking it down and back through the window towards her. She pulled her hand back, nodding to herself. There was no actual woodland out there, just an illusion that hid other villains ready to stop her if she tried to pull a runner.

Smart, she admitted. No way for them to get their entrance exposed if they teleport to the entrance and then have others on hand to stop you from running off if you figure out that the whole thing's an illusion...

At least the villains had their heads on straighter than the heroes. They weren't going to be doing something stupid like trying to kill her if she didn't do something to start it. At least, that was the big hope that she had on the matter. She would have to see how it played out before knowing whether she was right.

The key-pad dinged, and she turned back to the bat. The smaller woman had already stepped in, and was waving for her to join. Margaret nodded, stepping into the tube and reforming herself slightly, going from her chubbier hippo form to something that was longer, lankier, looking more like a giraffe that had been stuffed into a hippo's body rather than a hippo as she loomed from floor to ceiling. It was more to give the other person room than for her own comfort, and she looked forward to reaching the bottom of the lift -

They fell quickly, faster than the average elevator but not quite at the speed of an amusement park ride. It left her stomach at the surface, and she gritted her teeth the further they fell. This was not an illusion, nor did she believe it was the bat using her powers. This was just pure mechanics and biology working together to fuck with her stomach.

They came to a stop that was as sudden as their start, and she felt no shame or guilt as her body suddenly collapsed together again. She went from skinny as a rail to fat as a pig in the space of a second, and the bat went flying off to the side, slamming into the side of the lift cylinder with a loud 'oof'. The door opened, and Margaret stumbled out, slowly in the process of forming herself back together again.

"Ow...fuck..." the bat groaned.

"Serves you right," the hippo muttered. "Give me some warning when we're going to fall like that."

"You should have known."

"How? It was a lie that we were in the forest just a minute ago. Everything's been smoke and mirrors, and I was trying to give you room. Fuck me for being polite."

"No, fuck you for being huge," the bat groaned. "Ow, my face...I have a flat enough face already, thank you. No need to squish it further."

"Lolurker, try and be a little more polite to our guest."

The new voice drew her attention away from her complaining stomach, and Margaret turned to its source. She had stumbled straight ahead of the elevator, and the voice came from her right. She found a little table set up, some iced tea on the table itself along with two cups, and sitting on the other side of the glass table was...an octopus. Or at the very least, an octopus-headed man. His fingers looked vaguely slimy, and the suit he wore was wet in the chest and in a few other areas, implying that he was oozing slime from various areas and soaking through the cloth, but most of his octopus features were clear in his face, with a long, bulbous head that ran up and back, and tentacles that extended over his shoulders and down his chest like a moving beard.

"...Sorry, boss," the bat - Lolurker - muttered. "Just...ow..."

"You may see Bloodletter for some pain relief," the octopus man said, nodding to a door that illuminated itself even as he spoke. "After that, get yourself some rest. We have some plans for you coming up."

"Sure...nnngh..."

The bat was still holding her nose as she walked out, and Margaret wondered if she really had bounced her around that much. Before the hippo could think of it for too long, the 'boss' gestured for her to take a seat.

"Please. Join me."

"...I'm assuming you're at least the head-honcho for this place," she said, making her way to the chair. "Can't imagine that you brought me straight to headquarters when I'm not even one of you just yet."

"You'd be most correct. I'm more the regional head. Taking care of business, ensuring that we get our recruits, making sure that you're going to be a good fit for us."

"So it's a final interview."

"Quite so, quite so. Tea?"

"Nah. I drank plenty of water before coming here."

"Fair enough." He sipped from his own cup, sighing. "A lovely brew, though."

"Don't suppose I can get a name?"

"A super-name, at least," he said. "My name is Lovecraft. Ready for your final interview, Margaret?"

The End

Summary: Margaret finally puts herself back together, and then makes the journey to meet with the V. G. The one in charge surprises her.

Tags: No Sex, Supers, Superheroes, Supervillains, Bat, Hippo, Bull, Octopus, Series, Nudity, Healing, Latex, Superpowers, Goo,