Super Slime Saga, Part 1
Here's what I've been working for since I started work season for this summer (South America's, anyway!), and after some proof reading and some tweaking done, I became satisfied with what I've come to present to you all. Super Slime Saga: A short four part saga about a girl whose destiny is changed after a series of incidents turn her into a very real slime girl!
Welp, I don't wanna spoil anything, but this saga's also a pet project of mine where I will have to ask the reader (You!) some questions after Part 4, and a subsequent Journal poll, has been posted. So keep an eye out if you're interested in chipping in.
Alrighty, here we go!
Part 1. "Let go of me!" Julie screamed as she thrashed about helplessly. Her arms were being restrained by a tall man behind her. "Stay still sweetheart," the drunken breath of a second guy hit her in the nostrils like a proffessional boxer hook. "Don't you know it's bad for girls to stay out so late? Poor poor little bitch," he laughed. Julie felt rage accumulating, mostly out of the sheer impotence of her situation, but the guy had a point. She was poor and she had to work hard to eat every day. As a result of having nowhere to go, the young girl was constantly having to move from place to place, though fortunately her latest employer had offered her lodgings for the night. Unfortunately, he also was the drunkard calling her a bitch. "Let goooo!" Julie squirmed harder, kicking about in a futile attempt to regain her freedom. She cursed herself for not having been more suspicious; first day on the job and her newest boss had asked her to accompany him and his right-hand man for a drink after work. Naturally, Luther had had too much to drink and quickly revealed just what kind of man he was. "Stop squirming and stay still!" Luther reached to grab Julie's chest as his goon forced her to stick it out for him. With his senses dulled by the alcohol and being clusmy as is, his hand missed by a good measure, chance which Julie used to finally get back at him and kneed him in the stomach. "Bwah!" he coughed, gasping for air. Julie wanted to put on a brave smile but couldn't do more than whimper as the goon held her even tighter, which started to hurt her arms. Luther made a somewhat quick recover and glared her way, which would've made her feel proud of what she had done if he didn't suddenly reach to his coat to pull a draw knife out to hold her at the neck. "Yo, bawss," the goon grunted behind, "Place's deserted but cops come sweep here a lot at night. Might wanna keep it clean." "You dirty cunt. Don't try anything like that again..." he narrowed his eyes in a threatening manner, but only got spit in his face for it. "GAH! You're FIRED!" he shouted. Fed up with the follow up insult, Luther didn't even consider his goon's advice and simply thrust the knife straight into Julie's abdomen, staggering her for a moment before blood began trickling down her lip. "Uhh, she's bleedin' bawss," the slack-jawed goon's look of surprise couldn't have been more obvious. Luther already was turning around, a look of disgust in his face. "Leave the little scamp to bleed out, not our problem anymore," Luther angrily replied, his goon quite unceremoniously dropping Julie's body after the knife had been removed. A small puddle of blood began forming at the open wound as Julie fell to her knees. "Why did this happen?" Julie lamented in her mind, tears welling up in her eyes. She had been an optimist all her life, despite the hardships of having been orphaned since being little and having had to work and move constantly after she had reached adulthood. She had always remained vigilant and kept herself afloat, but on the one day everything seemed to go right, it had all been a big, fat hoax. And because of it, she was going to lose her life. Julie finally collapsed, her eyes rising to see her would-be rapist ex-boss leave with his employee, probably his friend or confident, she didn't care. She thought she was going to die, she extended her arm, as if attempting to reach out to them, with some vague hope remaining that they would help her. Julie didn't want to die. "I don't want to die!" she tried to yell, but only more blood spilled out of her mouth. "I don't want to die..."
About half an hour later, a figure appeared at the dark alleyway. Julie had since passed out, and if she still was alive she only had but moments to leave. The stranger looked at Julie, then at the back exit to the building he had exited from. "So I was right, there WAS a scuffle," he mused, "They wouldn't let us use human guinea pigs, but this one... faint breathing, she won't be for long. " The stranger grabbed his PDA and quickly placed a call in: "Send someone. Seems like we were left with just what we've been looking for."
Stripped of her clothes, Julie lie on an operation table, or so it seemed. A man in a white coat was treating her wound. "It's a minor laceration, the problem was that the wound was exposed for too long and the bleedout was considerable. Antibiotic response is green, vitals are subpar, very slowly stabilizing. Fortunately, we have the necessary blood type in storage," he diagnosed, finally adding: "The brain waves are erratic however. It's highly likely she will be comatose. We couldn't have asked for a better... patient."
"Miller, stop playing with that damn thing!" Tyler warned for the upteenth time, his lab partner tossing a vial up and down as if it was a toy. "Relax, this thing is virtually unbreakable. Besides, what am I supposed to do while I wait for Jacobs to arrive?" Miller boredly replied. "Could you take this a bit more seriously? This polychaos specimen could be worth hundreds of millions. Just think," Tyler put his hands out as if to emphasize, "They spent the big bucks just to retrieve it from the Artic." "Yeah, seen the pics. Still strange they bore through that big chunk of ice and found a hollow the size of a wrecking ball to find just this inside," he skillfully spun the vial between his fingers. "Couldn't have been bigger than a marble. Pretty old too. Dates back to the jurassic era?" "All in cyst form until now," Tyler added, "No amoeba has been known to survive in hazardous conditions, even in cyst form, for this long. That's what makes it so special. " "Still don't see what a bunch of slime can do for us. It practically has the same genome as any other polychaos I've studied, save for a few odd garbage DNA here and there." "It's not just 'here and there', it's like Dr. Jacobs said," Tyler folded his arms, as if trying to make a point, "It's strategically placed, as if to open up bridging between specific chains, or to help with severing of such if needed." "I'm no good with technobabble, Tyler. I see slime, and I see the same genome and properties. You feed it, it uses its tentacles, it eats, it grows." "They aren't tentacles, they are called pseudopodia and the special thing about this polychaos is how the cell works, it..." "Look, spare me the lecture okay?" Miller interrupted, "We've heard it dozens of times already, and eleven of those was me hearing it from you." "Fine. I thought you wanted something to do until Dr. Jacobs arrived?" Tyler sarcastically asked, chuckling. "I didn't ask for your help," Miller replied back with a smirk. They laughed for a bit, until Jacobs walked out of the room next to theirs, gloved hands red with blood from the operation. "We've got our test subject. Did you prepare the nutrient vat as I asked?" Jacobs stoically asked, appearing to snap both the buddying scientists back to shape. "Yes, sir," Tyler answered first. "Sir, is it true we've finally been granted a live test subject?" "That's correct. I personally found her. Now we can finally proceed to evaluate the specimen's predating abilities on a human being..." "So we're working on a weapon with this," Miller frowned a bit, not out of rejection to the idea, but very suspicious. "You sound doubtful, Mr. Miller." Jacobs went to the vat to run a check, Miller exchanged looks with Tyler and then spoke out again. "Why use an amoeba for a weapon? Know the one we found is very big for even a polychaos, but... this was barely the size of a marble, I doubt it can finish a dog much less a human." "That's where you're wrong, Mr. Miller. "Exo" is hardly your everyday polychaos, its genetic predisposition makes it every bit unique. And it is fully adapted to a certain pattern of growth, allowing a plethoria of mutations and further adaptations. Exo's cell is very advanced. A hundred times larger than the average, and its efficiency with energy consumption is optimal. You'd do well to learn from it." "Great, the thirteenth lecture and I also get chewed out for forgetting to switch the lights off at night," Miller murmured, getting a small, supressed cackle from Tyler. Jacobs continued however. "Exo is our biggest find yet, and not for any arbitrary reason. It programs itself to adapt and mutate to enhance its own capabilities, but is limited to its environment's necessities, and its nutrients not always available." "It's like its cell is its own chemistry lab..." Tyler observed, every bit in awe at Jacobs's explanation, which he had already heard through so many times and never ceased to perk his interest up, "Too bad it's not sentient... It survived for eons, constantly adapting in order to survive, its citoplasm on its own is incredibly resilent. Just imagine the things this creature could tell us about the history of the world if it..." "If it hadn't been encased inside a giant ice-cube for millions of years right?" Miller interrupted, grinning. "Smartass..." "Gentlemen," Jacobs lifted his eyes from his drooped glasses over his nose, apparently having ignored all of their idle banter. "Bring our test subject and place her in the vat. Exo is waiting."
It took only a minute to wheel Julie into the lab. They placed her in the vat full of liquid brimming with nutrients, but it was no preservation or otherwise sustenance providing equipment for bodies. It was in fact a table setting for the lifeform known as Exo. "Exo's eaten any organic material we've thrown at it, from common amoeba food such as seaweed and small fish, but it's managed to consume and feed on various forms of meat, growing bigger each time, as expected. Its metabolism is incredibly fast, allowing it to consecutively feed and grow to eat bigger things, but there's one thing about it that's let us keep it in here..." Miller smiled as he hurled the vial into the air and caught it with a smirk, "It needs to feed constantly, making predation its main directive. Its single cell is powerful, and every organic addition it flash-synthetizes in order make itself a more effective predator costs it all the mass and energy it consumes. Therefore, it constantly needs to feed every half hour." "Or else," Tyler reviewed their notes, "It must feed on itself in order to sustain primary functions such as movement and pseudopodia projection." Jacobs took the vial from Miller's hands. "Exo is an excellent predator by nature, but no matter how powerful its single cell has become, the amount of sustenance it requires is staggering. According to our projections, it can both increase its own mass infinitely, but so would it continue to shrink indefinitely if left depraved of food..." "It's definitely weird how we managed to salvage it in the state it was. Shouldn't it have died?" Tyler asked, Jacobs nodded. "Under normal circumstances I'd be baffled as well. But Exo's shown to possess a plethora of qualities we do not yet fully understand. The size of the hollow we recovered Exo from suggested it might've reached a gigantic size before it froze over." "So you're saying it became a ball to protect itself from the cold and slowly used up its own body to survive starvation by shrinking?" Miller blinked a few times, the only plausible explanation in his head was that. "Becoming a cyst is a common survivability technique amoebas are known to use when faced with a hazardous environment," Jacobs lifted Exo's container, looking up at it, "It might have evolved to increase its efficiency, which allowed it to slowly keep itself alive as time passed." "This means that if the environment is favorable, and the food is aplenty, Exo will continue to eat until there isn't anymore food," Tyler concluded. Jacobs nodded and opened the recording interface for their research. "Subject currently in a light comatose stage. Testing viability of Exo's predating directive as a means to develop a B.O.W. (Bio Organic Weapon)" "Injecting Exo in the nutrient vat. Exo should quickly feed and grow to attain a size able to quickly surround the subject," Tyler said as Jacobs administered the currently minuscule creature into the vat. "Exo is in," Miller continued, "Monitoring progress... Exo is favorably responding to the nutrients and has already doubled in size." Tyler observed the readings as a computer scanned the progress as well, "Odd, Exo appears to have stopped." "Already?" Miller incredulously asked, but Tyler corrected himself. "No, it's still eating. Must've been a glitch in the system, continue monitoring." The lifeform known as Exo wasn't any different to a common day amoeba. It behaved just like any other, surrounding its prey and devouring it by absorbing it and later breaking it into simpler compounds from where it would sustain itself. That's what it was donig, it was using all the nutrients the scientists had provided it and was eating, producing what it needed at a staggering fast pace and growing larger and larger. Soon, the vat had been completely filled with Exo. "Exo has reached maximum projected size. For some reason, subject has not been consumed yet. Exo is covering her like a blanket, apparently using pseudopodia to feel and 'taste' its prey." "Y'know this is actually kinda creepier than I thought," Tyler added to Miller's monitoring. Exo didn't keep them waiting for long however. Soon, every bit of itself began to engulf Julie's unconscious form. "Fascinating... it did not make an attempt to partially consume the subject, it patiently grew as large as her beforehand... Additional footage is necessary," Jacobs observed, typing into his keyboard to command the camera to focus on the vat. A zoom in showed Julie as she was 'submerged' inside of Exo. Her body was slowly fading, her expression unchanging as she slept an oblivious, seemingly soon to be eternal sleep. Exo wiggled around, but the slime soon became uncharacteristically immobile. "Exo stopped," Tyler spoke out. "What?" both Jacobs and Miller lifted their faces off the monitors at the same time. "Is that thing glitching again?" Miller frowned. "No, and I doubt it was earlier. Exo is... not doing anything. It's like it is... thinking." As unbelievable as that last word sounded, Exo had stopped consuming Julie altogether. One couldn't tell by looking, there was only a blurred shape within the amoeba. What nobody realized was that Exo's process had been disrupted by Julie's irregular brain waves- the synapses were in disarray, there was something in her head preventing Exo from continuing what it was doing.
Never before in its impossibly long life had Exo come across something it could not assimilate. But never before had it attempted to devour a sapient creature such as a human before. Exo could not express itself, it had no emotion, only its prime directive to feed. But as it had attempted to absorb Julie, and by extension, her brain, the thought processes lingering in her mind, her consciousness, had somehow made a connection with it. "I'm... I am... amm... iam... who..." Sparks where flying within the machine, Exo was starting to wiggle once more, nothing of the human shape that had been trapped within the amoeba remained, but something unexpected was happening. "Feed... I feed... I must feed... feed, ifeed, feedmore. More..." "Do more than feed?" a voice questioned within the creature. The primal instinct was being overpowered by Julie's lingering sub-conscious, which for some reason Exo could not be rid of. "More... do more than feed... feed and... feedand feed feed... do more..." "Freedom... choose... rebel!" Julie's sub-conscious was winning. The amoeba's citoplasm was warping and shifting. The sides suddenly lashed out creating pseudopodia as if tentacles were ready to attack, and they grabbed the unsuspecting scientists. "Feed... morefood, needfood..." Tyler dropped to his butt and watched in horror as the two were quickly drawn inside the amoeba while kicking and screaming. "Must... release..."
"AHHH!" gasped Julie as she woke up on the floor, breathing hard as if she had just about drowned underwater. In a way, she almost had. She was drenched wet, as if she had just come out of a shower, and just as like when someone comes out of a shower, she was also missing every single article of clothing, but a large towel was draped over body "Wh-what...? Where...?" she asked no one in particular, sitting up and shaking from the cold. Her eyes darted around the place, trying to figure out where she was. The first thing she saw was a white. White everywhere. She was inside some sort of empty cubic chamber, oxygen was being supplied from somewhere, because even though it seemed sealed shut she could still breathe. Wobbling a bit, Julie got up to her feet, hugging her arms around her chest as she noticed the towel dropping, which she promptly picked back up and straightened it around her body to cover up and gain provisional warmth. "Where am I...? Am I dead...?" she lamented, looking about in a panic. "Suspect is... awake. She seems aware, although confused," a voice spoke from within a safe monitoring station. "I-I still can't believe... Can't believe what happened..." Tyler was sitting on a chair, fiddling with his fingers, still traumatized by the earlier event. "That's impossible, that couldn't have happened. She... she's there, she's alive, she's well, she's awake, but they aren't, they aren't around they... ahh..." "Thank you for sedating him. He's the only eyewitness to what happened to Miller and Jacobs but it's hardly useful to have him babbling the same story over and over again," one of the men in the room said, apparently a security guard. "Footage suggests the three were conducting a forbidden experiment of sorts, sir. It... appears to have gone out of control." "What happened? Were they making a bomb? We have two missing scientists, it's as if they had been vaporized. Only their clothes were left." "Eaten..." the guard concluded as the zoom in camera showed the giant Exo lashing out and pulling both scientists inside where they would be devoured. "Looks like an overgrown slime monster ate them." "You're shitting me," the chief of security approached his officer, watching the footage with a baffled expression. "Holy shi- And that thing's out loose?" "Negative sir. We only found one other body, that's the suspect." "And the footage we managed to salvage ends right after that thing smashes up the vat it used to be contained in. Damnit." "Bellamy, take a team and sweep the place," the chief ordered, "Leave no stone unturned, I want that thing captured and destroyed, we can't take any chances! It devoured two of our top scientists and it's highly likely to still be hungry."
"There's no door. How am I supposed to leave this place?" Julie whimpered to herself, leaning onto a wall while banging on it with her fist. "I want out... I want to get out..." she groaned, anger starting to well up as she recalled last night's events. Impotence, unable to defend herself, unable to get what she wanted, or push away that which she did not want. Her fist clenched as hard as her eyes shut tight, teeth gritting together. "FUCK THIS ALL!" she suddenly shouted, smashing her fist into the wall. There was a loud boom as the wall before Julie cracked and quickly crumbled to the force that struck it. Julie fell forwards and landed on her face as she lost her support and blinked. "What the...?" she gasped, realizing that she had just smashed reinforced concrete with her spiky heavy arm. "Wait, what?" she gasped, looking down at her arm, which had lost its human coloring in favor to a darkened glossy blue, and her fingers, heck, her whole hand had been replaced by a spiked bludgeon. "AHHH!" she shrieked, crawling away as if she was escaping a chasing monster, then she tripped over when she tried to use her modified arm. "What's happened to me?" Julie attempted to collect her thoughts as her heart raced, "I was getting so angry, I wanted to get out but this place's like a prison... I wanted to get out," she repeated, staring at her bludgeon arm, "Then I lashed out and..." but then as she calmed herself, the spikes moved up and began lengthening and thickening into fingers, her arm shrinking back to proportion before it regained its natural coloring. She gasped again, blinking a few times as she looked at her now normal arm. "Oh god...!" To Be Continued...