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A swift fox with green hair wearing a slightly lighter green leotard with a half-melted skull logo on her stomach snuck up to a seemingly abandoned warehouse. The would-be superheroine who called herself Toxic Shock crept along the wall to a rusted metal door. She tried the handle, locked. So instead she focused on her salivary glands, mentally shifting hydrogen ions from one molecule to another before spitting a large glob of spittle that gave off visible fumes into her latex-covered palm. She slapped the acidic spit onto the door just above the lock, after a couple seconds the metal began to smoke and sizzle, a minute later it was weak enough for her to shove her hand through the door and reach for the lock mechanism.

But the moment she clicked the latch open a deafening siren sent her large ears laying flat against her head. She considered backing out and running, but no, this was her big chance to prove herself. She wasn’t going to have another opportunity like this anytime soon. Toxic Shock flung the door open and tore through the open doorway. Inside the building that looked abandoned from the outside was clearly anything but. Spaced equally apart on the almost spotless floor were churning vats of reeking chemicals and fermentation tanks that stank like rot. The wannabe superheroine was impressed, she was expecting just a few synthesizers cranking out meth or fentanyl, but she should have known the Korps didn’t do anything small.

The whoosh of air behind her caught her attention just in time to watch a seven-foot tall musclebound hyena clad in nothing but a pair of shorts and the Korps’ characteristic pink visor make a three-point landing. The time it took him to stagger back to his feet gave her the opportunity to run for the nearest bioreactor. If she could burn a hole in the side then maybe the liquid inside would make him slip on the pavement, or it might dissolve his skin, or it could give him additional superpowers. The vixen shuddered as she recalled her own empowerment, she had to know what was in the vat first!

Toxic Shock found a monitor embedded in the side of the vessel and began taking in information quickly. Temperature, pressure, agarose feeds, growth ratios, was this some kind of bioweapon? She couldn’t have a plague on her conscience. She flicked more rapidly through screens, trying to process the information she was taking in. Genetically engineered E. coli producing some kind of peptide chain, the shape on the screen looked like a hormone, almost familiar…

A meaty pair of hands grabbed her by both arms and lifted the short vixen off her feet. She stared straight up into a pair of slavering jaws, stretching impossibly wide for mammal mandibles. Before she could scream an objection she was shoved between those jaws into the tight pink tunnel of the hyena’s throat. As her head was enclosed by flesh Toxic Shock started to produce her acidic saliva almost out of reflex, but realized that where she was headed more acid probably wouldn’t help that much. Instead she started to focus on her sweat glands, priming them to secrete a variety of basic compounds.

A lengthy tongue lapped around her torso, teasing her nipples through her polymer leotard. She let out a gasp at the unexpected sensation, still getting used to their new sensitivity. Unfortunately letting her breath out required her to inhale stagnant air tainted with the sickly-sweet odors of rotting meat and bile. Toxic Shock gagged and struggled, trying to break free of the hyena’s grip before she passed the point of no return. But he kept pushing her into his hungry maw. As her muzzle squeezed through a tight ring of muscle the hyena’s tongue found her crotch.

The hyena paused for a moment, then crammed her the rest of the way down. Once her feet passed his larynx he took a deep breath and spoke for the first time the almost heroine had heard. “Don’t see too many trans heroes.”

Toxic Shock turned her concentration onto her sweat glands. “We’re not all villains you know.” She felt her fur start to turn slippery as the acrid liquid surrounding her bubbled.

She felt the hyena’s hands grasp the sides of his stomach. “Whoa, that doesn’t feel good. I haven’t had acid reflux since I started in K-BURP, what are you doing?”

“Neutralizing your stomach acids foul villain!” The bases she was secreting would free her soon enough, but Toxic Shock kicked upwards into the hyena’s ribcage for good measure.

The villain commenced a fit of coughing and retching, the heroine inside him felt the concrete floor press into her as he collapsed to the floor and fell forwards. Toxic Shock squirmed in the squishy organ, trying to find the sphincter she’d entered through. But the motions of her predator had disoriented her, and she felt herself pushed tail-first back up the hyena’s throat.

She felt herself fortunate that nobody could see her, bent at a 90 degree angle, ass crammed into a supervillain’s cardiac sphincter while her head and feet stretched out his gut. “Wat you doing!” He groaned through a mouthful of fur. “Urrrr stuck!”

“You’re trying to throw me up butt-first!” She retorted. “Stand up so I can cram my feet in!”

Toxic Shock felt the hyena raise himself off the floor, she took the opportunity to fold her legs in and feel with her toes for the sphincter that had swallowed her tail. “Oh, that tickles.” Her pred mumbled.

No sooner had the fox squeezed both feet into the sphincter than she felt herself rocketing out of the hyena’s mouth. She slid her way across the floor, the concrete tearing her costume as she went. As Toxic Shock attempted to gather herself up the hyena continued retching.

“Soap?” He shouted. “Wait, no, bleach?! Did you make bleach in my stomach?”

Toxic Shock jumped to her feet and adopted what she believed to be a suitably heroic pose. “A base, to neutralize your acids.”

The hyena coughed up another mouthful of bubbling liquid. “I was holding my acid back you asshole!” He lurched towards the vixen, footsteps falling heavily on the floor.

The vixen blinked in confusion, “holding it back?” He wasn’t trying to kill her? But why would…

Her train of thought was interrupted by a forklift sailing through the air in her general direction. Toxic Shock ducked just in time, dropping to all fours before it crashed into the floor behind her. She searched madly for the nearest exit and her eyes caught on a metal staircase leading up to a catwalk that circled the walls.

She ran for the stairs and started tuning her footpads to produce sulfuric acid. It was one of the first tricks she’d learned, sweating acid, it was what she was best known for in her brief career as a superheroine. As she heard the concrete smoke behind her it occurred to her that maybe that was why the Korps had attempted to capture her by eating her.

Toxic Shock leapt onto the metal stairs hard enough that she heard them creak beneath her feet, almost causing her to lose her balance and fall backwards. Her fluffed out but still wet tail helped her regain her balance just as she felt the metal begin to buckle under her acid-covered foot. She spread more acid over the stairs as she climbed them, staying just ahead of the damage. The hyena stopped at the foot of the staircase, shouted an emphatic “Damnit!” and stared up at her. “I’m going to grab a ladder, and then you’re going right back in my belly!”

As he turned away Toxic Shock realized she had trapped herself, there were no other ways down to the main floor in sight, there was a door at the far side of the catwalk, but she had no idea where that could lead. When she heard the hyena supervillain start to unfold a giant metal ladder she decided to take her chances and dashed for the door. It was locked, of course, she began to gather up saliva just as she felt the ladder crashing against the catwalk behind her. She loosed a glob of the most concentrated acid she’d produced from her mouth at the door and slammed into it with her shoulder. She heard something crack in the lock but it stayed closed, she tried kicking it with the same result.

She heard the hyena climbing up the ladder as much as she felt the reverberations. Toxic Shock ran backwards, gathering up speed for a last effort. Her shoulder ached as she crashed through the acid-weakened door, she smelled fresh night air, and after half a second of sailing through the doorway her waist caught on a railing that just barely separated the roof from a twenty foot drop. This time her wet tail wasn’t enough to save her, and she went tumbling over the railing and into the open air.

The swift fox felt a pair of scaled talons clamp down on her leg. “You weren’t trying to jump off the roof, were you?” Came a cheerful avian voice.

Toxic Shock looked up, she was held aloft by a fluffy brown raptor with a short beak who wore a jet black unitard. She couldn’t recall any owl heroes, but who else would come to her rescue like this? “No, I was just trying to bust open the door. Didn’t know the roof was so short.”

“Oh good.” The bird swiveled her head down to face the fox, showing off the pink visor covering her wide eyes. “I hope you’re smart enough not to try any chemical tricks while we’re twenty meters up in the air.”

Toxic Shock kicked at the owl’s legs before she knew what she was doing. She regretted it almost immediately, even before she dropped her. She fell screaming as the street zoomed up towards her.

What felt like an eternity later, her view of the onrushing traffic was hidden by a beak opening into a wide pink gullet. As the owl’s mouth approached the vixen considered her options carefully, and decided on the metaphorical devil she knew. Toxic Shock dove straight down the owl’s throat.

The owl lurched in the air as the impact of her meal sent her tumbling down, she managed to regain her balance just in time to avoid splattering the pavement. “My name’s Penumbra. I presume you’re Jane Sweets, aka “Toxic Shock?”

Jane shifted in her new fleshy prison, Penumbra’s gut was even more cramped than the hyena’s, though somehow less… fragrant. “How do you know my name?”

Penumbra hooted in amusement. “Please, the security you Americans have on your databases is even more laughable than the PHL’s.”

She sat up, or at least she hoped it was “up”, and started to think again. The owl was right, she couldn’t try another one of her chemical tricks if she didn’t want to become a stain on the pavement. Just kicking her had been stupid, she hadn’t even been thinking about it. But if she stayed in there she’d be taken to one of the Korps’ bases and brainwashed into becoming one of their puppets. Maybe if she waited for Penumbra to land she could fight her way out. But no, she’d have to do something like cook up mustard gas in the owl’s stomach before she vomited, and she wasn’t sure her tolerance to her own chemicals would protect against that. Not to mention that if they had synths it wouldn’t help her.

While Jane was trying to think of something else she could try, Penumbra interrupted. “Oh, would you look at that? Looks like the Mavens have already written your obituary.”

“What?” Toxic Shock sat up straight, stretching the mucous-covered walls around her. “I thought they didn’t write those until a superhero was undeniably, absolutely, confirmed dead?”

“Perhaps they were being overly cautious?” The owl suggested. “Toxic Shock, known otherwise as Jane Sweets or, oh is that your deadname there? What were they thinking?”

Toxic Shock unconsciously sweated a few beads of acid, which fell smoking to the owl’s stomach wall. “Ow!” Penumbra hooted.

“Sorry, slipped out.” Jane grumbled. She thought back to how she had been treated by the Madtown Mavens, they’d accepted her, hadn’t they? She just needed to prove herself a “real” superheroine didn’t she? “I don’t believe you.” She added.

“I could show you.” Penumbra suggested. “But all I have are my RCGs.”

Jane shuddered. No way was she putting on one of those brainwashing devices. “I’ll pass, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” The owl replied. “They really are convenient.”

“No thanks.” Toxic Shock asserted herself. But she couldn’t help thinking. She’d heard some of the Mavens complaining behind her back about “having” to bring a trans girl on board, but most of them were glad to have her, weren’t they? Maybe they wrote obits for all their members just in case, except that didn’t make much sense. Iron Phantom hadn’t been officially declared dead for months after he’d been torn to shreds, the standards for superhero death were set so high. She shook her head in an attempt to clear her thoughts, this was clearly just an attempt to trick her into putting on a pair of those brainwashing glasses.

But what if it wasn’t? Surely there had to be some way to trip her up, trick this supervillain into admitting the truth. “What else does it say?” Jane asked.

“Hmm,” the owl’s thoughtful vocalization reverberated through her stomach walls, massaging the fox’s sides. “Well, it says that your powers emerged while you were working at a confectionary company as a food chemist.” Jane nodded, though she couldn’t tell whether Penumbra could tell. “And you were fired for using your powers to contaminate a vat of icing.”

“What? No!” Toxic Shock objected, squirming defiantly in the owl’s guts. “That was an accident!”

“Watch it!” Penumbra shouted back, reminding the fox not to upset her ride too much. “I’m just reporting what it says on their server.” When Jane had calmed back down a bit she continued. “It then claims that you were offered a post with the Madtown Mavens as part of a plea bargain to avoid charges.”

“That’s even less true!” Toxic Shock shouted.

“Wow. I’d almost think they might be priming the public to expect your return as a villain.”

That comment sent Toxic Shock twitching, it was obscene! She wasn’t a villain! She couldn’t stand these lies for a moment longer. “Give me those glasses!”

She felt an abrupt drop in altitude, causing her ears to pop, the owl carrying her tumbled in the air as she pulled her RCGs off with one wing and stuffed them down her throat. Once she swallowed Penumbra stabilized herself and regained altitude, seconds later Toxic Shock felt a piece of hard plastic land on her head and saw a glowing pink visor fall into her lap. She gingerly picked up the RCGs by the edges and tried to examine the text displayed on the miniscule screens without putting them on. She squinted, it was small but she could make out some of the words. For certain she could make out “plea bargain,” “sabotage,” and… a name.

There was less than a paragraph visible on the small visor, she wished she could scroll up or down so she could see the rest of the page, but couldn’t find any sort of controls for the device. She’d heard that RCGs had some kind of neural interface, and clearly there was no other way to use them but wearing them, which would open her up to brainwashing. Though as she turned them over in her hands, she started to wonder. Maybe she could set up some sort of failsafe, keep it from brainwashing her?

Toxic Shock closed her eyes and began to will her glands to produce the same slippery base that had freed her from the hyena before, but held back on secreting it. If she lost focus, such as from being hypnotized by the RCGs, she would release the base from her pores and hopefully the RCGs would slide off of her face before they got enough of a hold on her brain. Hopefully.

Carefully, she laid the pink visor over her eyes and thought about scrolling up. Instantly the text began to roll downwards, bringing her view to the opening of the article. “R.I.P Toxic Shock, aka Jane Sweets, formerly named…”

The railing creaked as Jane leaned over a vat of green bubbling sickly sweet fluid. Not quite liquid, but not quite solid either, it was hard to believe that substance would ever be edible. She took notes on her clipboard, so far all looked well. Her ears perked up at the sound of a name she didn’t associate with herself anymore and she turned to see a balding stag walking towards her.

She groaned. “It’s Jane now.” She reminded him for what must have been the tenth time since she’d submitted the paperwork for her name change.

“Whatever,” her boss said. “Everything good on the production line?”

“So far, so good.” Jane replied.

“That’s great.” He said, walking up closer to her. “So, you’re becoming a girl right?”

“I am a girl.” Jane growled. “I just don’t have the body that fits me yet.”

Her boss sidled up next to her on the narrow catwalk, his hand starting to reach around behind her. “So, this wouldn’t be gay then, would it?”

Jane attempted to jerk away but the catwalk gave her no room, the creaky railing gave way entirely and she fell straight down into the vat of fondant. The impact with the green semisolid knocked the wind out of her for a moment, and then she began sinking, it was like quicksand with high-fructose corn syrup, she couldn’t just paddle her way to the edge like with water. As she tasted the sickly-sweet substance enveloping her mouth she wished it was just water, water she could deal with.

Sinking into the fondant, the substance in her mouth suddenly began to change consistency. It was less sweet, more fluid. She attempted to paddle and found the quicksand-like fondant break up and leave nothing but water behind her strokes. The dissolving fondant couldn’t suck at her anymore, she could just swim through it now as she finally touched the metal rim of the vat.

A coworker lowered a rope to her and she pulled herself out of the vat, climbing over the side and flopping to the floor below. She heard voices around her, speculating about her condition and what had happened, who if anyone might be to blame. Then one all too familiar voice called out. “What did you do to the product?”!

Jane leaned up, her ears swiveled to the furiously fizzling vat as she stared at her boss’s shocked expression. “I don’t know.” She replied. She held up a green-tinted hand and pulled at her hair, it was now almost solid green. “Maybe I have some kind of power?”

“That vat costs as much as a year of your salary!” Her boss roared. “If you’ve got powers now, maybe you can go be with the other freaks in the Korps because you’re not working here anymore!”

Jane gathered a massive glob of saliva in her mouth and hocked it in her former employer’s direction. She got up and left just before he started screaming.

I suppose it’s a good thing he didn’t press charges, right?

Toxic Shock jolted out of her reverie when she heard the strange, oddly soothing voice in her head. “Who is that?” She looked around her fleshy prison, but in the dim light of the RCGs she could not make out anyone else in there with her.

Sorry to alarm you, but I’d have to talk to you eventually. A red vixen with bright pink eyes wearing a magenta jumpsuit materialized just in front of Jane, the stomach walls appearing to stretch out to accommodate her. I’m Rose, nice to meet you.

“Rose?” Toxic Shock blinked, that name sounded familiar. Something to do with the RCGs themselves? She reached for her visor and gently lifted one side away from her face, Rose was still visible through the lens, but when she looked under the lens she saw nothing but stomach. Her brain struggled with grasping both the stomach wall expanded around the other vixen, and holding tight around herself, so she laid the RCGs back across her nose. “You’re the network operator or something?”

The Korps vixen grinned. I am the RCG network. I suppose you could call me an “AI”. Though I prefer to think of myself as your friendly guide to the world of the Korps.

Jane stared at Rose’s projection for a long minute. “How did you know what I was thinking about? Are you reading my thoughts?”

Of course I am. You are a superheroine fighting the Korps aren’t you?

Toxic Shock held up both hands to the RCGs, priming her glands to produce acids. “Tell me why I shouldn’t just destroy your stupid pink visor right now?”

Go right ahead, I’ve already determined that you know nothing useful to us.

The swift fox tried to think around the virtual vixen’s words. “But you’d lose a potential recruit?”

Are you saying then that you would consider joining us?

“No!” Toxic Shock shouted, all too quickly. But she knew it wasn’t totally accurate, they were criminals and supervillains, yes. But they were way more accepting of trans people than the hero groups she knew of, except wasn’t that their fault for associating trans people with villainy?

Don’t you remember any old-timey cartoons with non-gender conforming villains? They decided we were the bad guys long before the Korps were established.

Jane was annoyed by Rose reading her thoughts again, but had to admit the AI had a point. She couldn’t recall any movies or shows more than 30 years old that had any gay or trans protagonists, but there were plenty of crossdressing bad guys. “Okay, maybe you have that point. But you’re still supervillains, you cause so much destruction!”

The organizations and individuals we target cause much more pain and suffering than any of our actions. Do you even know what that lab you attacked did?

“It was a drug lab!” Toxic Shock retorted.

What kind of drugs though? You saw the readouts.

Jane tried to remember the molecular configuration she’d read. It was familiar, a carbohydrate, like a hormone, wait. “Insulin?!”

You know how much the price is inflated in your country. Normally we just smuggle it across the border but the pharmaceutical companies have been hiring super-teams to intercept them lately.

The swift vixen tried to process what Rose was implying. “You’re saying that the Madtown Mavens were just protecting Big Pharma’s profits?”

And attempting to dispose of you. It’s not typical to send out a single rookie hero on a mission by themself.

That almost brought out a whimper from Jane, she had not even realized that. She’d just thought that she was sent alone because a larger group would be noticed, or that it would be easy, or that she just needed to work harder to prove herself than everyone else just because she was a trans woman, again. But she saw it now, and couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been. “You planning a reprisal of some kind?”

Unfortunately we don’t have the capacity to provide enough for the 34 million diabetics in the US yet, the Overlord put a moratorium on attacks on Big Pharma until we can be sure nobody will suffer without them. A mass-market confection producer, on the other hand…

“Are you trying to bribe me with a revenge strike against my creep of a boss?” Toxic Shock inquired, suspicious.

I would never do such a thing.

Penumbra’s stomach squeezed around the vixen, shoving her out onto a cold metal floor. Toxic Shock spun around, taking in her new surroundings. She was in a room the size of her studio apartment, all covered in silvery metal, the owl stood in the doorway, already wearing a fresh pair of RCGs. “Sorry it’s so small,” Penumbra explained. “Didn’t have much time to fabricate a customized cell for you.”

Toxic Shock evaluated the room, large bed with a soft-looking mattress, a nightstand, a small enclosed space that she hoped was the bathroom. “What’s stopping me from making some agua regia and burning a hole in the floor?”

The owl stepped aside from the door. “Take a look outside.”

The vixen looked out the door, it opened out into a seemingly bottomless shaft. The wall of the shaft was well over 30 feet away from her, further than she could jump. Cautiously, she poked her head outside and looked to either side. She could see the corners of her little cell, not connected to the walls of the shaft either. She looked up, no sign of cables or suspension beams that she could use to climb across the gap. Then she took off her RCGs to make sure it wasn’t an illusion of some sort. All still there.

“Food will be teleported to you three times a day.” Penumbra explained as Jane slowly backed back into the cell. “You can make requests via the RCGs.” She pointed at the pink visor in the vixen’s hands.

“How long are you going to keep me here?” Toxic Shock asked. “Don’t expect the Mavens to pay ransom for me.”

“You know enough that we can’t let you leave without wiping your memories.” The owl replied, perching on the edge of the doorway to nothing. “But, we’re not going to force that on you. Not while there’s still hope for you.”

“So, I’m stuck here until either I let you erase my memories,” Jane turned the RCGs over in her hands. “Or I join the Korps.”

“More or less. I wouldn’t take too long.” Penumbra fell backwards into the shaft, rising back up with her wings spread seconds later. “Oh, and Ridley says you owe him a new meal.”

The door slid closed and locked, sealing her in. Jane Sweets took a seat on the bed and considered the visor in her hands. She’d been used, that much was clear. But what could she do now? She could let her memory be erased, but then she wouldn’t remember learning about being hung out to dry and next time they might send her on an even more suicidal mission. On the other hand, Rose had a very soothing voice…

A week later, a green-haired vixen led a Korps raid on a confectionary factory. When they were done, the whole building was filled with acidic foam that ate away at the machinery and foundations alike. By the time that the biohazard team had cleared it for entry the building had to be condemned on account of the supports collapsing. The manager was found the following morning in the bathroom of a Michigan truck stop, his antlers chewed off and smelling of hyena vomit.