Figment, Part 12

Perfect bodies, Imperfect Minds

By Hedonism

Synopsis : Rebecca has kept her best friend with her since childhood, despite knowing full well that this friend is just an imaginary one she never had the heart to forget with maturity. Putting up with this minor psychological idiosyncrasy, she got on with life. Until she was attacked by two vicious gangs, and the friend she knew damn well was just made up turned out to be quite real, and capable of giving her ass-kicking transformation powers.

An organisation of serpent creatures called the Union Of Coils captured Rebecca and separated Figment from her body. The human had her memories changed and was released with a different, more mundane past that didn't include her childhood companion. But subconscious trauma at losing Figment restored her real memories and she escaped from the Union Coil observers who were ensuring she adjusted to her new life. On the run with her supervisor, Sarah 'Magpie' Fritz, and a Union Coil hostage, they set out to find the Scientist, a man Sarah says could tell them more about the creatures that had kidnapped her. Their captive, John, swears that Figment died after being removed. But Rebecca is unconvinced and determined to recover her friend.

* * * * * * * * * *

Magpie drove Rebecca and John in silence through another city. The snake man, back to looking totally human, sat still with his legs pressed together, his arms by his sides and his head turned upwards. His mouth moved quietly in a prayer to that god of his, Ssseth. He used his tongue a lot; it probably consisted of a lot of hissing.

Rebecca looked at herself repeatedly in the rear-view mirror. Was it really herself doing this? Before, she was a super hero, much more than human. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, or fly over them anyway. She was a dragon with shape-changing powers, one half of an incredible duet.

Now Rebecca was on another mission. But this time, she was just a plain old human being. No special skills, not very good looking, no strength, no ability to leap tall buildings or even throw a punch properly. She was on the run from things she had no idea about, but they knew far too much about her, were bent on melting her mind and wanted to keep her away from Hedonism forever. When the anger she felt at all this happening to her faded, terrible fear and uncertainty replaced it.

If only there was someone to talk to about this. Figment was... needed to be rescued. Magpie was too damn weird and calm about everything. Her parents and friends, apart from not being here, would think she was insane, or writing a comic book.

What about the... other childhood monster, Critter-Man? Rebecca smiled as she thought of him as that. How would he react to being called a bogeyman? But the term was a good one, because of his appearance, his name and the way he got into her mind. She would love to chat to him about this, and not just for the reasons that he'd understand her, believe her and maybe even help her rescue Figment. But also so that... well, she would have a reason to talk to him again.

Rebecca tried something silly. She thought out cries for help, called out for Critter-Man to aid her, as if he was her god. He had been in her mind after all, just for a few moments. But she may as well have been... well... screaming for help inside her own mind. All she got was a hauntingly empty feeling, as if she opened a door in her stomach and found a cellar stairwell winding down into empty darkness. It was a friendless cavity in a hollow body.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Scientist's house was an unassuming, run-down semi-detached lost in deepest suburbia. According to Magpie he also owned the adjoining house, but just used that one to store equipment, exploded machinery, hazardous materials and monster spare parts. Rebecca didn't ask how serious Sarah was when she said that.

Magpie had phoned on ahead, so the Scientist was waiting for them at the end of the surprisingly well-kept garden. He wore a stained lab coat, along with thick safety goggles that might actually have been his prescription glasses. His face looked old but at the same time had practically no lines or wrinkles. This meant it was impossible to be more specific about his age - was forty or a hundred and forty?

"Good evening, Sarah," he said in a mock-English voice as they came to the door. "Still not a magpie I see."

"Technically, no," replied Magpie. "Meet Rebecca, who's my assistant librarian, and John, who's a snake."

"A Yuan-Ti," said John with more than a trace of annoyance.

He waved them into the lounge and bid them kick all the machinery off the couch so they could sit down.

"Good to meet you all. I have to say, John, your species did a very good job on my brain. Almost had me convinced for a while."

"Errr... yes?"

"The problem was, the implanted memories just _didn't_ really fit with my... world view..."

"Errr... yes."

In other words, Rebecca thought, they probably couldn't create alternative memories that were insane enough. Why was he putting on that accent? Why did she think there _was_ a reason?

"So do we get to find out all sorts of cool stuff now?" Sarah asked the Scientist.

He nodded and paced the room.

"I may as well start from the beginning. Five years ago I started to research into whether there were intelligent, non-human creatures on Earth, disguised as humans. A few months after I had begun, I was kidnapped by the Yuan-Ti and brainwashed."

He smiled and sat on a table.

"So I can safely say _that_ research was a success. It was clear that for further studies I would require an insider to find out more for me. So I... ahhh... made one. I've called for that agent and her assistant to come to the house. She'll be here shortly, so while you're waiting, do you want a cup of coffee?"

John, Sarah and Rebecca all pretty much thought the same thing. It would get this man and his disturbing glasses and non-wrinkled face out of the room if we said yes. But if we said no, then we definitely won't end up drinking something with poisonous or experimental additives.

The weird glasses won out, and they all ordered coffee. While Rebecca was looking at the scorch marks on the walls the front door thumped open.

"Hi doc! You wouldn't believe the day we've had! Yet _another_ super villain escaped the Union jail!"

Rebecca relaxed a little. She thought the serpent police had broken into the house.

A very, very beautiful woman in a blue and white spandex costume stormed into the lounge, threw a soaked trenchcoat in a random direction, closed her eyes and stretched.

"Which one this time?" called out the Scientist amidst coffee making noises.

Rebecca immediately felt jealous of this woman, who actually managed to make a super hero costume look great on her perfect body, simply by putting it on.

The newcomer didn't appear to have noticed them. This was pretty much confirmed when she tugged a tight part of her costume out of an intimate bit of flesh, scratched herself and transformed before their eyes. Magpie smirked while Rebecca and John stood agog, for different reasons. Rebecca felt a twinge of fear that the woman getting hairier and more animalistic, was turning into a werewolf, while the Yuan-Ti was thinking adolescent, inappropriate and embarrassed thoughts.

"Buxom. The creepy strong one."

Despite turning into a deer her body's perfect shape became even better. John's choking noises made the female open her eyes just as the transformation finished reshaping her into an anthropomorphic, exquisitely proportioned deer. A red squirrel walked into the room, holding a bag of peanuts. She had on a red and brown super hero costume. It went well with her fur.

"Oh... Hello..." said the squirrel awkwardly. Rebecca had almost been expecting her to sound like one of the Chipmunks, but instead she had a cute but regular female voice.

"Come on, Nicey... off to our _fancy_dress_party_," she continued urgently, tugging on the deer's arm.

"You'll have to tell me where you get those costumes from," said Magpie cheerily. "Very easy to... change into..."

"Oh... you saw that then," said Nicey the deer. She wriggled a bit and popped her tail through a slot in the back of the costume. Rebecca and John just continued staring.

"Yes. You walked into the center of the room and turned into a deer. It sort of just caught our notice."

"Scientist?" hollered the squirrel. "Sorry, but your guests have all seen Nicey turn into an animal. Could you call the Union Coils? We're gonna have to get their minds wiped."

"Why's that?" asked Rebecca, coming down off this weirdness trip. The impromptu heroes looked a bit perturbed that everyone was taking this so calmly.

"Well... you now know we exist, humie," said the squirrel. "The Union snakies will come along and wipe your mind so you don't tell anyone else about us. Don't worry, it's only us you'll forget."

"Ahhhh..." said Rebecca. "So the snake cops come along and erase any memories of humans seeing these... animal things?"

"The Were," said the squirrel. "We're called the Were. As in, Nicey being a Weredeer, and me being a Weresquirrel. No offence, but if you humans found out we exist, you'd start hunting us down and there'd be genocide!"

"Genocide? How many of you _are_ there?"

The scientist walked in with a tray of coffee.

"At last estimate, around 1.5 percent of the world's population consist of either Were, Yuan-Ti or other supernatural creatures," he said conversationally. "And that number is growing."

"You mean... the Were and the Yuan-Ti are taking over us?!" asked Rebecca with encroaching horror as the Scientist handed out the drinks

"_That's_ why we reckon you'll go all out to kill us if you knew we existed!" answered Super Squirrel.

John grimaced as he supped and swapped cups with Rebecca. Snakes are fussy drinkers.

"We're not taking over anyway," he said. "We're... ahem... integrating with you."

The Scientist volunteered, "The Were can breed with humans. Their offspring is always Were. Yuan-Ti are more like the movie lycanthropes - they can turn transform humans into their species through their bite."

Nicey looked around with extreme annoyance at the way everyone was taking in the Great Secret so casually. "But it doesn't matter - you'll forget all this when the Union arrives..."

A wicked grin spread on the doe's expressive face. "Hey, Amanda, this could be cool! We could do _anything_ to them and they'd forget it happened! We could, like, do experiments..."

Amanda rolled her huge eyes.

"Scientist, get out that artificial insemination machine!" continued Nicey with devious excitement. "If it does what it did last time, that'd be cool!"

She rubbed her palms together and looked between Rebecca and Magpie.

"Right, who's first?"

Magpie smiled in an easygoing way. She picked up a pencil, held it against her palm in an odd fashion, tensed her arm, then drove the length of flimsy wood through a mahogany table. She wasn't a strong woman, but it's amazing what a little technique can do.

"I could kill you with a paperclip," she said, quite seriously.

"The other humie it is!" said Nicey quickly.

As Nice Rack approached Rebecca, Magpie sighed and pulled a pen from her pocket. As she wound her arm back and tensed to throw it at Nicey, Amanda leapt out to block her aim.

John cleared his throat. "You know that the Union Of Coils would have you imprisoned for malicious alteration of a human and intent to unnecessarily endanger the Secret?"

"Hah, they'll never know it happened!"

John reached into his mouth and pulled out his tongue until it flopped completely out of his mouth. He stored it in a little box in his shirt pocket and let a long black tongue forked tongue roll out to take it's place.

"It'ssssjussst likely we'll find out."

"Yeah, how's that?"

Nice Rack doesn't catch on very quickly.

"Nicey?" said Amanda clearly and carefully. "He, is, a, Yuan-Ti. He, is, a, Union, Coil. And, he, heard, you. And, he'll, arrest, you, if, you, try, and, artificially, inseminate, our, guests."

The deer looked around for a second. The glassy eyed look left her face.

"Oh yeah. Good point."

* * * * * * * * * *

"Nice Rack, what _is_ the Union Of Coils?" asked Magpie. "John won't tell us because we're humans and therefore should be kept stoopid,"

"The Union? A group of mad cultist fascist Men In Black cops, of course!"

John clenched his fists as Magpie said, "That's 1 to the Snakes are Evil' group."

"All bloody right, I'll talk! We've taken up the duty of policccccing the werecreaturesssssand the other weirdossssthat make up that 1.5 perccccent! We protect the humanssssfrom them, them from the humanssssand them from each other!"

"What's that about a cult?" asked Rebecca as John put the prosthetic tongue back over his serpentine one.

"We are a religious species. Every Were has a god, but they usually don't worship it. The Yuan-Ti god is Ssseth, and it is our pleasure to serve him - "

"Last time I heard," said Nice Rack as she sat down and put her arm around John, "if you didn't worship ol' Ssseth, you turned into those helpless lil' Lesser Snakies."

John slowly turned beetroot red. Even at this proximity, his serpent nature had overcome Nice Rack's only super-power, her hypnotising bosom.

"The Yuan-Ti are Ssseth's children, the Lesser Serpents are ours! We will protect and nurture even our heretics until they understand!"

Nice Rack tried flumphing her upper body and leaning against the Yuan-Ti. John just stood up and let her fall into the cavity he left behind.

"Yes, we worship the god who made us in his form. And yes, we continue to recruit more followers and change more people. We are hated because we are cops, and no-one likes cops when they're not needed. And we are hated because we're a 'sinister religion'. But you still _need_ us!"

"Gaaawd," said Nice Rack dismissively as she slouched in the chair.

"Just remember that before the Union of Coils, you know what the usual response was for a human learning the existence of the Weres?"

He pointed an accusing finger at Rebecca.

"'You know too much... Now you must DIE!'"

Rebecca looked around uneasily. Being ranted at by a boy who looked to be around sixteen was humiliating, even if he was a disguised snake.

"It was messy. Humans died, and Were-creatures were discovered and killed right back. Now we're here, and as the evil men in black we'll be called on to empty your mind, keep you innocent! We're the people the Werecreatures ask for help! They may despise us, but while we're around, you don't have to return to the old ways of killing humans who discover their secret! And we're better at capturing and converting the humans than anyone else. We have members in all the emergency services. We're even starting to recruit non-Yuan-Ti, non-Ssseth worshippers into the forces!"

Magpie nodded as she took this in.

"Why don't you have those little gadgets that flash and wipe people's minds?"

"I don't know. Maybe because... THIS ISN'T A FILM! Minds need a full doctor's attention, or there will be gaps that traumatize the victim or make them remember!"

"So, back in the library, the Coil Union went after those thugs because they'd seen a giant lizard woman? And been beaten up by one?" said Rebecca.

"Yes!"

"Presumably if you wipe humans minds but protect monsters, I must have been a bit confusing for you."

John slowly calmed down.

"In a way, yes. It was just luck that we found you too, we were only intending to find the thugs. But when we arrested you, we saw you were, well, a normal human and a parasitical monster. As the monster was forcing you to do evil acts, we treated you as just another victim. We separated you from the parasite and gave you a normal life."

Rebecca sighed.

"Only she's not evil. If she was, why didn't she make me kill the thugs when they went for me?"

John clutched his head.

"I don't know why. If she really was good, we might just have adjusted your memory so you thought she was just a normal childhood friend thing, and told her not to reveal her real nature to you. Or we could have treated you like any other hidden creature and introduced you to our society and rules."

"So it's possible this was just a mistake. Because the only alternative was, someone killed... kidnapped Figment knowing she wasn't evil."

Rebecca clutched her fists tightly.

"If your Union is as wholesome as you say it is, they won't stop me going in there and finding out what happened to Figment."

John nodded.

"If you take me with you, I'll make sure you don't get arrested, and I'll take you to the doctor who worked on you. Maybe he'll let you see her... body."

Rebecca tightened her clenched fists. When she unwrapped them, she had cut into her palms with her fingernails.

"I want to see him. Now."

"Lets go then," said Magpie. "After you've cleaned up your hands."

Rebecca stepped to Magpie and held her hand. She put on a worn-out smile.

"Sarah... I can't let you come with me. I'm going in there to save Figment. You've no reason to risk yourself."

John cast his eyes upwards.

"We won't harm you! It's as safe with us as at your library!"

He knew it was a bad choice of words the moment he said it, but life has no rewind button.

"Can you swear I won't come out of this without someone mixing up my mind?"

Nice Rack grinned and acted out being in front of a double record deck. She made scratching sounds. No-one looked at her.

John stalled.

"I... shouldn't swear on such a thing."

Magpie sighed and smiled.

"Whatever, I'll stay. Prof, can you change me into a magpie or not?"

The Scientist looked around, startled, and stopped attaching a chainsaw to a robotic hand.

"Indeed."

Rebecca shook her head.

"No, you can't force me to let you come by threatening that. Can I borrow your keys?"

"Sure, I won't be needing them after the Scientist's finished with me anyway."

She fished out her keys and threw them. Rebecca winced as they hit her palm.

She and John left wordlessly. As the car drove away, the Scientist said, "Are you sure you wish to go ahead with this, Sarah?"

"Yep."

"I'll have the machinery up and ready by the time you've rescued Rebecca from the Yuan-Ti."

Amanda looked up with surprise. The Scientist's face broke out in a wrinkle-less smile. Magpie simply nodded.

"And I'd like Nice Rack and Nut Lover to help me."

Amanda's huge eyes opened wide enough to twinkle.

"Of course we'll help - "

"No we won't," said Nicey quickly.

"Why not?"

"Well, we're going to invade a Yuan-Ti base to rescue... a parasite? We're going to piss off the snakies over a creature that's probably imaginary, possibly a tapeworm, and almost certainly dead?!"

"Don't you believe in justice?" asked Magpie. "I thought you were supposed to be heroes!"

"Yes, but this is hardly black and white, is it. The Union are not particularly villains."

"So far I've found that not to be the case."

"And most importantly, their snakes! They _ignore_my_boobs!_"

The Scientist smiled.

"I thought you didn't like the Union much."

"Yeah, but they put a lot of business my way, nutless. What with all those prison breakouts and jobs they couldn't handle themselves."

The Scientist walked to a large and overly futuristic rifle mounted on the wall. He idly toyed with it and Nicey cringed.

"Okay, I won't call you nutless again. Just, p, put down the lesbo laser..."

The Scientist smirked.

"Remember that one shot off this and you'll be so attracted to your own perfect body so much you'll exhaust yourself to death in hours. Anyway, doesn't it annoy you that the Union Of Coils set up all those jobs for you?"

"Whatyou mean, nut..." she shut her mouth hastily as he swung the weapon around. Magpie slowly got up joined Amanda behind the couch.

"The fact that you found something suspicious in your last six jobs being all in quiet places away from humans, and that they all consisted of recapturing your old adversaries as they escaped from Union jail? Of course you worked out what their secret plan was... "

Nicey's eyes widened. Amanda looked both confused and lost in deep thought as she tried to keep up.

"Yeah, course I did," said Nicey desperately, waiting anxiously for the Scientist to tell her what she was to have known all along.

"That they staged your missions to keep you from fighting real crime in full public view. Because they, thought, mistakenly of course, that you'd openly transform into your sexier deer form and reveal the existence of the Were. A bit like that job you did seven missions ago..."

Nicey fumed.

"AAAAAGGGHHH! They _gonna_pay!_ Yeah, I've been pissed at them doing that for the last six missions! Of course I knew! They thought I was fooled, but I knew all along!"

Amanda twigged.

"Of course, Nicey, all you were looking for was a chance to invade their headquarters for a true, virtuous reason, so you could show them what _real_ justice was."

"Yeah, that's right! I'm gonna go in there and kick their big scaly asses! To the Deer mobile!"

The scientist cleared his throat as she ran towards the garage.

"I haven't finished making it yet. The engine's still in pieces and the antlers keep coming unglued."

Nicey screamed again. Due to her sex and species, it would have gotten any hunter or stag a mile away running gleefully towards her.

"Call the Deer Taxi!"

When they finally left, the Scientist picked up the empty cups.

"Better safe than sorry," he muttered to himself, and threw one into the bin.

By Hedonism