Figment, Part 6

Reincarnation into Salamanders

By Hedonism

Synopsis : Rebecca has kept her best friend Figment 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 trait, she got on with life. Until after an attack from two vicious gangs, the friend she knew damn well was just made up turned out to be quite real, and capable of giving her ass-kicking transformational powers.

While you can never be sure of the aims that motivate super-powered monsters, the desire of flame is always clear. Critter Man has the task of saving the occupiers of a residential skyscraper from the fire that is devouring it. Hedonism, AKA Figment and Rebecca have chosen to rescue those that are theoretically already beyond help.

An image of Critter Man : http://www.geocities.com/orenotter/images/critterman.jpg

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The interior of the lift was in solemn, appropriate darkness for it's contents.

Then the doors shuddered, and claws hooked around the gap that had been forced. Sullen red light desecrated the graffiti covered tomb holding ten bodies.

Rebecca felt glad for emotional editing that had dulled her emotions as she looked down.

: Can we save any of them? :

: According to my scan, they've all been clinically dead for at least twenty minutes. The best doctors in the world wouldn't be able to start their hearts, and their brains have suffered permanent damage due to lack of circulation. :

: You said you could save the dead! :

: I'm... sorry... I forgot one thing. There's not enough emotional energy here. If they were alive and suffering, I could use their emotions. :

Rebecca nodded their head solemnly.

: Then I'll save them. :

She told Hedonism what to do.

Rebecca looked at pile of corpses and suddenly felt incredibly sick. The lost eyes stared vacantly up at her. The mouths and noses were surrounded by black dirt from the soot they tried to breathe in. They had not passed over peacefully.

The seven foot tall reptile screamed with anguish at the death she was forced to stare at. What was she doing here? How could she possibly have thought that a librarian could have saved anyone? How would she ever get their sad, lifeless faces out of her mind?

Rebecca stumbled back, shaking her head from side to side as she took in the hands, the faces, the clothes, that marked every one of them as a distinct person. She thought of the suffering their families would go through, the life they had begun and lost forever.

She fell onto the floor, put her claws to her face and wept helplessly.

The serpents atop her head started to thrash and squirm. Then they broke away from her head and slithered down her body. She didn't notice or care.

Fuelled by Rebecca's misery, the serpents transformed their poison sacs.

"Give them the kiss of life, girls," said one of the creatures. They crawled horrifically over the bodies.

A snake looked around, then squirmed onto a woman, bit the corpse on it's leg. Then she slithered to the next, and bit it's throat.

The venom pulsed through still arteries and veins, dissolving into dead blood and enriching it with oxygen. In the dead woman's brain, heat and smoke-damaged systems were suddenly blasted with electricity, kicked into life. Her eyes, surrounded by black except for two pink rivulets cleared by tears, fluttered and opened. The pupils sharpened, lengthened and became bordered by green irises. Her limbs twitched, and the skin became bumpy, then covered with pure red scales.

Lisa looked around wildly, and took in her first breath for thirty minutes. Pure smoke went into her lungs and back out again, useless for breathing. Yet she felt fine. She looked around and shrieked as she saw a four foot long snake squirm away. Then screamed as she looked at another scaly mass right by her shoulder. And nearly passed out when she realised that this second creature was her own right arm.

Her eyes and throat no longer stung, though it felt like a million years ago that she ever felt _anything_. She stroked her pebbly skin, noted that at least she was still human shaped. Those the snake bit shuddered and convulsed, then turned reptilian like her, stopped being corpses and started becoming people. Both friends and strangers, people who had been trapped in the lift when all power went out and smoke started to billow in.

"What the f**k!" murmured Andrews, as his words exhaled clouds of black smoke from his scaly mouth.

"We... alive?" asked someone she knew from a couple floors up, as he scratched desperately at a hide no amount of dermatitis cream would soften.

There was a sudden scrabbling as people got to their feet, and looked out with serpent eyes through darkness and smog that human sight would not penetrate. Lisa slid awkwardly up off the floor as the lift cleared, and looked down with renewed horror at the very still, very human form of her daughter, whose body she had protectively covered. Maybe the serpents, which seemed to have intentionally bitten all the corpses, hadn't seen this one.

"Snakes?" she called, hesitantly. But they had gone. Mortally confused, she looked down at her dead child. What was the point of escaping this hell if her own daughter was dead?!

Then as renewed tears sought to escape down scaly cheeks, she felt her teeth with her tongue. She now had sharp canines, with hollow tips. And fizzing venom that dripped onto her tongue. She lifted the corpse of her child, and tore it's jumper, then the shirt underneath until she could get to it's shoulder, just where her tetanus jab was made a few months ago...

Lisa walked down the steps, carrying Claire. The ground was sizzling wood and melted lino, and every step was like firewalking. Her plastic shoes had melted and charred away, but her feet stepped through glowing embers that burned the hem of her dress without injury. Her daughter looked at her, deep in thought.

"What is it, honey?" she asked hesitantly. The girl suddenly laughed, pointed to her and said, "My mum is Charmander..."

The distant inferno crackle was drowned out by Lisa's nearly hysterical laughter, sparked by her daughter but kept fed by ecstasy at being alive, and desperation about what the hell would happen next. Lisa's mad chortle nearly worried her own child into crying. Neither noticed the air start to clear, and with the introduction of breathable atmosphere into their lungs, the scales on their bodies soften and melt away, back into smooth skin.

Rebecca cried with happiness as she saw the figures escape. The creatures looked at her and shrugged, too addled to really take in the sight of yet another scaly thing. The younger ones tried picking up red hot metal and burning wood, and started to laugh and play in the roaring fire, enjoying the tickling sensation of the flames.

: Where are we going now? : asked Rebecca.

: I've taken in enough emotion power to do rescue more people. Many more... So we'll go where we'll do more good, natch. :

Rebecca didn't complain at that. Potential sleepless nights, inspired by the horror Hedonism had let her experience, had been cured by the sight of those dead faces returning to life. She was high, an over-emotional battery of energy her friend would be able to use to work more miracles. If this was the pleasure she could get by being a hero, Critter Man wasn't joking when he said it was addictive.

* * * * * * * * * *

SMASH!

...

SMASH!

Critter Man ferried terrified victim after terrified victim from the burning building to the safety of the opposite flat, supported through the air by his own velocity.

It had to happen eventually - with a SMACK, he thumped into the wall underneath the window he had been aiming for. His concussion-addled mind barely registered that by pure instinct his hand had leapt out and grabbed the windowsill, saving him and his cargo from a 22 storey fall onto concrete. His other hand clutched a man who was unsurprisingly screaming with terror, and continued to do so due to the monster's claws digging into his chest. Not all instinctive reflexes are benevolent.

Critter Man hung there for a second, then hauled himself upwards with supernatural strength. He destroyed the windowpane without even noticing and deposited the human on a handy bed.

The leap back was more straightforward. By now both buildings were regularly pocked with broken windows from the monster's remorseless leapings. He never tired out. Never.

"LL!" he cried.

His former nemesis shooed a gaggle of... humans? Lizard things? Up the stairs. They climbed enthusiastically, intent on getting to the top floor where a helicopter was flying and a rescue team were daring to stand on the roof. The lizard woman looked utterly exhausted, her limbs shaking, her body stooped, her snake hair dangling like dreadlocks.

"Those things... They looked like the corpses I passed..."

Hedonism merely nodded.

"I've rescued all those who can't make it to the top," he continued, "and everyone else is already up there."

"There's just one more... person, for you to ressscue..." wheezed the lizard woman. And flopped onto the ground before him. She had used up all her resources on returning all the humans to life.

Critter Man chuckled and pulled her onto his shoulder.

"My Hero, " said Rebecca, as Hedonism gave up trying to keep the human conscious.

Rebecca lay against the wall, back in human form, and barely able to do anything else except pant. The polluted, smoky air did wonders for Hed's depleted chemical reserves, and the relief felt by hundreds of people in the crowd as people were reunited was a virtual bath of pure emotional energy to take in. Critter Man had departed as mysteriously as he had appeared before Rebecca had come to, though such is expected of tragic, dark strangers. Maybe he'd have invited her home but he didn't want to show her how untidy his lair was.

* * * * * * * * * *

The next day, in the Daily Communicate :

"FIRES OF HELL!"

Families of the former occupants of the Kingston Tower block, destroyed in a fire yesterday, were relieved when authorities reported that no-one had died in the fire. Twenty-seven people are still in a serious condition but all are reported as stable.

Hundreds of occupants have claimed that there were 'monsters' in the flats during the fire. Eyewitnesses described seeing 'humans with scaly skin, dancing and laughing through the debris', and a 'creature with snakes for hair' picking through 'corpses'.

Some residents were found in an adjacent tower block, with physical signs of having been in the fire but no reasonable account as to how they got from one building to the other across a seventy meter gap. Psychologists say the only explanation they could get from these people was 'being carried through the air by a monster with burning fur'.

A large number of occupants, mostly those living in the center of the property where the fire started, were found alive and in perfect physical health. Some had walked to the ground floor, while the rest were rescued by helicopter from the roof. They had no memory of how they escaped from the fire, Many were nearly naked, their clothes literally reduced to ashes in the fire.

We interviewed representatives of the Church of England for their comments on the 'monsters' that had been seen, and whether these events had any biblical relevance. They gave no comment However, many .religious groups have eagerly talked about the events, describing the happenings as 'a rescue by Ssseth in female form' and 'a setup by Hell itself'.

Please see our main report on Page 7.

By Hedonism