Mara's Story

“The castform… I have to save them…” Mara tumbled out of the cot, still queasy from the effects of whatever knocked her out. She shook her head, cleared her senses, and tried to stand. She then realised that her legs were heavily bruised. It hurt to stand, needless to say.

Before she could gain her bearings, a solid iron door swung open. Humanoids in white poured in and carried her off. The sudden, fast movement knocked her senses loose once more. Once more, she was out cold.

…

“… -ay… Okay, just a little pinprick.” There was a pinprick, up there, not unlike the best place for a tranquilizer. “There’ll be no more “Aaah!” but you may feel a little sick.” The voice laughed, which suddenly began to warp and distort as the effects of the pinprick began to eat away at Mara’s mind. It wasn’t unlike a tranquilizer, but the Ranger retained cognitive awareness.

Some sort of communication was made between others, and Mara felt her arms and legs firmly groped before being lifted onto a stretcher. The previously bumpy ride now felt silky smooth due to the relaxed feeling coursing through her body. Mara’s vision blurred greatly, but she did recognize the padded cell where she was eventually unloaded. It was a different cell entirely, of course, but she couldn’t tell the difference between the waiting room and her new home for the next little while.

“I think I could get used to this,” she slurred. The floor was soft, and for once, did not smell like bleach. She, however, didn’t know that the padding was all simply replaced because of the last experiment. A few days ago, the cell was slashed up by a mutation that resulted in razor-sharp claws, and a blind madness that resulted in accidental self-destruction. Not the move, obviously, but wild flailing of huge claws would eventually make the last mark.

Her timing on saying what she said could not have been timed any closer to perfect, for the first sensation she felt was distant pain as each of her hair stalks was pushed out from their sockets. She couldn’t tell it was her hair, though. It felt less like actual pain and more like some kind of unbearable tickling. She laughed, and continued to laugh. She could not stop laughing. It was fortunate the doctors stressed no fluids before the operation.



A whole lot of bleach went into cleaning this particular room, Walter could definitely tell. He remembered using only a small amount added into the ordinary mop water to sterilize the gym, and that stench overpowered the citrus scent of the mop water itself. This place smelled far more rank than any cleaning job ever done to the gym.

He sat on a reinforced metal chair, designed with padding so that no prisoner could use it against the door or the guards. In front of him, on a metal slab attached to the wall on the other side, was a bowl full of cheap, dry noodles with nothing on them. No water was provided, which the ace trainer found unusual.

A girl’s drunken-sounding laughter filled the corridors as Walter succumbed to his hunger and began to eat the gruelling mess that was the provided food. Was the laughter taunting him? Was this place taunting him? The iron door looked puny enough for the old family Machoke to easily punch through… But Machoke was gone. It’s been gone for years, and Walter’s own pokemon were gone. He knew not where they went. He knew not where he was. He was strong, but never could be strong enough to match a pokemon’s raw power.

The laughter continued to carry through... only suddenly it was accompanied by other voices. Scared-sounding voices. Walter returned with his own greeting. "Hello? Anyone out there?"

Before Walter could say anything to any others, a woman crossed down the corridors. A woman whose feet clamped with a wooden sound as they planted against the corridor tile. Adorned on her head appeared to be… antlers… Walter found the antlers oddly familiar, but he could not place where he had seen them before. The woman called to the other cells as well as Walter’s own. “Please refrain from escape attempts,” the words were spoken as if this were an everyday warning, “Professor Redwood would not be pleased, and I will have to stop you.”

The distant laughing had still yet to cease.

All of a sudden, a set of keys rattled outside his cell. The click rang across the solid cinder block walls of the tiny chamber, as well as Walter’s ears. The heavy iron door swung open. Walter glanced up. There she stood in the doorway… Wait, no. Walter couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. They were dressed entirely in white, with face-covering sterile masks, hoods, and goggles.

With a snap of their fingers, the first one summoned forth a group of four more. Walter was a fit trainer, but even he could not fight back against four older people of at least equal strength. His arms were strapped firmly, and he found himself being dragged between two of the strangers. Through the corridor, two pulled Walter along, with two walking close behind, and the apparent leader up ahead by a few paces- well out of Walter’s reach.

The laughter grew in volume as Walter passed a cell. He caught a single glimpse through a barred, plexiglass window. A young woman lay on the ground, losing her lovely black hair at a ferocious pace. Her gaping, grinning mouth indicated that she was the source of the insane laughter.

Walter’s thoughts immediately went to his Gym leader, Flannery. Was she here as well? Were any of the others here as well? He didn’t want to think about it, but the thoughts flooded his mind regardless. He was the only one to slip and drop several ledges from the mountain… But he couldn’t have slipped. The ground he stood on was solid while he was taking that picture…

His train of thought came to a crashing halt as he was thrown onto an operating table. Then he knew exactly what happened with the laughing girl… Something… something that involved this table… something that will now happen to him. Walter screamed and squirmed in defiance, but his mouth was quickly gagged with a thick cloth. Everything else was strapped down tight. He rattled in futility against the far tougher bonds, before finally tiring out and inadvertently allowing a person in white to roll back his track suit sleeve and extracting a sample of Walter’s own blood. The needle- thank goodness- looked and felt sterile; Walter didn’t even feel a thing. "Sample 121, P. Walter," one voice commented before a pen scribbled on an unseen notepad. "DNA extraction successful, transporting sample to test labs."

Soon afterwards, the doctors turned him over. His face wedged into a horseshoe-shaped pillow, forcing him to constantly stare at the clean, white tile floor. From the edges of the pillow, he saw white boots take steps around him. The laughter, though muffled by the operating room doors, still echoed throughout the complex. Walter shut his eyes and wept. He wanted to get out. He wanted to find out who else was in here, and get them out too.

Time passed for what felt like hours. Walter finally drained his tears long ago, and was about to wonder if they had left him for dead when some footsteps returned. “You got another lyric for us, man?” One asked very casually with a laugh, as though these same individuals were chatting it up around a water cooler.

“Lemme think,” the second voice replied. After a long pause, he added, “I did that really good one for J. Mara... Ah, I know! All in all it’s just another brick in the Wal.”

This resulted in a great eruption of laughter from several others. “Haha! Very fitting!” A third scientist replied as the source of the second voice plunged an equally silky-smooth needle into Walter’s neck.

—

Walter was left in a padded cell. He felt only a little sick, but his vision was not blurry. He felt sort of relaxed. The long time on the operating table was unusually tiring, so the young man remained lying there on the comfortable padded floor for a long while. The laughter was closer, and still had yet to cease. Strangely enough, Walter felt only relaxed by the laughter.

The relaxed feeling seemed to grow at an unusual rate. Soon enough, he realised that he was going numb all over. With all his will, he raised his left arm, and saw said arm crumbling away as if made entirely out of sand. The sand swirled and pulsed at his heartbeat- which spiked in utter panic. Walter swore. With the sudden surge of adrenaline, he forced himself to sit up. Once up there, he saw that his right arm and both his legs were dissolving into the sand-like substance as well.

He tried to scream, but he felt his neck go numb as well. His head seemed to naturally drop forward, and he saw that the rest of his body was dissolving. He could not scream. He could not do anything. He was too numb to even breathe.

Despite the horror, he still held onto the notion of getting out. In fact, the most unusual part about all this was that despite being numb, he could still feel he had his appendages. As his head dropped to the floor to splash in the small puddle of sand, he willed something- anything to move. His one uncovered eye watched as a patch of sand began to move of it’s own accord, and lift off the ground. The collection of sand formed what looked to be some kind of pathetic excuse for a gaseous hand.

Walter finally gave up at that point. He was too numb. He couldn’t feel anything, not even fatigue. His uncovered eye wandered around the limited field of vision, between the crumbling skin around him and the tiny dunes of what his body became.

"Help!" he tried to squeeze out between his dry, numb throat. There was no air to push, though. He didn't imagine anyone could hear.

People could hear, though. Walter did not know that he technically functioned normally.

As Kyle sat in his cell he saw someone's arm bend around the corner of his cell. The man in the cell next to his introduced himself as Alexander Ashfist, and assured him that they would get out of this place, and that there was no reason to worry. It actually helped somewhat, he was confident that they would make it out of here somehow. Kyle resolved to try, and calm down, trying not to let his fear get the best of him. Kyle with a smile took the hand, and shook it. "I'm sure you're right. Gotta be optimistic in times like this, right?" There was no point in being doubtful about escaping, he just had to do his best to keep a clear head, and eventually he would find a way out. He'd be sure to come back for the others, and help them escape as well.

He watched through the bars of his cell, there was a mysterious girl, with a large sheet over her head carrying something large on her head, walking around the cells. She didn't seem to be the one in charge, but it was certainly her job to keep them from leaving. The girl known as Desiree seemed to try, and unlock her cell regardless, and Alexander seemed convinced they were here to be some kind of test subjects. The thought of being some kind of lab rat was not a pleasant one. Many of the others were taken, and undoubtedly had something happen to them. Kyle held out hope that he would escape before something happened to him as well.

Despite the strange girl paroling the cells Desiree still tried to escape making a run for it as soon as they came for her. She ran past his cell, and though he couldn't see much else, it was obvious that she failed, as he heard the sound of a dragging body. This was not good, there was no way out at this point, and trying to escape would bring nothing good. He let out a sigh. Escape it seems would take much longer than he thought it would.

Soon four men walked up to his cell, and unlocked the door. They walked towards him, clearly intending to take him somewhere. Kyle backed up somewhat, and threw his hands in the air as a gesture of surrender.[color=orange]"Well there's obviously no way out of here, and there's no point n resisting. I'll cooperate." the men looked towards the strange girl apparently looking for confirmation. They forcefully pulled Kyle out of the cell but instead of forcefully dragging him to wherever he was gonna go they allowed him to walk upright. Kyle breathed a sigh of relief, despite the circumstances he was just glad to be out of that horribly small cell. Two men positioned behind him, two in front to prevent him from escaping. They began to lead him to their destination, Kyle walking behind them. As he walked he saw inside some of the cells. Some were normal people, stuck against their will but otherwise unharmed. However other cells contained something less than human. They resembled Pokemon, one looking sort of like a Tangela, the other resembling a Ghastly, though they almost looked human in some ways. Whatever was going on here was not going to be good.

Soon they entered a room, in the center stood an operating table, and beside that stood some doctor, or researcher type people. At this point the guards had ceased being gentle, and forced him down on the table, forcefully strapping him down. An old doctor walked up to him with a needle, and a smile. "Good to see you've been cooperative. This shouldn't take long." Before Kyle could say anything the man plunged a needle into his vein, extracting his blood, then left the area. After what seemed like an agonizingly long time the man returned, and injected him with some kind of chemical. The needle itself didn't hurt, though shortly after he began to feel pain spread throughout his body, there was a pain starting in his head. He barely noticed when they took him off the table, and started carrying him back towards the cells. He grunted in pain as they carried him, throwing him in a new padded cell. Fortunately before he could panic about being back in such a small space he passed out.

She looked over and out the bars, her voice getting scratchy from not having enough water. There were many others, and her brain was confused, so confused with all this information. Nola let out a scream when her tail bone retched almost out of her skin- like she was getting a tail. Not to mention her hair was slowly turning a very light grey, and growing non-stop. Nola took a close look at the others, trying to keep her mind off of her pain.

One was a girl who stood out the most- mostly because she just tried to escape her cell, and a very- beautiful woman with horns, held her still, and forcefully placed the girl in her cage. Nola shudder, wondering why she thought of a cage. Another girl looked like a Tangela, with beautiful long black locks. Another one closely resembled a Ghastly, and she shuddered. Two guys in the prisons beside her were talking- probably introducing themselves, when one of them got taken away. Another girl got clothes from hat horned woman, and Nola sighed.

She was honestly getting bored, and hungry.. and her tail bone kept growing every five minutes. Nola curled up on the ground and whimpered, trying to fall asleep, but not doing so well. Her thoughts trailed back to her family, then the people here, and then she actually fell asleep. Nola was soon sleeping in her bed at home, with Wendy on the bed beside her, and her maids coming in and placing tea beside her, but when she woke up and tried getting out of her bed, she had woken up from her dream and yelped in pain, when her tail burst her skin open, and a stub of a tail was appearing.

Nola tied her hair up with a hair tie she had on her wrist, because her hair kept falling in her face. Soon she saw the antler woman approaching her with food and clothes. As she got closer, Nola examined her, she was so beautiful, her skin was pale, with literally no defects, and she had beautiful long white hair. Nola shook the thoughts out of her head, when the woman gave her the clothes, then the food, which Nola drank the water right away. She stared at the clothes and wondered how she'd get changed with privacy. She had soon grabbed her jacket and tied to the bars, and changed in behind that, only her legs showing, and her head.

Soon she was in the clothes, and realized it came with glasses too. She placed the glasses on the top of her head, and stared down at her clothes. She was only wearing a bandeau for a top, which she thought was too revealing for herself, and threw her jacket on. She had shorts on that puffed out at the bottom, and had sash on it, with a butterfly pin. She looked at the last piece of clothing and saw it was a scarf, a very long scarf. She shrugged and put it on. She then stared at her food and gobbled it all down.

She looked at her pants a second time, and saw there was a hole for her tail, which was still growing and almost the size of small twig, it was also growing white fur on it, which- thank god- didn't hurt. As for her hair, it was still growing, and Nola sighed.

WALTER

The faint ringing signified a complete lack of sound. Much like standing in a closed sound booth, Walter felt completely isolated. He finally closed his eye, unsure of what he could possibly do at this point. He couldn’t feel his body, and his mind was incredibly fuzzy. He couldn’t even work up the nerve to panic at the fact that his entire body disintegrated. From there, he felt a rumbling under what was left of his skin, like a thousand particles of sand washing through the inside at a haphazard pace. He still could not move. Beyond the uncomfortable writhing, he experienced nothing.

Finally, his eye shot back open. A sense of hearing was coming back to him, only it was flooded by this… nightmarish sizzling. The sound of an egg cooking over an open fire combined with the screams of the damned. His single, uncovered eye snapped to every available field of vision he could view. His head still remained resting on his face at a slight angle, amidst a pool of some sort of sandy substance.

Only the sand was no longer the tan of his skin. The writhing he now felt appeared to show itself in the sand itself. Warping like light through half-melted stained glass, or like gasoline in a puddle, he saw the skin-coloured sand twist into a disgusting purple.

Walter reached… Or rather, he felt himself reaching, using the memory of when he had arms mere moments ago. Surprisingly, the hand made of sand reformed itself, only this time, it felt… felt… more solid. It felt nothing like the lumpy, sagging hand he had summoned before. As he tried to summon a second hand, the sizzling, shrieking noise intensified in Walter’s ears. The writhing, uncomfortable feeling began to grow hot, even blisteringly painful.

Walter cringed in pain, and felt his head roll. A wave of the slowly purpling sand followed his head’s movement, only to sag back to the ground once his head came to a stop. This time, he was facing the ceiling. From this vantage point, he could see a girl. Like the one he saw before, this one was losing her hair at an alarming rate. Unlike the first one, this one appeared to be bleeding from the scalp.

She was by her door, looking through the bars. Her mouth was moving, but the sizzling made it difficult to hear. Walter, fortunately, managed to read her lips and her strain at breathing out. She was saying, “Hey.”

Oddly enough, the greeting seemed to comfort Walter somewhat. The burning sensation seemed to lighten somewhat. Especially when the previous girl’s laughter still echoed through the corridors. The laughter- thank goodness- actually seemed to show signs of dying down, however.

“Hey-HURK,” Walter could hear himself now. His voice functioned properly, but something about the voice terrified him. It was a voice that should not exist. An eldritch cough, followed by more coughs. Walter felt more of the tan-purple sand pour out of the corners of his mouth. He watched as sand of the deepest purple seemed to float in the air and swirl around close by. The burning feeling returned in full force, forcing Walter to clench his eyes shut.

MARA

Finally, after a grueling, unbearably long time, the tickling had finally stopped. Mara thanked the stars she never wet herself laughing, as disgusting and humiliating that would have been.

It was then that she finally managed to pry her eyes open, only to see absolute darkness. She could barely move. All around her, she could feel things that were firm, yet flexible, like the fresh, smooth bark of a sapling. As she touched them, the “roots” squirmed in delight. What was more surprising was that she felt the delight of the “roots” experiencing contact. She squeezed her hands up to her face, feeling more and more of these “roots”.

Part of her wondered if she had been buried alive after that tickling injection. Did her usefulness end that soon? Was she buried alive? The mere thought made her panic… and the “roots” shivered in-sync with the panic. The “roots” began to move away from Mara’s body, allowing the dim light of the padded cell to pour in.

The roots were not roots, but vines. Pale turquoise vines with the finest of details that would be missed entirely unless examined closely. The vines swung away as Mara swung her arms forward. She felt padded walls with more fingers than she knew she ever had. This time, she was confused. What was registering feeling to her brain all of a sudden? She was lying on the floor in the middle of the padded cell. Her legs never moved once, and her arms were the only other things the moved… So how did she feel the walls?

The realization dawned upon her like a punch to the gut. She looked at the vines being suspended in the air in horror. Her hands shot up to her head to feel the roots of the vines originating beneath her skin.

Instead of laughter, the corridors were filled with screams. As a Ranger, Mara enjoyed exploring the Northern areas, where the climates were temperate, dry, and cold.

These disgusting vines were tropical… Mara hated the tropics with a passion.

Liquid fire, liquid fire, it burns me inside and out.

i breathe, but i can’t feel. i hear but i can’t think

“…could still… out of here but I… would be… this point... east we… food.”

drums… drums… food... need food... but the liquid fire… it won’t stop…

why didn’t the laughing stop, when the very walls weep around me?

the walls weep, and in their tears, i see things, they show… green fields… rivers… hope.

we must get out of here

i need this hope. the burning won’t stop.

Heavy gasses lingered around the pile of purpling sand. Evaporation continued. The gas was odourless, but poisonous. A lab technician quickly, yet nonchalantly covered the padded cell window with some sort of membrane. The lighter gasses neared the window, but did not pass through to the other cells.

“Genetic reaction faster than simulations,” the technician made a note in a small recorder as he stepped calmly back down the corridors. “Though very good news, P. Walter almost contaminated other subject cells. Membrane has been applied, but a more suitable cell is recommended.”



Mara slowly, but surely pushed herself to her feet. Her head felt incredibly heavy, as it was the source of the hundreds of tendrils that curled around her. The tendrils even helped her up by pressing against the floor. These horrible vines… helping? Mara couldn’t even stomach the idea. These were the type of vines that contracted diseases, and choked the life out of all other things. It was a damned weed, seeping the strength of others.

There was no way she could tolerate these horrible things- a similar species to one that had nearly-

Footsteps rang in the corridor… incoming footsteps. Mara’s brain clicked, and she suddenly became unusually tolerant of the horrible vines. Pushing her arm out, Mara willed a goal into the centre of her thought process. Several vines shot out through the small openings between the bars of the tiny window.

“What the-“ the technician spat before he found his neck being squeezed by a set of vines- as many vines that could fit through. Mara felt the figure being pushed against the opposite wall, and subsequently lifted an inch higher.

Yes! Mara grinned. This technician had to have some sort of key, or at the very least, she could lure a guard along to take their key with her vines. It was a perfect pla-

Mara shrieked in agony as a burning sensation flooded the vines. Being fresh, the vines were incredibly sensitive- especially to the fire provided by the lab technician’s lighter.

The lab technician, in a desperate bid for survival, grabbed his lighter and lit it up under the vines at the window. Two of the tendrils even caught fire. Immediately, all of the tendrils shot back inside to put out the tiny, yet deadly flames, and also protect the rest of their body… or host… The technician knelt down to catch his breath.

“Fuck me sideways, that was close,” the technician gasped for breath as he quickly worked up the strength to get the hell away from the padded cells. He glanced at the lighter that saved him, “Damn, It’s a good thing I smoke,” he muttered hoarsely to the recorder with a pained chuckle. “Subject J. Mara: Transformation grants her abilities- Extremely dangerous to friends and co-workers. Must relocate to a more suitable cell ASAP. Until then, avoid Subject J. Mara.

The technician rushed off- now with almost an emergency to report. Mara, on the other hand, was putting her arms over her face as the vines whipped, spun, twirled, and slashed rapidly. The vines slapped and slashed at the cushioning of the padded cell walls in an attempt to get rid of the small fire that had since grown into a not-so-small fire.

It was hardly a fire Mara herself couldn’t handle, given her Ranger training, but she was not herself. She was utterly paralyzed at the sight of the vines slashing everywhere, with a mind of their own. They did not harm her, but they did not stop flailing.

EEVEE: lands the finale blow on a Pikachu girl. she looks around at of the room to see if any are dead but they all were alive she sighing and turns into her normal Eevee form. Emily: "huh? what happened?" Dr. Red: "you won now please go back to your cell" Emily dose as told