Leela Brown and the Mutant Apocalypse. A tale of survival, multidimensional romance, transformation and the puppies of war.
By H'eidi Knight
Part Three
Hail most gentle and lovely readers,
Welcome back to another slice of the adventures of beautiful transgender heroine Leela Brown and her journey in time and space. Backward and forwards from 1999 to 2999 and all stops in between. If you have hung with us through the last lust filled 70 thousand words you should be ready for part three.
If you are new to this semi-autobiographical time travel story, the year is now 2014. To celebrate Sarah and Heidi's anniversary Heidi decides to write a spoof, but honest holiday romance version of their original meeting. The book begins to take on a life of it's own, becoming more and more frank and less and less earnest, as Lee becomes Leela and Leela becomes Heidi.
In spite of the main characters not actually having sex, the Nifty erotic archive still continues to post the chunks of 'The Thoughts of Chairwoman Heidi" on their web site. Thankfully most readers continue with us on the journey. Even risking chunks of 16 year old Leela's Kafka-like epic of mutants and ghostly transgender romance... mixed with her continuing un-stressful journey to discovering what it is to live as a girl.
As you join us, Leela is on day three of her week apart from Sarah. She has snoozed, tried on a lot of clothes, had her make up done by a wonderful shop owner, eaten a cheese sandwich and had impure and improper thoughts about Latin heart throb Antonio Banderas. If this is the kind of breakneck passionate adventure you crave, leap onboard the Mutant Apocalypse Express ... here we go ...
Additional Note: As I began to write today's section I was NOT intending to add a certain event into the narrative. It wasn't nice thing and I wasn't ever going to be talk about. I did decide to leave it in, though I don't want anyone to get upset about it. It happened and I'm fine and with the distance of 15 years and 4 months, it is even something you can laugh about. My apologies if it torpedoes the tale a little. If you want, read the family games night, then scroll down to where I cheerfully shout HELLO!!!!! .. it will be safe to return to reading. I might even thrown in a distractingly passionate love scene.
Monday family night turned out to be surprisingly fun. After having a huge meal in a harbour front eating place in Padstow we traveled back across Cornwall to Pentewan and our caravan. Nobody felt like an evening meal or watching me sweeping around the caravan in the various items Mum had bought me in Padstow.
Some ancient board games appeared from storage and the annual game of hunt for dice began. The frustration of trying to find at least one six sided die in any of the boxes. It happens every holiday and we never remember once we are home to buy some dice and put them in the caravan for the following year's vacation.
We finally gave in and I fetched a ten sided die from my bag. As a dedicated Vampire roleplayer, I don't travel anywhere without my black 10 sided dice (numbers in vivid red, naturally!) ...after all I don't know if I am going to meet another player and we might need to decide whose cape might be darker or whose gaze is the most brooding and erotic.
We give a few games a try, but everyone is cheating like crazy. Ryan becomes unhappy if he doesn't win. I become unhappy if Mum and Dad give in and let him win, feeling sure they never did that to me when I was 11 (They did .. bless them!) Dad becomes unhappy when people invent new rules without passing them by him. Ryan's timewarp rule in Cluedo, which lets him sneak a look at the solution and then carry on playing as if he hasn't, is especially unpopular. Mum becomes unhappy when we all stop being happy .. which is just her.
It was cooler on Monday night, so I had pulled on a nightdress and fleece before taking my towel and walking down to the shower block. I have my hair tied up in a haphazard fashion, reluctant to surrender the braids and black ribbons the lady in Padstow wove into it. I've got my white leather shoulder back filled with wipes, soap, shower gel and some writing paper. I intend to sit in the quiet of the shower block and enjoy the free electric light (push the button ever 10 minutes) to write today's bit of the Mutant Apocalypse.
"Hello!!" comes the voice I'd misplaced in the 'Embarrassment Corner' of my mind. Dave is a guy who tried to chat me up last week. I've not seen him since I confessed to him I'd got a girlfriend and everything got a bit awkward. I reluctantly smile and wave as he comes loping up to speak to me. "Hi, Dave!" I say, wondering what this is about.
"How is your week going?" he asks, catching his breath. He really is out of condition for teenager, unless he has run all the way from Lands End and I'm being a little unkind.
"Brilliant." I lie. Why am I lying? I don't lie at all well, I hate it and it just makes me utterly miserable.
"Ace!" he says. Who says 'ace' anymore? I realise that I don't want to share how I am missing Sarah with this person I barely know. It is my business and my pain. He might see the absence of my girlfriend as an opportunity to try and save me from being a lesbian. It is like he has mental powers for the next sentence from him is ...
"How is your girlfriend?" Merciful mother of the Divine Abraxas and the Great Invisible Spirit! He knows! He probably watched her leave on Saturday and has been waiting to pounce on me ever since. Completely against my will I feel my eyes begin to fill up.
"She has had to go home." I say, curse me for my reflexive truth telling. The swine puts a hand on my shoulder to comfort me. I'm too polite to say or do anything, so I let him.
"Oh no, that is really bad!" He says with such fake sincerity I nearly begin to hysterically laugh. In his head I'm probably already gasping in ecstasy under his pumping body, thanking him for showing me what a real man can do for me. I am about to tell myself I'm being too harsh and judgmental on him, when he slides his hand along my shoulders and tries to pull me in for a hug.
"What the fuck!" I say without sounding the words out. I dip my head forward because I sense he might try and kiss me. Indeed he plants a kiss into my hair.
"Don't worry, it will be okay." He says. I am drawn closer into his embrace. I turn slightly to the side to avoid a front to front encounter and his groin connects to my thigh. He is turned on, the bastard has a big lazy bulge in his pants and it bumps into me. I wonder if this has been an accident, it was me that moved and maybe he didn't mean to rub his chubby up against me. He slips a hand under my chin and tries to lift my head. I can hear him mumbling "You are so beautiful .." and I know he is going in for a kiss.
"I don't want this!" I say, still not capable of being rude and just telling him to fuck off. He destroys my 'maybe it was an accidental chubby encounter' by pushing his crotch into my thigh and holding it there. He is letting me know he is aroused and how much.
"God, you are so beautiful!" he says. "You turn me on so much." I swear I can feel him getting harder. He slips a hand down my back to my bum and pulls me against him. It is getting frightening now. He is much much bigger than me and well built. He could force himself on me, then, when he discovers I'm not the girl he thought I was, probably slap me.
"I don't like boys!" I say, a little louder than my 'what the fuck' ... maybe he heard that tiny whisper as 'wow, lets fuck' ...but If I sent my Latin Lover to wank himself off alone, I am not going to go down on this idiot.
"Have you ever been with a boy?" he asks, still insistently rubbing his arousal onto my thigh. I know if I lie and say no, he will insist on proving what caring and sensitive lovers they can be. If I say yes, I wanked one off once, he will take that as encouragement and a promise to wank him off.
I feel trapped in more ways than one. I want Claire or Sarah to appear in my head and tell me what to do. Claire would probably have snapped his spine by now or got him in a wristlock. Sarah would have destroyed him with a devastating put down or a movie quote that sliced his manhood off with its satirical appropriateness.
I'm beginning to tremble and fear he might read this as arousal .. that I am shivering in passion. I find my mind is blank with nothing inside it. From somewhere inside me I find courage. The memories of all of Sarah's wonderful religious curses and utterances. The appeals to holy mothers of Greek and Babylonian gods. Sarah is a complete atheist, but she adores the concept of the female divine. That any masculine god who strides around the heavens with his giant cosmic penis flapping about, first had a female creator. The Female divine. I can't remember a single bloody female deity to appeal to though. Then I have it ...
"By the Holy Mother of the Great Fucking Cthulhu," I say, "Let me the fuck alone!" I look up at him and pull backwards from his embrace.
"I was only trying to be nice!" he protested.
"Tell that to my other thigh!" I wish I had the foresight to say. Instead I give him a sour look and stride off into the shower block.
"This is the ladies, don't fucking follow me in here!" I shout after him, discovering that adrenalin and fear make me into a real potty mouth. He is walking away though. Heading back to some dismal caravan or tent. I've four days left in this miserable place, I can't wait for them to pass.
Note: This was the last I ever saw of him. It gives me satisfaction to imagine he may have spotted me coming several times in the following week and dived into hiding rather than piss me off again .. who knows!
HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (All the jerks, may time have withered their manhoods, have departed. It is safe to return!)
The shower block was warm and steam filled. I had obviously just missed a number of other shower users by mere minutes. To lift my spirits I imagined them showering together. Much in the way Sarah and I had subverted the hygiene goal of the shower to explore numerous other possibilities that hot water inspires in the minds of the passionate. Hands touching under the flow of water. Slippery soap covered bodies rubbing against each other. Becoming bolder. That is better, I'm feeing nicely disconnected from what has just happened.
I put my bags on the wooden bench and slide the 50p into the machine. Time to take back this night for feminine sexuality. I undress and move under the stream of powerful hot water. I haven't got a shower cap, and anyway, no cap could contain the hair that Sarah describes as a riot of curls on a Pre-Raphaelite Muse. I scrub my face and then let the water rinse it off. My hair gets a little damp, mostly from the steam, but I keep the braids in place. I raise my hands to my breasts, then laugh, suddenly realising I don't have them. How strange, I've been with breasts all day, everyday for nearly a week now. Sleeping sometimes with my bra filled with Sarah's socks. My body image has got used to having this modest, but very real frontage. Now without them, I realise that frontage has internalised. I actually feel naked without them there.
"Goddess, give me something sweet and appealing!" I ask the future, rub my nipples and sigh. The route to getting female hormones isn't an easy one. Sarah has told me of the assessments and the hoops she had to jump through to get treatment. It was worth it though. I remember just six days ago, seeing her pull down her leotard and seeing them for the first time. I didn't know my body was just like that. Just needing the right chemical signal to grow natural breasts. A week ago Sarah was fantasizing about my future breasts and I was uncomfortable and unsure. Now I knew I wanted them with a passion. I wanted low cut tops that gave Sarah a glimpse of my cleavage. I wanted her hands on them, to lie back and surrender to her mouth teasing me. Sarah was a natural tease. Both in and out of the bedroom. She seemed to take joy in her role of leader, the more clever of us both. She loved the subtle, but kindly, teasing of my sexual response.
And me? I loved being teased. I naturally submitted to it and adored the attention and erotic charge it gave me. The night we had played out the fantasy of me giving Sarah a baby, cumming inside her as she quite deliberately made me promise not to, then waiting until the very moment of no-return to make me. It was gorgeous control, but kindly and loving. I adored giving her that mastery over me.
I longed to play that scenario in the reverse. Pretending my hand was the eager passage waiting for her. That I was fertile and ready for her seed to squirt inside me. I wouldn't try the trick of making her promise not to cum inside me ... I would have done that last week, but I understand now that Sarah wouldn't have liked me to just copy her fantasy. That was just for me, perfectly judged for my needs and my passive longing to be controlled. No, I need something that will appeal to her.
"I've checked the calendar," I say to the warm shower room. "It is my fertile time .." I stroke a fingertip across my flat stomach.
"Do you want to try again?" Sarah says in my mind. I nod and cross to the wooden bench. I put a towel along the hard wooden slats, then lie down with my head on my shoulder bag. I open my legs and gesture for her to come to me. By the time she walked across the room the anticipation of being inside me has made her hard. She kneels down to begin to lick at me, but I gently pull her up to kiss me instead.
"I love you." She says. "I want this to be special for you."
"Then delay your orgasm until I've cum ... but be inside me to make me cum." I ask. Instead of just making a tube with my hand to accept her erection, I hold my own erection, slippery and wet from the shower in my hand. She will need to enter me, pushing herself along my length. Thrusting and stimulating me with just the movement of her beautiful penis. I will be lying there passive, accepting her, letting my orgasm build slowly. She will be desperately thrusting and trying to keep her orgasm at bay. It is a challenge I know she will love.
"You don't think I can do it, do you?" Sarah says. I forget that internal Sarah is a mind reader. She shares my brain, so knows all the rubbish I'm thinking. I laugh.
"You don't stand a chance!" I answer. "I am going to use all my womanly wiles on you to make you cum early." I squirm my hips and let out a sigh. I imagine feeling her at my sex. Pushing gently against my arousal. I let her slide inside without a single protest.
"You are going to cum!" she promises.
"Without a doubt, but I will cum into the beautiful sticky pool of your gift to me!" I promise her right back.
"Not going to happen!" She leans forward and kisses my breasts. Her tongue sliding from one nipple to the other. Planting little kisses across me.
"Hey, not fair!" I say, shuddering in pleasure. Damn her, she has followed my thoughts about my breast longing. Now she is playing on my delights and anticipations. All the while she pushes firmly, but slowly in and out of me. Letting the head of her penis slide almost clear of me, then squeezing forwards until she fills me completely.
"I am going to make you cum by just playing with your breasts .." she says.
"That is impossible!" I gasp untruthfully.
"You know I can do it!" Her mouth dips down to my budding breasts. Her hair spills forward and rubs across them. Her penis never stops moving. Pushing along my length. I feel myself start to tingle delightfully. A warm glow that spreads out from my nipples and down to my groin. I know I am going to fail, she knows I am going to fail ... it has all been a love game of pretence and delight. I can't help trying one more time.
"Make me with child!" I beg her.
"I would, if I could." she wistfully says, still in control.
"Tell me the future!" I plead, feeling a muscle deep twitch in my groin. I am close.
"Three years from now, we visit here again. Just the two of us. We find the old shower block and share a few old memories."
"I hoped so .." I close my eyes and let her own me.
"You have beautiful breasts then." I shiver at the thought. "You kneel before me in the hot water and ask me to do something you've never requested before." I know what it is, I want to turn a horrible thought into something touching and personal.
"I want you to cum on my breasts ... lovingly and adoringly. I want to gaze up into your eyes and watch you pleasure yourself, watch you reach the point of loosing control and feel the warmth and softness of your gift." I tell her, but she already knows.
I cry out imagining the feeling of her cumming across me. My hips twist and I'm filling my hand with tiny pulses of pleasure. I can feel it pattering across my tummy, slipping over the edge of my hips and running down onto the towel. I let out an animalistic, shamanistic howl of divine female power. Calling down blessings from the Moon Goddess to seal my future.
As my orgasm rises and falls I know I feel Sarah still moving, still clinging on through my pleasure. She grins a smile of victory and self control.
"Love me, be with me." I ask, honestly and openly. Such candor is her undoing, I feel her surrender inside me.
Tuesday
My love. Did you know that the human fetus begins as a female? Male or female later on, when the soup of hormones kick in. We all have gills as well, for a while. I wonder if some future point in our development it will become possible for the whole human race to joyfully become a species solely made up of female aquatic creatures. Now you are going to tell me someone has already written a science fiction series just on that topic, aren't you? Tuesday today. Named by the Norse for their god Tyr. I think I will always love Tuesdays, the day the fates pushed you into a swimsuit/tights and made you think masturbating in the woods was a great idea. (Don't leave this note around for your parents to read.) More things to love sharing with you. Stephen Hawking's American Accent. Gormenghast Castle .. in spring time. Strawberry Milkshake during thunderstorms Watching you sleep. Line Drawings in the Good News Bible. Old Black and White Miss Marple movies with Margaret Rutherford. Hunting Snarks together! Dorothy Parker. The Art of the Hildebrant Brothers.
I know by now I will be missing you rather excessively. I just left you 15 minutes ago, fast asleep and beautiful in your dreamland. Already, as I lie here writing you this note, I am missing you with a heart sick feeling like a lump in my stomach. Heaven help me by Tuesday!
Lets not do this separation stuff again. It isn't good. xxx
A week. At lunchtime today I will have known her just a week. Four of those days she was actually in my life. Four days just living in my mind, in her notes and in the novel I'm writing. The novel has begun to scare me just a little.
Writing is a weird process. This is something I've discovered over the last week. You think the writer is in a driving seat position, the vehicle being his/her ability for words onto paper, the novel is the result. It makes sense and looks simple, especially on paper. However, there is something odd happening that I've not quite got my head around yet. You begin writing and the control you think you have over the flow/direction of the story doesn't happen. Characters take on a life of their own. Events seem to arrive that you didn't plan and suddenly they are happening to the characters. The process is fraught with an undercurrent that almost seems beyond my control. I have no way of knowing if this is normal, or this is happening because I'm inexperienced as a writer and just need to practice getting the story from my brain and onto paper ...ignoring the undercurrents and being more assertive with bossing my characters around.
Right, I resolve to try it again. I'm not going to be a wuss and the story is going to happen how I want it to unfold.
"This is insane!" My ghostly Sarah screamed. Her words didn't carry across to ears of the Examiner however. He continued to prowl around the bed with his clipboard and pen.
"Sarah, please!" Leela begged, "Activate the Reality Bridge again. Suck me out of this place .. anywhere has to be better than this!"
"I don't have control over it, neither of us do." Sarah beat her hands against the Examiner, but the man's body might have been a wall of rock. The face of a mountain, frozen by the elements, a dense cooled soup of rock that is beyond any mortal manipulation.
"That is the second time you have addressed to this Sarah entity, yet I see no evidence of a presence of another here." The Examiner gestured with his writing stylus. "Are you talking to spirits and demons?"
"Yes, yes I am!" Leela confessed. "I am quite obviously possessed and need immediate transfer to the psychological department!"
"I am the head of the psychological department." The tall man announced. He gestured exactly to the centre of his chest with the stylus. "Doctor Ebeneezer Malfeasance."
"Isn't there somewhere else I quite obviously need to be transferred to, Doctor Malfeasance?" Leela questioned.
"I think you are precisely where you need to be." he stated.
"This one is a keeper!" Sarah broke off her assault and stalked around the bed. She thought furiously. "Ah, have him turn his back on you .. and then hold up a number of fingers. I will tell you how many he is holding up!"
"I can prove I am in league with spiritual forces ... and not a case for the Psychological Department." Leela announced boldly. "Most interesting delusion, but I am not prepared to collude with your fantasies." Dr Malfeasance said.
"Turn your back on me, hold up some fingers and I will tell you how many!" Leela said. "Go on, indulge me just once!"
"Very well." He swung around with a precision that suggested practice in making dramatic exits from troubling conversations. Three delicate vinyl sheathed fingers were held up, then he reached a decision and lowered one finger. Sarah told Leela in exact detail.
"You held up three, then changed your mind and lowered one. So two fingers." she said. "Transport me to the Department for the Spiritually Possessed or whatever!"
"I am the head of that department as well!" he grandly announced, turning his head to regard her.
"No fucking way!" Sarah said. "I think he is the only person working here!" She squinted a look at the assessment form. Three other options were listed on the paper. Transfer to Department for Social Adjustment, transfer to the Department for Mutation and Experimentation, transfer to the Department for Elimination. Sarah sadly related the options to Leela.
"Are you also the head of Social Adjustment, Mutation & Experimentation and the department for Elimination?" she asked.
"Alas, no." He said sadly. "But I am being impressed by your ability to read my form!"
"I could have just been through this system before." Leela suggested.
"Hardly likely, we'd have you listed and a file prepared on your case." Malfeasance said.
"That sounds about their style." Sarah sighed. "Ask him if there is there any discharge procedure from this place?"
"Any chance of me getting discharged?" Leela asked.
"Hardly likely." he replied.
There is a clack of something at the farthest edge of the room. Doctor Malfeasance turns toward it. The sound of a gurney can be heard. Two dark figures push it into the sparse illumination provided by the oil lamp.
"Transfurr ordurr frum the Department orf Advarnced Studees." the larger of the two figures says. "There is no such Department!" Malfeasance protests.
"Restricted, ain't it .." the dark figure chuckled. "Need ta know bases only, and yer obbiously darn't needs to know it, Doc."
Malfeasance spluttered behind his surgical mask. His fingers twitched impotently as the two figures crossed to the bed and began unstrapping Leela. She is scooped up by the one who spoke and placed on the gurney.
"Ear yer go, Little Miss" the figure says kindly.
"That isn't a little miss ..." Malfeasance raged. "That is a dangerous mind controlling mutant with links to dark spiritual powers!"
"Gud job we arr takin' err to the Department of Aeronautical Studees then."
"Hang on a second!" Malfeasance said cunningly. " You said it was the Department of Advanced Studies?"
"Yup, dats the wun."
"But you just said Department of 'Aeronautical' Studies?" The Doctor probed.
"Yup, dats the wun." the figure confirmed as he wheeled the gurney through the doorway and out into the dimly lit corridor.
"Well, it can't be both!!" the voice of Dr Malfeasance protested. Leela enjoyed the way his voice and protests grew quieter and quieter.
"Ello, Little Miss." The dark figure finally said. "The name is Kip, Miss."
"Und I am 'ayetch, miss" the other figure said.
"I'm very pleased to meet you both." Leela said. "Where are you taking me?"
"Anywhere away from that mad fucking Doctor is good!" Sarah said.
"Yerr orft to seas the nice lady Doctor." Kip rumbled. "She will take goodly care of you."
They wheeled the gurney into an ornate long brass and wood elevator. Kip cranked the lever downwards. With a grumble and a lurch the carriage shook itself into life.
"The lady Doctor, what department does she work for?" Leela couldn't resist asking. Though still nervous following her 'rescue' by Kip and 'ayetch, she still feared for her fate.
"She dunt work fer no department, miss." Kip laughed.
The elevator stopped suddenly and Kip heaved open the mesh door. He reached under the gurney and took a blanket from somewhere. He covered Leela completely.
"Just be quiet, miss .. pretends like yerr not udder there."
"Okay." Leela pressed herself onto the soft cotton of the gurney top and trying to think herself flat. She felt the gurney move a little, turn and then move a little more. The journey seemed to take an eternity. Several times they were stopped by figures who questioned where they were going. Each occasion Kip gave a different destination.
Finally the journey ended with a soft knock on a door.
"Doctor Crooz?" Kip asks in his basso voice. Leela head the sound of a door being opened. Suddenly the blanket is being scooped up, herself bundled with it, and carried. Leela makes a muffled protest.
"Ear yerr go, littul miss." says Kip.
She is placed gently down on a soft surface. She clears the blanket from her face in time to see Kip and 'ayetch leaving the room.
"Thank you!" she calls.
"Yerr never seen us, miss" he laughs. A handsome lady in her early 50's closes the door behind Kip. She turns and smiles at Leela.
"Forgive all the cloak and dagger, but I had to get you out of clutches of Doctor Malfeasance somehow."
"Thank you, is he a real Doctor?" Leela can't help but ask. Her brain slowly takes in the homely little room she finds herself in. A warm fire burns in a hearth surrounded by a confusion of books and pottery figures. Two leather armchairs are angled at the fire. Leela, still bundled like the infant Moses in one. Doctor 'Crooz' crosses to the other.
"Heavens no, my child." she confirms Leela's suspicions. "But he is an excellent administrator and professional sadist."
"Professional sadist?" Leela asks.
"Right now he will be attempting to locate you frantically through official channels."
"Professional," Leela asks again, "Sadist?"
"Yes, dear. The Establishment pay him handsomely each quarter for his skills in inflicting pain and discomfort."
"Why?" Leela asks. Dr 'Crooz' gets up and crosses to a tea pot and cups. She pours a cup of tea and picks up a plate containing a slice of cake. She offers them to Leela.
"Because the Establishment believe that nothing of importance is achieved without discomfort and punishment."
Leela looks around the comfortable cluttered room and takes a bite of the cake.
"And you aren't part of this Establishment?" Leela asks.
"I am more like yourself than you could possibly imagine." she answers. "I'd never be welcomed or accepted by the Establishment, but I have psychological skills and certain influence. They tolerate me here."
"And me?" Leela asks.
"You we need to get out of this complex as quickly as possible."
"Why?" Leela is just beginning to feel warm and safe. The idea of having to leave this little room makes her head reel.
"Because, clever and sneaky as Mr Kip and Mr Haytch undoubtedly are, Malfeasance will eventually guess you could only be in one place. This room."
"How long do I have?" Leela says, stretching out her fingers to the glow of the fire.
"We probably have 30 minutes before the Senior Orderly and Administrators arrive to search my rooms."
She reached behind her chair and pulled a small valise around.
"How do I get out of here?" Leela asked. Sarah crossed to the window set high up on one wall.
"We are sub-basement level here." she told Leela, looking up at the small grate over a glass.
"You have one chance, and I am sorry to offer this to you, but it really is the only way out."
She clicked the catch on the valise open and reached inside. A folded garment in a shiny grey material and a two bottles of fluid were drawn out and laid down on the hearth rug.
"What is it?" Leela asked.
"It is a serum of R.N.A. that contains a pattern for re-writing your entire genetic structure."
"So I will look different?"
"Not really, your face and body shape will remain the same. It will just allow you certain abilities that will get your through the only exit in this complex that isn't monitored by guards, cameras and multiple checkpoints."
"Which is?"
"The water main." Dr 'Crooz' unfolded the grey material and handed it to Leela. It was a one piece body suit made from a curiously elastic fabric. "you'd better put it on, the water will be just above freezing and I don't know how long you will have to swim to get clear."
Leela stood and regretfully let the blanket fall from her shoulders. She turned the suit over in her hands to look for a way in. The neck section was stretchy and pliable. She pushed a foot in and through, tugging the fabric up her leg. With some awkward stretching and contorting, she got the bodysuit over her hips. Immediately her legs felt warmer and curiously secure in the tightness of the material. She pulled the nightgown over her head and continued to inch the suit upward.
Dr 'Crooz' rinsed out the tea cups in a little sink. She turned back to discover Leela looking down at herself in the sleek sea lion coloured formsuit. The top of the bodysuit was low cut, allowing a large section of collar bone and trapezius clear.
"Now drink the bottle with the red liquid in." Dr 'Crooz' pointed to it. "Put the bottle with the blue liquid safely inside your suit. You will need that to return to your human form afterwards."
Leela unscrewed the bottle. Despite her fear, she had to smile at the neatly written label 'DRINK ME' on the side of it. The contents were curiously tasteless and slightly salty. Instantly she felt their effect though. The room spun and her senses blurred. She could feel Dr 'Crooz' helping her to walk. Guiding her a small side room. She sat Leela down on the floor and rolled back a thick Persian rug that covered a wrought iron grate in the floor.
"It leads into the main water system. I am so sorry!"
"Wha .. wha .." Leela's voice is going. Like the Little Mermaid, the cost of transformation seems to be her speech.
"Try not to breathe too deeply, your body is rewriting itself."
"I .. don't ...eee an .. no ... your name .." Leela gasped. Desperate to know at least the first name of this lady who had risked so much to help her.
"Shelly, it is Shelly." She helped Leela cross to the grate and pulled back the cover. Leela could smell the water flow. It called out to her on a bodily level. She yearned to plunge into it's embrace.
"Gud by" she managed to say as she slid forward like a seal into the fast flowing stream of fluid.
"Good luck, my dear." Leela heard just before the water closed over her head.
The universe changed. Her senses exalted at the tang of the water, gills opening along her neckline. No wonder the suit had such a low cut. It allowed a twin set of gills to sluice oxygen rich water through her system. The water was cold, but Leela had to laugh at the protection of the suit. It wasn't needed in the slightest, her new aquatic form didn't have the same temperature needs of her old self. It was protection against scraping the insides of the water main though. The slick pipes could still be abrasive, especially at the speeds the water carried her along at.
Never a strong swimmer, Leela also marveled at the thin taught muscular control she now had over her flight. Twisting like a sea lion, a dolphin ..a beautiful tuna fish. She navigated the turns in the pipe with a sonar like sense that seemed to bed into her brain effortlessly. The only thing visible in the pipe was the flickering blue ghost of Sarah, unhappily being towed behind her.
Suddenly she registers a dim light ahead of her. She over shoots it, then twists around to kick back against the current. The light is coming from a large iron grid. Filtering down from numerous tiny ventilation holes. She takes several deep breaths of water, oxygenating her bloodstream and cranes up and out. Through the tiny hole she can just make out the roadway outside a scary Dickensian Asylum building. Lights appear to burn savagely from most of the windows. Leela can feel the water she is trying to hold inside her body leaking out of her gills. She gives up and sinks back under the flow.
Sarah floats just beside her. A blue spirit in her naked form. Leela gestures upward and holds a quizzical hand out.
"You want me to check out the upstairs?" Sarah asks, her voice now sounding strange within Leela's head. Sarah levitates toward the surface and vanishes. Moments later she returns and shakes her head.
"Just outside the main entrance .. I think we need to go much further down the pipe system." Leela nods her comprehension and twists back into the current. Sarah feels the tug of connection drawing her after her companion and surrenders to the helter skelter ride. The water main connects to other side branches. The turbulence increases as other currents boil in together. Leela begins to struggle to maintain her dolphin-like grace. She is still hungry, the bite of cake seems a woeful amount of time ago. Despite letting the current do the lion's share of the propulsion, she is still expending energy keeping her flight even. If it wasn't for the speed of her passage, she feels she could just close her eyes in this womb of water. Let herself float and rest.
Suddenly chaos. The pipe is gone, she is in freefall .. a large underground chamber and a ring of giant vents discharging water. She falls into the confusion and her body slams into something hard and unyielding. Her mouth opens and a silence rings loudly in her ears. She reaches out to cling to something, anything, but her hands sweep clear water. With feeble strokes she drags herself into calmer water. A set of steel rungs loom out of the gloom. Leela holds out both hands and feels a side wall. She slips one hand through a rung. Gathering her energy for a moment, she pulls up and begins to climb. The air breaks over her head. Reflexively she tries to take a breath and chokes on the thin gas. Dipping her head beneath the surface she draws water through her gills. She fumbles inside the suit to find the hard flask of serum. She can sense a problem even before her fingers brush against the cracked surface of it.
"Looks like we've had our glitch for this mission. " Sarah says, looking at the broken serum vial in Leela's hand.
Afterword Last Instalments mixed in movie quotes: I didn't warn you about them being in part two, so less replies this time!
Thirty seconds of revelation is worth a million years of know-nothings. is from the movie The Horse's Mouth.
My god, it's full of stars are the last words of the human Dave Bowman before he is transformed into the Star Child in 2010, Odyssey 2.
Tragic Thomas Hardy heroine: It had to be unlucky Tess of the d'Urbervilles I almost name checked. No really a movie quote, but it felt right to mention her.
"you face forward or you face the possibility of shock and damage" is Brody's immortal line from Kevin Smith's MALLRATS.
"Better than mortal man deserves!" are the words spoken by Ginger to herself and Sarah Connor in the original TERMINATOR movie.
Today's winners are: Savage Beauty and Timos392
Your celebratory quote from Sarah is "Rotten kids, you work your life out!" which is from 12 Angry Men.