Mary blinked and looked around. She was clearly in the destination teleportation pod - the large D in the periphery of her vision confirmed that. But she didn't feel different. She looked the same. She still felt the travel terrarium and the travel aquarium resting on her horizontal backs.
Mary stepped out of the teleporter pod and stopped moving. She paused and blinked her eyes. She had expected to be able to see herself through the orange goop but... Now that she focused on it, she couldn't see or hear anywhere she'd put the orange goop.
Sigh... Okay, I guess no more superspy stuff for me. Crap, that means Dad might already be on his way down here. I have to get out of here!
The sudden surge of adrenaline spurred her 10 legs to life. She rushed over to the aquariums and terrariums and unceremoniously used the arms on her segments to dump their contents back into their standard habitats. The travel containers were carelessly discarded on a nearby table and she rushed up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs she propped open the door and peeked out - noone was directly outside. She poked her head out and was relieved to see the hallway was clear in both directions. She held her breath and listened... The faint sound of footsteps from the direction of the kitchen meant Dad had likely finished his coffee and was walking around the house.
Shit! I don't know where Dad's going. Please, please, please don't come down here.
Mary knew that she would have to show her changed form to her Dad at some point. But she wanted a chance to try out the newest changes first. And ideally first get to spend a couple of days changed - maybe even longer if she continued to stay happy with her new form.
She pulled back and quietly closed the door. Outside, the footsteps grew louder and louder then stopped just outside the door. A moment passed then they resumed down the hallway. Mary held her breath until she heard her Dad's bedroom door close, then she sprung into action.
Mary's entire body poured out of the lab into the hallway and she closed the door as quietly as she could. Then she tip-toed down the hallway to her bedroom. Just as she reached her bedroom, the doorbell rang.
In a panic, Mary shoved her bedroom door open and rushed inside. She slammed the door behind her and took a step backwards, pushing her butt up against the door to hold it closed. Down the hallway the sound of another door opening and closing was accompanied by work boots walking down the wood floor. They stopped just outside Mary's door.
The door shook as Dad knocked on it. He called through the door,
"My investors are here, sweetie. If you aren't already dressed, probably best to just stay in your room this morning. I'll let you know when they're gone. Love you."
Then he walked away, the sound of rubber-coated steel hitting the wood floor becoming fainter in the distance. A little bit later the sound of the front door opening and voices heavily muffled by distance reached Mary's ears.
Phew. That was close. But I have some time, at least.
Mary let out a sigh of relief. To her surprise, 5 tongues spilled out of her mouth. As they passed her lips, the tip swelled and rapidly grew into a smaller copy of her head with its own mouth, nose, eyes, ears, and even hair. Her tongues continued to slide out of her mouth and lengthen until they reached her knees. Mary blinked 6 sets of eyes in surprise - her originals stared down at the tongues and tiny heads that had just come out of her mouth, and her 5 newest sets pointed down at the floor.
Her focus shifted to 1 tongue picked at random. To Mary's delight, it felt natural to move the tongue - it moved exactly how she wanted, flexible yet strong like an octopus' tentacle. She moved it up so the new small head at the end of her tongue was positioned about 2 feet away from her original head and facing towards her. It was very weird to be looking at herself. The head at the end of her tongue was about 1/3rd the size of her original head. She could clearly see that her teeth had become more sharper and pointed; meant for tearing meat from the bone, like a piranha's teeth.
Okay... Not exactly what I expected from the piranha's DNA. Still, this could be pretty neat.
Mary relaxed her focus. The 4 other tongues started to move and twist. Then as Mary willed them, they moved to positions that gave her views of her altered body - both her humanoid front and the 4 segments behind.
She quickly became curious and opened the mouth on one of her tongue-heads. Another tongue-head moved into position to look into the tiny mouth and Mary laughed when she saw 5 small tongues in the small mouth. The laugh simultaneously came out of her original head and several tongue-head's mouths.
Wait... Does this mean... ?
Mary closed her original mouth as much as she could around the 5 tongues escaping through her lips. It looked a little comical, almost like she was trying to bite off her newest features. Then she picked a tongue-head at random and focused on it while attempting to speak,
"Testing. Test-- whoa. I'm talking out of my tongue!"
The voice coming out of her tongue-head was much higher pitched than Mary was used to - both because she didn't have the typical feedback resonance in her original skull, and because with a smaller head and smaller...
Wait, I have a neck embedded in my tongues now? I didn't think about that before. That's... kinda weird. But it has to be that way, right? Wait, does this mean...
Two tongue-heads spoke at the same time,
"Testing 1, 2, testing. Testing 1, 2, testing."
"I caaaan multitask but noooot very well!"
Another set of laughs escaped Mary's original set of closed lips, and several of her tongue-heads.
That'll be fun to play around with later. Luckily I can properly form words even with 5 tongues. That would really suck to not be able to talk any more.
Mary opened her original mouth again and... she didn't swallow, but it was a similar motion. Her tongues rapidly retracted into her original mouth. When the head at the end of each tongue approached her lips, it rapidly shrunk and its features (including her additional senses) vanished until it was the normal end of a tongue again. Once all 5 of her tongues were fully retracted, Mary shut her mouth and grinned, once again only seeing out of 1 pair of eyes.
She commented to herself,
"That was definitely a combination of the piranha and probably a bit of the starfish. But they might have had other effects elsewhere too. Hmm, I wonder what else is different..."