After stumbling to a stop, you turn around to hear the door to the chamber slam shut. "What the hell? Don't I get a choice? Penny got a choice!!" referring to your girlfriend Penny, who just went in this very machine minutes earlier and became the famed Lioness from the comics you both enjoy. She got to pick a hero from a catalog on a tablet before freely walking in. Instead, Dr. Terrific just throws you in all willy-nilly. You notice your only window to the outside world is a vertical slit window in the door, which you remembered from Penny's transformation, just that it was opaque, but right now it was transparent. "Guess it must be that new glass that gets fuzzy when electricity passes through it." Through it you can see Dr. Terrific and Penny chatting, Penny playing with the tablet. "Hey, I said what about my input?" You exclaim as you pound on the door.
Dr. Terrific's voice suddenly crackles over an intercom into the chamber. "Yeah, sorry about the brashness, but I was eager to give this another run. But don't worry, your girlfriend..." She seems to pause and lean over as to confer with Penny her name, "...er, Penny, has this handled like a champ!!"
Penny leans over and speaks into the intercom as well, "See!! The doc says I got this. Besides, you know I know what and who you like, Brian!! Trust meeee...!!!" Penny had this coy smile as her tail was wagging. You really didn't trust that wagging tail. You knew from your cat at home that unlike dogs, who wag their tails when they are happy and/or excited, cats tend to wag their tails when they're either upset or being mischievous...
Now you were worried when you see Penny tap something, the windo go opaque, and the machine whirr to life. Mechanical arms lift you up under your armpits slightly off the ground as a third injects a sea green formula into neck while a fourth still went to work incinerating your clothes, including your limited edition Justice Man t-shirt. "Aw, come on!! I paid $40 for that!! They only made 2400 of them and this was the only time I've ever wore it!! I was hoping to get it autographed by Sam Kirly, creator of Arachne-Girl, the Unreal A-Squad, Metal Woman, the Incredible Bulk, and so many others!!" Something in what you just said suddenly doesn't sit right with you, which distracts you from the physical changes happening to you, such as your waist and shoulders constricting to a comical proportion and your hips & butt balloon out massively. "Wait, maybe they just saved me from the depths of embarrassment!! I mean, the fuck was I thinking? That shirt was a Justice Man t-shirt, quite literally the mascot of RC Comics, and I was going to ask Sam Kirly, the man who MADE Slam-O Comics a household name, to sign it?! Talk about crossing the genres, ya dingus!!"
You let out a nervous laugh at your near-gaffe, when you notice the mousey soprano sounds that had come out instead of your normal light baritone. You look down to see you can't see past your G-cup knockers. Swinging your hips forward you can see just past your bosom to see the finale of your genitals realigning, labia folds forming and opening as the last of your penis shrinks into a cute clitoris. All the thrashing also makes you aware of the new ass-length straight lime green hair.
"Yep. Definitely female... But who though?" Somehow you could think up fifty-six different heroines that had green hair on the spot. You knew you had an acute knowledge of all things comic & manga, honestly expecting to take a few moments to recall five or six heroines, but you realized this was absurd how many you recalled so fast. This, combined with the fact you began to notice your feet feeling weird, only to swing your oddly more dextrous legs up to see your legs & ankles fused together forming a giant fishy tail fin, did you remove all doubt and realize what Penny had selected for you.
She had selected Ocean Girl, the legendary super-scientist mermaid superhero. Unlike in potrayals in media, folklore, and stories, there are many varieties of mermaids out there, and Ocean Girl was of the Marina tribe, a branch that was more like marine mammals in that they had no gills or other abilities to process oxygen from water, instead having large lungs and necessitating breathing air like dolphins, whales, and of course, humans. Also, unlike some tribes, the Marina need not stay in water and only need slightly more water than humans to drink to stay hydrated, giving them great autonomy out of water.
As a baby Ocean Girl washed up on a shore where a young roboticist by the name of Thomas Arville found her and took her back to his home in Archville (a fictional expy for St. Louis, Missouri) and raised her, where she picked up his interests in science and anime, giving her the name Clair Arville. She largely lived a calm, peaceful, loving life with her adoptive father except for two major events. The first was when she was 6 and her dad took her on vacation to a nearby major lake. Suddenly a girl Clair's age fell off a pier and young Clair thought she could save her. Ironically, Clair... couldn't swim, and worse, she almost drowned trying to save this girl, and even more ironically still was ultimately saved by the girl that fell out off the pier. Kindly though, the girl, Ginger Adams, didn't laugh at the mermaid who couldn't swim and almost drowned. The end result was that Clair developed intense hydrophobia, and she also acquired a best friend.
Then, at about 16 after being with her adoptive father when he was nearly fatally shot by a mugger and only able to sit in a wheelchair, the trauma awoke her dormant mermaid hydromancer powers, which she used to force the blood to stay in Thomas' body, saving his life.
She took her advanced intellect and hydromancer powers and, throughout her college years (for which she was admitted early at 16), refined them, until, upon graduating from Archville University of Sciences at a record pace with Ph.Ds in robotics, quantum physics, biology, geology, and chemistry all in just six years, she finally made her debut as the superhero Ocean Girl.
As all this backstory seems to integrate with your psyche along with Ocean Girl's vast intellect, you find all this extra mental data is still secondary to you, yourself, and your memories, as though to say while Ocean Girl is a part of you now, you were still very much mentally you first and foremost. You then manage to glean a warped reflection off the side of the metal chamber's inside, and see your legs had finished fusing into a long glorious sanguine-scaled mermaid tail roughly six feet in length, your fins lazily sweeping back and forth on the floor. You also note your nearly footlong elven-like ears pushing out of your hair and your piercing gold eyes. Finally, you see your privates are fully covered by scaled, but you know they're still there, realizing your new vagina was hidden behind a retractactable flap of scales you could control as easily as your hands, but there was no anus. Your new memories then reminded you mermaids quantumly digest all their food, thus they produce no waste, and thus do not possess anuses.
As the arms holding you up release you, Ocean Girl's clothes begin to materialize around you:
- Knee-length (Well, in your case, half-tail length, since you don't have knees anyone) white lab coat with a multitude of pockets.
- A purple jersey v-necked t-shirt with yellow collar, sleeves, and sides, baring the Ocean Girl insignia, a starfish supplanted atop a golden gear, on the chest.
- A piercing in the left ear consisting of a short gold chain ending in a tiny figurine, a chibi Haruka, the main character of that popular shounen manga & anime about that catgirl kunoichi with elastic stretching powers that dreams of being queen of the ninja.
- A yellow pleated miniskirt.
- A black metal-plated utility belt fastened around the skirt full of crime-figthing supplies.
- A yellow v-shaped sunglass visor which, as you notice, is starting to show a HUD on the surface.
Finally, you notice the machine lower two tall tanks on your back and strap them on, hoses slipping down from them to giant pneumatic power gauntlets appearing on your forearms and hands replete with dual retractactable giant turrets above the backs of her hands, as well as a hose slipping under your coat and down your back, down the right side of your tail to a hefty metal ring that materialized near the base of your tail. You noticed these new add-ons weighed practically nothing, and that's when you remember Ocean Girl carries water with her in these two drums, but that she had them engineered with zero-G technology to offset the weight, plus the gauntlets not only exponentially increases her superhuman mermaid strength (bringing her strength with her gauntlets more than quadruple that of the Lioness, roughly 75% of her strength without), the turrets allow her to compress her hydromancy to near laser tightness, allowing you to fire garrote-like bolts of water or even form almost microscopically wide water swords that can sheer through tungsten with ease, and her tail ring lets fire compressed water from her tail as well. It also increases the top speed of one of coolest hydromancy powers, the ability to "stand" and even surf on water and moisture in the air, essentially allowing her to basically fly anywhere the air isn't dry or as long she has water in her tanks. In fact, if the conditions were right, you could surf up into the troposphere if you wanted.
Suddenly, your head hurt...
"We have to stop him!! The universe is at stake!!"
"How?"
"Life... dreams... hope... Where do they come from? And where do they go...? Such meaningless things... I'll destroy them all!!"
"We're not dead not!!"
"He has to have a weak spot!!"
"Nothing can beat the music of billions of voices screaming in unison!!"
"Stop Bulk!! You can't..."
"Bleh! You people make me sick!! You sound like lines from a self-help book!! If that's how it's going to be... I'll snuff them all out!! Every last one of your sickening, happy little reasons for living!!"
"...not even Justice-Man could..."
"It's over..."
"I will destroy everything!! I will create a monument to non-existence!!"
"Doc... You're our last hope..."
Everything was a blur, then a blasting white light of annihilation, then... silence. These weird new memories are jarring, but you don't have time to process them because you are jolted to your senses by a computer voice telling you the procedure was complete.
The machine finally opens up and... trying to act cool, you try to surf out with your new powers, but instead rocket out and fall flat on your chest in front of Penny. "Nice entrance, Brian." Penny snickers.
"Ha ha..." you remark as you pick yourself up. "What made you decide to make me Ocean Girl anyhow?"
"Kitty needs feeesh!!" Penny quips in a smarmy tone.
"Seriously, Penny..." you say, as you try to get used to your new hydromancy power by trying to float on some water vapor.
"Well, you do have that Nendo figurine of Ocean Girl in your room, that limited edition print of Ocean Girl #198 where Ocean Girl was forced to team up with her nemesis Calicoder (a catgirl blackhat hacker with the power to manifest any program, bit of code, bugs, and glitches in the real world, as well as make real physical objects digital & vice versa) to stop Dr. Despair after he stole access to the Mephistopheles Force that empowers the Hellion and Galactra's Power Quantum in order to wipe out the free world, purge the world of Estonistan's enemies, and most importantly take a dump on the counter of that Arby's that forgot his Curly Fries once... And also, when I was trying to pick out a hero for you, I mentioned some of the comics you've read to Dr. Terrific, and when I said 'Ocean Girl,' she insisted that would be the best choice for you."
You examine your coat and rub the scales of your tail below your skirt, realizing you have a tactile sense of touch as accurate as though you weren't wearing your gauntlets. "So, the Doc was the gave you that final push, eh? I mean, I don't mind..."
"Yup..." Dr. Terrific said. "I gave your girlfriend the suggestion." She leans over to Penny and says aloud, "Since it's about lunchtime, how about you go to lunch, tour the convention, on me, and then come to Convention Hall 3-D in a couple of hours. I just need to... borrow your boyfriend for a couple of hours. Now that he has one of the foremost scientific minds comparable to Metal Woman, the Wolfman, or my own, I need their help to upgrade and set up the Superhero Custom-O-Matic in the convention hall. As you can see, I can't fully show it off here in some hallway congested with autograph signing, art booths, and merch stands. To be honest, you two were just to beta test the machine to make sure it would fire up in the first place.
"We were guinea pigs?!" Penny exclaims.
"Yeah... Sorry about that." Dr. Terrific scratches her head. "But back to what I was saying..."
"Alright, you can have Brian for two hours. TWO. HOURS." Penny utters with a hint of jealousy. That tail of hers sure was wagging. She wanders off to enjoy the convention for the time being.
"Hey, nice foisting decisions on me again!!" You call out, before realizing she's already out of earshot, or given her new ears, couldn't hear you over the din of the convention crowd. You then sigh and relax a little, realizing taking on the genes of the Lioness may have meant she got a few of her personality quirks as well, much like how you feel for the most part you're still you, but you also feel smarter and just a bit... nerdier. Penny must be exuding a small bit of the Lioness' assertiveness, bravado, and catty playfulness alongside her usual self.
You turn to Dr. Terrific and ask, "You said you wanted my help with this?"
"Yeah, as you see, they double booked my convention hall space and to test if the basics were working I had to set up the earlier version and have it test run the newest version of the genome sequencer and matter generator. The proper version I intend to set up in the convention hall is a large open-view platform visible for a whole audience and can transform up to five people at once. Also, unlike thos model, it doesn't need to destroy your clothes to carry out the change, instead using Vym Bots, special size-changing organic nanobo-"
"I'm not only a comic book fan, but you also just imparted me all the scientific knowledge of Ocean Girl. I know what Vym Bots are, and I could build them in my sleep." you say cockily with your arms crossed under your ample bust.
Dr. Terrific smirks. "I guess I save some of the explanations of the minutiae then. Alright. Basically, the upgraded model I had planned to set up before the scheduling kerfuffle could transform more people at once, in a way that a convention audience can watch, and also doesn't violate any laws or convention terms & conditions."
"Sounds alright..." You go try and tie your back, but a sudden sting in your head stops you - a twinge of sadness from the idea of binding your hair. You then remember that for Ocean Girl and all mermaids in the Slam-O comic universe, hair is sacred, and is to never be cut, bound, or restricted in any way. It also, in part, imparts some of their strength not unlike the biblical Samson, as well as measures the strength of their mermaid healing factor. The longer and freer their hair, the quicker they heal. You release your hair upon remembering this.
You then turn to Dr. Terrific, who had saw what had happened, ans you say, "Right at the end of my transformation, I saw some... weird disjointed, scary..."
Dr. Terrific cuts you off. "So you saw some of her last moments..." Dr. Terrific continues working on the Custom-O-Matic and says, "I told you at the start when you did this that this machine's purpose was to make ordinary citizens the new incarnations of slain or critically injured heroes who can no longer carry out their duties. The heroes I'm offering to transform people into are but fictional characters here... but the universe I originally came from, they were all real once."
You audibly gasp and almost fall on your butt(?) on the news that not only the person calling themselves Dr. Terrific before you was from another universe, but all the comic characters you, your girlfriend, and nearly all these convention-goers adore once existed. Wait? ONCE existed?
"The memories you experienced were bits and pieces of the last moments of the original Ocean Girl, seeing what led to the end of our universe."
"What happened?"
"Laughing Jack..." Dr. Terrific shook, "...he somehow managed to partner with Doge the Galactic Bounty Hunter and Floyd Moon, the ruler of hell world Armeggeddon. They sowed chaos but we held them at bay, until they came to a world with vast hidden power. Floyd Moon discovered this power and began to farm it, but he never found the source, three strange statues of what were apparently at one time goddesses. We did when Doge realized they had too far, leading through a deep cavern, but Laughing Jack had followed us, killing Doge in a cruel ambush, and in the fight following turned that world turvy, causing the land itself to fly into the sky. Up there, Laughing Jack finally set his true plan in motion, betraying Floyd Moon and doing the seemingly impossible, killing him. Laughing Jack then moved the goddess statues out of alignment and began siphoning all their power from them, destroying the whole planet in the process and casting us all to the far corners of the universe. By the time we regrouped, it had been a year. Laughing Jack had... he was this... nigh-omnipotent god now, and just casually destroyed Earth and Venus in front of us with a single blast of light. Many heroes who were still on Earth at the time, like the Lioness, died instantly wholly oblivious to the horror in the heavens. We thought we could stop him with what amounted to almost ten million superpowered individuals, heroes and villains alike from those of us that were off-world and those we recruited along the way, who understood the threat of an all-powerful Laughing Jack, but we were just a nuisance to him, at best your previous incarnation destroyed his left eye, and Justice-Man managed to tear off one of the several majestic angel wings he had grown from his divine rebirth. In the end, he laid waste to us all, and the cosmos. Ocean Girl, Metal Woman, Wolfman, and I agreed. I took the DNA samples that would be used for the Custom-O-Matic, armed Floyd Moon's legendary Anti-Existence Bomb, and... and escaped the universe just before it was erased."
"You exterminated your whole universe?!" you gasp, dropping the wrench you were using.
"There... wasn't really much of a universe by that point. Laughing Jack had already destroyed 80% of the known universe and 98% of all life in our battle, and there was no hope of stopping him any other way. It was him or the bomb at that point, and we couldn't risk him becoming strong enough to reach beyond our universe either."
"When you put it like that, needs of the many and whatnot..." you utter solemnly.
"Let's... get this moved and set up then, alright?" Dr. Terrific said to break the ice, and the two of you continjed to work on the Custom-O-Matic for the next couple of hours.
Around 3:00, Dr. Terrific and you had moved, set up, and installed the upgraded Superhero Custom-O-Matic in Convention Hall 3-D, when Penny returned, holding a bag full of convention merch in one hand and a burrito in the other.
"Hey Brian!! Hey Doc!!" Penny waves them down. During the interim, it seems she also went out shopping for new clothes, wearing a rather casual yellow tanktop, black pleated skirt, and sandals. You can see her Lioness unitard sitting in the top of one of the bags.
"Nice clothes!!" you compliment your girlfriend.
"I know. While the costume is cool, I still needed regular street clothes for later seeing as a certain elastic doctor destroyed the clothes I came here in." Penny flashes Dr. Terrific a glance that makes her gulp.
"I'm sure I could... um... reconstitute your old clothes with some spare Vym Bots laying around later..."
"The real challenge is going to have all my clothes modified for my tail, because as you can see..." She flips around and does a simple flick of her tail, giving the two of you a clear shot of her panties, which were half down her butt to accommodate her tail.
"Yeah, skirts and tails never did really mix." you jest, scratching the back of your head.
"Not like you have anything to hide under yours!!" Penny exclaims, flipping your skirt up in response. You know otherwise, and quickly pull the garment back down, squealing & blushing in embarrassment. "I totally do got... parts down there!!"
Penny rubbed your cheek and said, "Oh... I'm sorry..." She then brushes some of the scales of your tail. "I never got to say how cute your tail is." You know, if you didn't know any better, based on the comic book characters she likes, how she's behaved today, and what is going on now, you'd think Penny had a fetish for girls with tails.
"Alright, we're set!!" Dr. Terrific said, doing some last checks at a terminal. With that, she gave convention staff the okay to start letting attendees in.
§ What Happens Next...? §