(Comm) Shapeshifters: Split Personality (P4)

Summary: Taking place after the events of Clara the Shapeshifter, two women wake up in different places with severe cases of amnesia, and potent shapeshifting abilities. While their attitudes towards their abilities are vastly different, both go searching for the truth of their situations. Commissioned by Moneris.

[Story Listing]

[FIRST PART]

[PREVIOUS PART]

---

Part 4

As Bruce and Isabella got better acquainted, in a shadier part of town, another superpowered femme fatale found herself rather tied up in some illicit affairs...

"Ugh... mmph..."

Her eyelashes fluttered as she stirred awake. The last she recalled was the painful sensation of too many volts of electricity surging through her body. She was still feeling a pervasive numb limpness throughout her body. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out where she was.

Apart from some light leaking through some boarded up sunlights, it was fairly dark. Strangely, everything looked upside down. It didn't take her long to figure out why; she glanced up, catching her brown hair as it dangled towards the floor.

She outstretched her neck, her body creaking as she swivveled upwards, turning upright to get a better look at herself. She grimaced. No wonder she felt so tight; whoever left her here had wrapped her steadfast to a large metal pipe. She made out her torso and back twisting around, her limbs looping around the circumference of the pipe over and over... and her fingers were tied together, preventing her from moving her hands. She tried to kick her legs, but her legs were wrapped in a decorative board at the top.

"Wow." She muttered. "The boys really took that jab about tying knots personally." She tried to shift out of her position, taking the opportunity to try and unknot herself, as a bit of a challenge. But her body was stretched taut, and she could hardly move about. It seems she was being held captive...

Creeeeeeak... a heavy metal door made a ghastly noise as it opened. Her head swivelled around again to face the newcomer. From her foggy recollections, she recognized his stature. It was the sharply-dressed man she saw before she lost consciousness altogether.

He had a stony expression and a lean figure, his face seemingly a permanent scowl. His hair was a slivery grey, and his face was only slightly more life-like. The smell of luxury cologne hit the malleable woman like a slap to the face, especially when it mingled with the stench of tobacco on his person; she grimaced, her nose twitching.

"To whom do I owe the pleasure?" She grunted, her body squeaking as she audible relaxed. The man approached, looking her over. She couldn't get a read on him through the black-tinted sunglasses he wore.

"Do you often pick fights with honest working men in the dead of night, miss?" He began, his tone straddling the knife's edge between banter and interrogation.

"They swung first." She would've shrugged if she could move. "How much did you pay them to grope me?"

"This is the part where I would say that you're lucky to be alive, but..." He looked up and down the length of her stretched-out body. "Looking at you now, I doubt that luck was any such factor."

"You flatter me." She smiled bitterly. "Can we skip to the part where you monologue about your evil plan?"

"I'm a businessman, thank you very much. Giovanni Riviera. I handle the finances of the Riviera family." He introduced himself coolly." His mouth flattened. Oddly, the malleable woman didn't seem too impressed by his stature...

"You're here because I wanted you here. I have something of a reputation in the underworld... I believe the men at the site understood that quite well, and were all too happy to pocket some drinking money, so long as they turned a blind eye."

"Do you usually make a habit of kidnapping women and dragging them to your dungeon?" She tilted her head. "You don't seem the sort to get your rocks off on screaming women."

"I know as well as you do that I am no threat to you." He placed his hands in his jacket pockets. "I caught a glimpse of you fending off that entire mob of... honest men. And if you intended to cut through me to escape, you would've done it a hundred times over by now."

"..."

The elastic woman pursed her lips, her eyes drifting to the side. She left out a noncommittal grunt... Her body began to quiver and shudder...

Drip, drip, drip... shlurrrrrrrk...

In a matter of moments, her body liquified, oozing down the pipes and splashing to the floor, tan and black mixing together in a paint-like slurry. The puddle of liquid ooze shuffled forward, tendrils twisting upwards as her body slipped free from the muck, her spine curving in a beautiful arc.

As the puddle shrank at her feet and sunk into her calves, her body bubbled, shifting and solidifying into regular proportions. Her wet, sloshing legs hardened, her heels clicking against hard concrete. As she reformed, she crossed her arms expectantly.

"Ya got me, Don." She huffed. "You looking to make an offer I can't refuse?"

She pinched her fingers, her arm stretching forward until it was right in his face. He regarded her, stone-faced and unflinching.

"I want to bring you on as a fighter." He explained.

She paused, and studied his expression.

"...Like one of the construction workers?" Her mouth flattened. "I'm not some hired gun you can throw at other mafia dons you don't-

"A prize fighter, to be more specific." He clarified. That seemed to have gotten her attention... she paused, considering it.

"...Mm... I don't know..." She mused, her head swaying back and forth. She sauntered forward, swaying her hips back and forth in a sensuous, deliberate rhythm. The suited man, standing firm and unmoving, allowed her to approach him.

She seized the opportunity by stretching her body in all directions, in order to loop around his statuesque form. Her torso twisted around him like a snake until her pronounced breasts nestled their cleavage into his shoulder. As she stretched her neck to swivel around and whisper into his other ear, her arms and legs roped and braided around each other, slipping between his legs and massaging him all over.

"You simply must understand... I'm more of a lover than a fighter." She purred, her breath hot and needy, as her body creaked in writhing gyrations, she raised a palm to stroke under his chin. "...Mmph, what's with you, you're so stiff, your shoulders are like stone-"

"I'm not a comedian, lady." The man, staring forward. "I am offering you an opportunity that should benefit us both."

"...Mrgh." She grunted noncommittally. She flicked his ear lightly before, in a matter of moments, unknotting herself from his person, her heel curving to catch her rapidly morphing body; there was a sludgy squish that punctuated her movement before her curvaceous form could resolidify.

"This better not be some fetish-tastic mud wrestling gig." She grumbled, raising her hands to massage her face back in proper proportions, looking off to the distance as if the man wasn't there at all.

"No." He stated. "It's a venue for exhibition fights for... enhanced individuals."

"'Enhanced'?" The lady repeated, her eyes widening slightly as she perked her head up. That got her attention... but she remembered herself, and coolly averted her gaze, trying to keep her aroused interest in check.

"Sounds like a lot of hassle." She shrugged. "So what's in it for me?"

"Whatever you wish." The man said. "The Riviera family has considerable resources. State your terms."

"You say that like I'm supposed to recognize the exalted Riviera family name." She frowned. "I didn't watch The Sopranos."

He ignored the sly remark, and steeled his gaze. He really wasn't one for jokes... she pouted, puffing her cheek.

"...Putting me on the spot..." The lady tilted her head, thinking. "How quickly can your goons cobble together a lab for me?"

"It will be done. We have some centers suited for the production of street goods.." He nodded, before cocking his head to the side. "What will you do with it?"

"I'unno. You got my attention with the talk of 'enhanced humans'." She chuckled, balling her hand into a fist. It inflated into an orb, spikes needling upwards and slinking as quickly in rapid waves.

"It doesn't surprise me to learn that there are others like me." She stared at her constantly shifting fist. "And the thought does trigger my scientific curiosity. I would like to, at the very least, see what makes them tick..."

Giovanni appraised her wicked smile... and nodded in turn.

"Consider it done, lady..." He folded his arms. "...You've yet to introduce yourself. How should I call you?"

"Does it matter?" She relaxed her hand, wiggling her fingers; with all the fun she was going to have here, she didn't want the matter of her own amnesia getting her down. "I suppose Lady is just fine~"

---

Clobbering a bunch of hired goons was one thing, but if she was going to contend with mutants, supers, and other higher pay grade thugs, it was quickly determined that she'd have to practice. She got a big warehouse all to herself to let loose.

Lady never had any issues making her formless body move as she desired, as an extension of her iron will that could reach seemingly infinitely. In fact, the more she seemed to flex her body to her own whims, the more that seemed to come back to her. Like the muscle memory of riding a bike, her sharp mind manipulating her form with elegance, grace and deadly precision.

Lady took to allowing her body to stretch, warp and expand, a sea of fleshy ooze enveloping swathes of the room at a time, climbing over everything it could. She could manifest tendrils from her form, each with the tensile strength to crush concrete bricks in just a twist. She moaned as she oozed and expanded, the tactile sensation of her heated body rushing over every cool surface it could.

Her form flooded over a crate; her body tensed at key points, removing nails boarding the wooden planks shut, her liquid form wrenching planks of wood off. As her consciousness zipped from one end of her sprawling form to another, she delighted in finding a stockpile of assault rifles. The tendril wrapped around the gun, carrying it through her body along a current of liquid ooze, and manifested at her side. As she sprouted an arm, she fired away, the muzzle of the gun protruding from her soft form.

Lady cried out, the heat from the rifle and the recoiling feedback rippling through her entire form. Even through the surges of raw energy coursing through her, exciting her to her core, she wondered of the possibility of breaking such a weapon down to its core components, reassembling it within her, and becoming a living weapon herself.

The only thing stopping her was, well... she wasn't enough of a gun nut to really process all the working parts. She was scientifically curious, but hardly a mechanic. And she didn't have as much time as she needed to before they would send her out to fight.

Discarding the weapon, she practiced her morphing. She could expand and shrink with ease, firming herself up in the right places. Lady stretched towards the ceiling, her hands melting into a sticky, gummy consistency, splattering against the ceiling as she heaved herself up, allowing her sprawling form to coalesce back into it. As she shifted into a single appendage, she straddled the ceiling like an inverted slinky, trapezing with ease through the air. And then, when she was satisfied with the command of her weight and mass, she reformed her body and fell; she outstretched her arms, connecting them together in a loop as a webbed film formed between her boneless arms and, with a fwoomph, created a makeshift parachute to catch her landing. Lady wouldn't catch herself clumsily splattering to the floor like a klutz.

She could morph the composition of her body, hardening against physical strikes. Lady gleefully looked over the killing edge of a blade that she formed from her hand, her fingers pressing and curling forward. The old adage of Japanese steel, folded over itself a thousand times over came to mind; she could perform an approximation of the same, her body constantly folding over itself in laps of flexible, clay-like ooze. She performed some slashes, before banging it against another part of herself, one part that hardened to the hardness of an ironcast shield.

The more she experimented, the more instinct she felt come back to her. Lady would be prepared for the first "enhanced" specimen to cross paths with her... and she would make sure they would come to regret ever getting in her way.