Melty Mercury From Outer Space: Chapter 16

Summary: Nikki is taken over by an extraterrestrial symbiote that changes her into a metal slime girl. While this comes with great power, she's unsure if she can control herself, or handle the extra baggage that comes with it.

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Melty Mercury From Outer Space

CHAPTER 16

Something had changed in Nikki's headspace. She had, to this point, felt isolated, alone in her alien condition. She thought of nothing but to hide herself from the rest of the world. But she had opened herself up to Brad, brought him into her strange new world. She was a little more courageous, a little more open. A little more willing to embrace what made her different.

Nikki had another one of her strange, otherworldly dreams that night. This one was different from the ones she was used to. She had become accustomed to a sense of creeping dread, being whisked away to a realm that she didn't recognize... but still felt strangely familiar.

She had witnessed the beginnings of a strange agrarian society, populated by a nomadic race of centaur-like aliens. She had opened her mind to learn more, and the world transformed before her. Modest barns and huts gradually replaced with brick and clay. Monuments began to take shape.

But the view of a vast temple complex commanded the most attention. Occupying the periphery of the emerging town scape, some kind of festival was going on. There were other alien creatures, creatures that Nikki had become intimately familiar with inside of her dreams. Many of them carried instruments that Nikki only vaguely recognized.

The strange mercurial ooze was there too. And the people seemed so at ease around it, gathering around the temple. Contraptions dotted the sacred grounds like fountains, and the ooze flowed as pristine water.

Nikki could feel and hear everything so intimately. She could hear the melodic sounds of wind chimes, the humidity of the air...

And then the music began to play. The vibrations of every string plucked, the warbling of the pan flutes, Nikki felt every vibration so intimately. The fountains shifted to life, the ooze shifting upwards, climbing skywards into increasingly elaborate fractal patterns; they were reminiscent of snowflakes, shimmering in the intense sunlight.

Nikki felt everything as if it were a distant memory. She was on cloud nine, so calm and relaxed, letting the music flow through the ooze. Even in separate partitions, the ooze flowed as one. It was so captivatingly beautiful.

The people below seemed to welcome the celebration. She didn't know. Her memory was so hazy, but the nostalgia was so potent... still, the myriad sensations overwhelmed her. She felt that warm sensation, like when she would assimilate an object, but they continued to pound at her. The chittering of thousands of voices echoed in unison, indistinctly...

The vision ebbed away...

---

Nikki awoke to a myriad of sensations. She felt beams of light slipping through the window blinds reflecting off her chrome-like skin. She felt streaks of herself dribbling off the side of the bed in long, oozing strings; she felt part of her forming puddles on the floor, sinking into the threads of the carpet.

She felt a warm body against her own. No, that wasn't quite right. Her body tensed and relaxed rhythmically on its own.

"Mrgh..."

Nikki groaned, stirring awake. Well, it was closer to a burble. She didn't have a mouth at the moment, but she effortlessly rectified that; ooze collected against the best rest. She could feel Brad's breath on her neck.

She worried about the alien sensations that were quickly becoming familiar. But a tender embrace with Brad was the right amount of familiar. She turned her head...

"...eh?"

Brad was asleep, rolled over to face her. He was shirtless, in nothing but a pair of boxers. She could feel his buff chest rise and fall with each breath he took. He was a deep sleeper...

...He was even sleeping through the experience of Nikki's formless body enveloping him from the shoulders down like a cocoon. Nikki's body tensed slightly, anxiously, squeezing Brad's muscles. Her breath was staggered and weak.

She wasn't eating him right? The thought struck her mind in a hurry, and she tried to find her footing, shifting away...

Shplort. Her ooze smacked the floor in a wet plop, quickly and formlessly shifting as far as she could. She hit a wall in that regard—literally, as tendrils lashed out to grasp at the wall. Her body flattened against the wall and the floor, flattening to their contours.

She froze as she leered over the room from her heightened vantage point. Flat against the wall, she could pick up on the rumbling of cars outside. The muted clattering of footsteps. The whirring of the furnace.

She grimaced to herself, lurching to the ground into a pile. She was ultra-sensitive to every minor gross sound her body made—like lurching through quicksand.

She decided it may be better for her to move to another room. But moving as a pile was too messy, and the emphatically wet sounds of her sloshing around got to her. The ooze jutted up into a pillar, effortlessly moulding itself back into a familiar human facsimiles; her glowing blue eyes examined her body in the mirror, rubbing her hands along the hourglass figure she made as her legs sloped into a puddle of ooze.

She raised her leg, watching the strands of ooze wrap around a newly formed foot; she turned to the hallway, tiptoeing away...

"Ah!"

She barely stifled a gasp, feeling a heavy tension as her body froze up. Her hair tendrils flexed and went taut. Her body pulsed all at once in rhythmic intervals. In the corner of her eye, she could see her twintails bloat as enormous bulging lumps travelled along their lengths, now stretched ten feet behind her. The pile of ooze was shrinking rapidly... she could feel it all traveling along her twintails, settling in her...

"...W-Whoa-"

Nikki grimaced, parting her legs as her body jutted upwards. A growth spurt hit her all at once. She felt a heaviness towards her chest, her cute perky breasts quickly ballooning to the size of cantaloupes. More of the biomass concentrated in her legs, her thighs, her ass, her gut... she was rapidly growing a foot, and she could feel every ounce of biomass reintegrating with her as her body swelled and surged, growing a foot all at once... but mostly, growing around the width.

A feeling of relief washed over her as she collapsed to her knees, her newly developed gut jiggling emphatically in response. She groaned quietly, looking over herself. Her hands lowered to rest on her engorged, curvy chest—an ample place to store her biomass, along with her thighs and ass. She frowned, lamenting years and years of healthy living and exercise, undone in a single day. Her curves were shapely and plump, and perhaps somewhat sensuous. She was drawn in by the softness of her body, but... this wasn't what she wanted.

"Nn... craaap..." Nikki jiggled her gut, clutching her newly developed love handles. "There's gotta be a way to fix this, right?"

Nikki was getting better with manipulating her body. Her hands tug into her gut, trying to imagine her body as it used to be. The last time she tried it, she left a puddle of biomass around her, but if she incorporated that...

She pressed down on her gut, trying to mold them into a slimmer form. Nikki could feel her body rippling as her excess mass travelled toward her core all at once. She raised her arms, focusing inwardly on restoring her usual proportions...

She beamed to herself, wondering if it was working! She could see her chest deflating, her gut receding back into her body, her stomach flattening out properly again. The feeling of the biomass shifting around inside of her was intimate and strange, but the curious display was so intriguing to Nikki. She could feel the extra mass collecting in her center, before drifting to her extremities. She could feel the biomass bulging around her forearms, traveling to her fingers. She held her palm aloft, seeing her hand... double in size. Along with her forearm.

"...Huh? H-hey, wait a sec-"

Nikki was slow to realize that the room was much smaller than she realized. The extra biomass was simply reinforcing her existing proportions. She staggered to her feet in surprise, bumping her head on the ceiling.

"Ah! Shit..." She yelped in surprise, hunching down as she took in her surroundings. Her body was the same it ever was, all of her well-conditioned proportions restored... only now, she shot up another three feet in height! She was almost ten feet tall; something inside of her clarified that there wasn't another living woman on this planet close to that kind of stature.

This wasn't going to work. She groaned, falling on her back, allowing her body to melt back into a formless slag, slowly pooling along the floor. Nikki resurfaced and rose to her feet, as if cresting the surface of a formless ocean from beneath the waters. Her form was as she remembered, but a puddle at her feet served as a reminder that there was more to her than what meets the eye; that, perhaps, there was more of her she could handle.

"You okay out here Nikki??" Brad's voice from behind snapped her out of her thoughts.

"EEP!" She straightened to attention, shooting quite up, quite literally—her twintails tensed up, their ends planted into the ground, and her body simply rose several feet on its own. She scrunched up her limbs anxiously as she hovered in the air idly, swivelling slowly towards Brad; she crossed her legs to hide her crotch, and pressed her arms against her pronounced chest.

"B-Brad! I'm naked, d-don't look at me!" She stuttered, fidgeting to herself.

"...you, uh, you've been naked since I got here." Brad's mouth flattened. "And why are you naked in your living room?"

"That, that was different, I was..." Nikki looked down to herself; she massaged her curves, willing a set of casual clothing to come to the fore; a hoodie, some yoga pants, the whole shebang. Her silvery skin ebbed away, restoring her peachy hues, as she lowered to the ground... though she couldn't deal with all of the mercurial ooze that pooled around her ankles. She lowered herself to the ground.

"...I-I was in a bad way. I still need to protect my modesty..." Nikki muttered. "Besides that, I was, um... letting you sleep in. D-did you sleep okay?"

"Huh? Uh, I mean, sure, it's just... uhhh..." He was staring at the ooze at her feet. "It was... different. I don't feel any different, I just heard you bumping your head."

"Ah shit, right." Nikki grimaced, lowering her eyes. "I was, uh... experimenting a bit. It's been something I've been racking my head on dealing with... this. All of this." She gestured to the puddle.

"Is... is it stuck to you?" Brad's eyebrow perked up. Nikki shook her head.

"That's not exactly... it's all part of me. And it's clingy, and I dunno how I'm gonna be getting around in broad daylight trying to hide this stuff. Not while keeping my old proportions..." She lowered her head.

"Ah, right... if someone recognized you, they'd ask questions..." Brad rubbed his chin. "Hey, idea. Why don't you put it on your belly?"

"...um?" Nikki cocked her head to the side.

"Yeah, just pretend you're pregnant!" Brad beamed. "People'll leave you alone about it... ooh, and you could cover your own maternity clothes." Brad was warming up to this idea.

"I'm not carrying twelve of your imaginary kids Brad." Nikki pouted. "Besides that, I already talked to Principal Diefenbaker, you think he's gonna believe my case of hyper-pregnancy?" She looked down to her tummy with a grimace. "Jesus, it'd look like I ate half a class..."

"The principal?" Brad tilted his head. "...oh, ohhhh shit, right, there was that thing..."

"What? What thing?" Nikki blinked.

"The open house, over at that school? You wanted me to tag along with you." Brad folded his arms. "Something about how the soccer moms feel threatened when a single woman is influencing their kids..."

Nikki stared off into space, a look of dawning horror crossing her face.

"Oh god. Ohhhhhhhhhh god that's right. Fuck me. Fuck me." She hissed, rubbing her face; her head squished and sloshed with the exaggerated pressure, stretching and deforming in an almost cartoon-like manner.

"I completely forgot, how did I forget? I got my calendar hard wired to my brain, literally, and I need my boyfriend to remind me??" She paced in circles, making little oozy footprints in her slime puddle. "What am I gonna do, what am I gonna do, what what what-"

Nikki's panicked train of thought was interrupted by the blaring of music; her entire body rippled with soundwaves that seemed to come from within. Nikki grimaced; she recognized that it was her favourite radio station, JRMA 109: all classic rock, all of the time.

Classic rock seemed to broaden its portfolio with every year, but Nikki was into the curated classics. Still, she wasn't sure how she felt about one of her twintails letting off a sick guitar riff, interrupting her panicked thoughts.

"W-what're you doing?? What's this about?" Brad staggered back, visibly confused.

"I, uh, I ate my radio alarm clock." Nikki admitted bashfully.

"Ohhhh that's JRMA 109??" Brad's eyes lit up. "They're doing All-Request Friday today, right?"

"God, maybe-" Nikki moaned, feeling her body start to move on its own. She focused inward, trying to get a feel for it.

"I should call them, see if they can put our song on." Brad was already reaching into his pocket.

"Y-yeah sounds great, maybe it's not the time though??" Nikki gulped. She felt her body ripple. She closed her eyes, following where the feeling took her.

Stalks of ooze sprouted from the puddle, forming fractal and beautiful shapes; her body shimmered, her arms swirling and looping on themselves, dotted with patterns that she could only describe as snowflakes. Her neck and torso tingled, before elongating on her own, billowing and refracting like a three-dimension kaleidoscope.

Nikki didn't know what she was feeling. But she felt so alive, so good. It was a familiar sensation, but one that she had been yearning to experience for a long time. She didn't even know, she just closed her eyes as she followed the rhythm. Her body lengthened more and more on its own, swaying to a breeze that only existed in her mindscape.

"Ohhhhhhhhh my god this is amazing..." She whispered. "I feel like an art deco music video or somethingggg..." She moaned, rotating her hips as the otherworldly shapes shimmered up the length of her extended body.

"Nikki??" Brad stepped back, absolutely astonished. Was Nikki enjoying this? It sounded like it, but she wasn't responding to a word he said. He grimaced, nervously looking back and forth.

Then he got an idea.

"Hey Siri, stop??"

The music stopped; Nikki's gyrations came to a crashing halt as she was frozen in an awkward pose, her cheek smooshed against the ceiling, her arms left to coil, surrounded by stalks of ooze that collapsed under their own weight.

...Nikki herself would follow suit, slumping to the floor in heaps upon heaps of shimmering, chrome noodles. Her humanesque-facade ebbed away in the middle of her strange ritual. She stared at a far wall, flopped over like a puppet with its strings cut.

Brad was immediately concerned, and hurried to Nikki's side, kneeling down to get a look at her head. "Hey! Nikki! You okay!?"

His hands hovered around her head, before he manned up and gripped her by her cheeks. Her head bobbed up, her glowing blue eyes narrowed, as if deep in thought.

"...Nikki...?" Brad repeated, a little unsure. Nikki was quiet.

"...that reminds me of that... that thing, from my..." Nikki murmured to herself quietly.

Her eyes lit up all of a sudden! Her lengthened body twisted excitedly as she looked up to Brad.

"Brad! Brad, I have an idea! Can you do me a itsy bitsy teensy solid???" Nikki pleaded.

"Me?? Um, sure, what do you need?" Brad blinked.

"I just need you to run to the superstore up the road and get some things... I think I might know a way to make this size problem go away."

Brad tilted his head. He listened intently as Nikki relayed him an important set of instructions...

---

Fifteen minutes later, they were in the bathroom together. Brad had just unboxed a decidedly cheap-looking portable radio he picked up from the store, and he turned it around in his hands.

Brad glanced over to Nikki's bathroom which had been filled halfway up with mercurial ooze. Nikki herself stood apart from it, with only a narrow thread connecting Nikki by the waist to the tub of ooze.

"So, uh..." Brad blushed slightly, fidgeting in confusion. "What's the game plan here?"

"I had a dream about it." Nikki nodded.

"...a dream??" Brad cocked his head to the side.

"Yeah! Um, so, basically, this stuff just, just really wants to stick together, and there's like this mental lock I have? I can't shed the extra weight, so I need to, I dunno, meditate or something." Nikki tried her best to explain. "I think music has a really good meditative effect on me, so I wanna see if it loosens the gears a bit."

"Ohhh, okay." Brad nodded robotically.

"...did you get all that?" Nikki tilted her head.

"Maybe? Sort of." Brad grimaced. "So you want me to leave this radio over here-"

"H-hey, don't put it near the bathtub!" Nikki held her arm out to catch Brad. "That's way too close, it's like leaving a steak for a shark!"

"O-oh, right, um..." Brad looked around. He propped it up on top of Nikki's medicine cabinet. "...Are you gonna be able to reach that?"

"What do you mean can I reach that, I got like..." Nikki scoffed, shaking her head. "J-just set it to play, okay?"

"Alright, lemme just..."

Kaclick. A smooth jazz melody filled the air, and Nikki froze up once again. She swayed, pushing into Brad as the rhythm gripped her. Her hands clenched against his chest as her body pressed up against him.

"N-Nikki?" Brad stammered, lowering his arms to embrace her. His cheeks were scarlet hot; he didn't need to remind himself that Nikki was technically naked.

"It... it's happening..." Nikki moaned; she clenched her legs together. She leaned in closer, feeling her body elongating, wrapping around Brad in a tightly coiled embrace. She felt like a weight had been removed.

Unbeknownst to her, the narrow strand connecting her to the tub disconnected from her, slithering like a snake into the tub of ooze, which burbled and surged to life, shimmering coalescing patterns waving through the air. Nikki glanced behind her, a dreamy look in her eyes.

"O-okay, this is, uhhh, a bit freaky, but maybe we can just..." Brad shuffled for the doorway as the radio played, dragging Nikki along. He closed the door behind them, perhaps a touch too urgently; the music was muffled enough that it didn't reach Nikki quite as potently...

It seemed that the spell it held on Nikki had dissipated. She blinked, looked up to Brad. And then back to the door. She stared silently, studying the wooden frame.

"...you, uh, doing okay? Nikki?" Brad tilted his head.

"I... yeah. I think so." Nikki muttered to herself. She stood up straight. "Holy crap, it... it worked! I shed all the weight! Now I look normal! Oh, my tummy's just fine now, and I got the toned calves I missed and-"

"You're still silvery." Brad pointed out. Nikki paused with a grimace. She looked over herself one more time. In her moment of weakness, she let her true colours shine again.

And, once again, she was naked. It was her natural state after all.

"...r-right." She shook her head, closing her eyes. The silvery skin shimmered, restoring her skin and flourishing back into her casual clothing. She looked up to Brad with a smile. "Gotta tell you, it is such a relief that this worked out, I didn't want to be a hermit for the rest of my life! I can go outside, and nobody'll notice a thing!~"

"Haha, I'll say..." Brad rubbed the back of his neck, looking back to the door. He had mixed feelings about this whole thing; was such a setup even going to work? They picked up the radio at K-Mart of all places, it didn't inspire much confidence...

But he didn't have the heart to break Nikki's spirits. Her smile was radiant; he tried his best to reciprocate.

"Hey, let's celebrate!" Nikki pounded a fist into her palm. "Smoothie bar, right? Let's get something cold and fruity! My treat!~" Nikki bounced up and down. "Something casual and fun we can do together!~"

Nikki leaned a little closer to Brad. She was warm, and her entire body pulsed with warmth. Brad had his reservations—Nikki mentioned something about government agents popping up in town—but with all of this effort just to help Nikki return to some semblance of her normal self...

"Yeah. Sounds great." Brad nodded. "I'm in!"

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