Melty Mercury From Outer Space: Chapter 4

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 4

Nikki had woken up in a dingy stall, out in the women's changing room. Even stranger, she was in the stall with Brad. Normally, someone would come to suspect some degree of shenanigans going on between the two of them. Thankfully, in this case, Brad had come to Nikki's rescue... as far as he knew. 

"Okay, Nikki, you didn't hit your head, right?" Brad motioned with his hand. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"...This is the girl's room... and this is a girl's stall. You can't be in here, you big creep..." Nikki groaned, rubbing her head.

"H-hey, this isn't a time for jokes, Nikki! Sheesh..." Brad heaved a sigh, slumping back against the floor. "C'mon, let's get you on your feet. Slowly..."

Nikki wasn't in the right headspace to object, and lazily went along with it. She was still pretty out of it. She felt sore all over, and there was this heaviness—mentally, spiritually, physically—that pervaded her. 

Brad felt the heaviness too, grunting to get the girl with a lithe frame back up on her feet. "Shit, girl, you weigh a ton..."

"You can't just tell that to a girl..." Nikki slurred, staggering to her feet. Her eyes lowered as her energy slowly came back to her, and the awareness of her body was coming back to her. In the corner of her mind, she felt something different. She felt like something might've... entered her. But she had no reason to suspect such a thing happened; she was alone in the stall.

A casual brush of her hands to the front of her pants indicated nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe she was still out of it...

Brad took her to a nearby bench, doting over her. He reached for a water bottle, raising it to her lips.

"Thanks," Nikki muttered, taking a swig.

Brad stared at Nikki, studying her face closely. As his mind pieced things together, a forlorn look crossed his face.

"...You haven't been drinking at the gym, have you?" Brad asked with a serious tone. This was enough to get a disgusted look from Nikki.

"What!? God no, I'm not stupid! Nobody's that stupid! It's..." Nikki's head turned to the side. 

"...I felt great doing my workouts, but when I hit the showers, I was... I got really tired all of a sudden. Like I wanted to throw up. A-and I... fainted."

Nikki didn't much care for being vulnerable, especially concerning her mysterious condition she didn't really understand.

"Nikki, what the hell happened? If you got a bad fever, you can't be bringing that to the gym." Brad wondered aloud with a frown.

"If I knew I had a fever, I wouldn't have come! Maybe I got it from one of your other muscle-head friends." Nikki glared.

"Hey, don't take it out on me. I worry about you, and I don't want you overworking yourself." Brad frowned empathetically.

"...Okay." Nikki sighed, turning to her water bottle. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, I just... I'm still kinda reeling a bit."

"No kiddin'. Still, cut me a bit of slack. We're about 30 minutes to close, and I see a girl passed out in the changing room? That's pretty-"

"What?" Nikki's eyes widened, turning to Brad. "Could you repeat that?"

"...I-it's thirty minutes 'til we close. I gotta clean up the equipment and stuff." Brad blinked.

Nikki stared, her breath caught in her throat. Her mouth opened and closed as if to say something...

...Her eyes drifted to a clock hanging over the door to exit the changing room. It was 10:30pm.

"...Ohhhh myyy GODDD!" 

Nikki scrambled to her feet. Sure enough, the clock corroborated his words. A chill ran through her, and her jaw went slack. She staggered back.

At this sort of moment, one's heart would begin to race, filling with dread and anxiety. It hadn't occurred to Nikki, at that moment, that she didn't feel an anxious heartbeat; she was too wrapped up in the dawning realization.

"...Shit... shit." Nikki hissed, shaking her head. "How the hell did I... I-I thought I had more time!" Nikki clutched her head, her eyes darting from side to side.

Strength returning to her legs, she pushed Brad's phone to her chest with an abrupt shove that caused him to stagger back in surprise. 

"Nikki??" Brad blinked, not sure what was going on.

"I still need to finish my lesson plan!" Nikki frowned, and broke into a sprint.

"GOTTAGONOWBYEBRADSEEYA" She blurted every polite farewell she could think of, already sprinting for the door. Her lithe figure squeezed between two chatting bodybuilders in her marathon bid to get out as quickly as possible. 

"Wait, Nikki!? NIKKI!" But his pleas fell on deaf ears, and he was left alone in the women's changing room. He could only wonder to himself what could possibly be happening to her. That girl was going through some shit. Not to mention she left her bag behind.

...Well, he still had a job to do here. He should at least check on the toilet Nikki was using.

"...Huh? Rousseau told me he left the pipe wrench right here..." Brad muttered, rubbing his head.

---

Nikki didn't even bother changing out of her sweaty tracksuit when she got home. Her one-track mind was focused on getting home as quickly as possible, throwing open her notebook, and throwing together any kind of lesson plan for the immediately imminent school year. She only had this weekend to get her shit sorted out. 

She ran like an absolute madman, and even ignored more than one traffic law, going on a tear through the streets, to her building, scrambling up about 6 flights of stairs, and through the door to her apartment. It was the best time she made yet, and somehow she didn't feel as winded as she should've been with the Herculean effort. None of this occurred to her—she focused only on getting to her work desk. 

Opening her laptop with such force that it threatened to tear the screen from its hinges, she opened a word document and began typing furiously. Even if the first week was something of a throwaway—introductions, reviewing the syllabus, going off the cuff on introducing the talking points of the year, learning the kids' names—she still needed to prepare a syllabus from scratch. Not to mention the rest of the lesson plan. Nikki hated going in without a structured plan...

In the back of her mind, something didn't feel right about any of this. She was usually so on top of things! She had all day to work on this stuff, but she slept it all away...

...Not that she wanted to. Her fainting spells were becoming more pronounced. Maybe she was coming down with a fever? And she had so many of those vivid dreams. Like the one with "Brad"...

Subconsciously, her legs crossed defensively. 

Her hand raised, absentmindedly toying with one of her long twintails. It felt hefty in her palm. She recalled the strange things that were happening to her today. The changes with her eyes, the fever, the... the thing with the faucet. 

Her eyes glanced over to the sink in the corner, and a needy pang rippled in her tummy. She suddenly had a craving. She sharply shook her head, trying to put that thought aside. It was a disgusting idea, she shouldn't be drinking brown water!

She tried to refocus herself on her work, trying to bury her suspicious thoughts to the back of her mind. She had to finish what she was doing...

...But her attempts to get back on track failed pretty quickly. She was really curious about her eyes. Rising from her chair, she paced over to a nearby mirror, leaning forward to get a better look. 

Her eyes widened. Her hazel-green eyes had changed indeed, to the brightest blue she ever seen. They were, like, sky blue. She could get lost in them, it was almost like they glowed. She leaned closer to get a better look at herself...

Gurgle.

Her stomach lurched suddenly, and Nikki felt the strength in her legs suddenly dissipate. Wincing, she clutched her gut, leaning forward. Lowering her head and gritting her teeth in considerable pain, her twintails flailed behind her, as if caught in a breeze. 

Her skin broke out into goosebumps as she felt another fever fill out her entire form. Only this time, it was more intense, nauseating. The contents of her stomach were churning, and she felt like throwing up at any moment. 

"Augh!" Nikki cried out, feeling some kind of intense heat building up inside her. She felt like a volcano ready to erupt. Heaving, her eyes drifted to a door not far from the kitchen complex. If she hurried, she could make it to the toilet and let everything out. It was just the worst kind of fever, nature's payback for drinking the nasty well water...

She staggered to her feet, and tried to run for it, but her right twintail inadvertently wrapped around her leg, sending her crashing to the floor once again. She could feel something inside her sloshing back and forth from the impact, and she was bracing to upchuck it all then and there. 

And the heat inside her continued to build to a dangerous point. It was absolutely sweltering, she felt like she was going to burn alive. What kind of hell fever was this, she wondered, moaning and writhing along the ground. 

She planted her hands on the ground, hunched her back, and heaved, with no regard for where her insides landed. The floor was linoleum, so it wouldn't be hard to clean up, once she recovered... if she recovered. Her eyes were closed in pain, feeling hot, caustic liquid spill from her diaphragm. 

"Oh god... that's the last time I drink something like- ... what??"

Nikki's eyes slowly opened, expecting to find a partially digested lunch in front of her. It would've been disgusting, but at the very least it would've been familiar. Nikki didn't know what to make of what lay before her. 

It was a small puddle of glossy silver liquid, thick and viscous. It resembled mercury in how it quivered. Nikki's jaw hung in utter astonishment.

"Was that... inside me...?" Nikki gasped. Her stomach churned, indicating that it wasn't done with her yet. The liquid metal began to glow white-hot, and Nikki recoiled from the intense heat. 

All of a sudden, it latched itself across the front of her tracksuit, painfully pressing against her. Nikki gasped, scrambling backwards as the heat surrounding her, inside and out, began to crescendo. A burning smell pierced her nostrils, the stench of scorched cotton filling her lungs. 

"THE FUCK IS THIS!?" Nikki exclaimed, arching her back in pain as heat spread across her entire body. The searing heat was painful, but the pain subsided quickly, almost as if her nervous system was collapsing quickly from the stress. 

To her abject horror, there was more to come. More inside of her, looking for new and creative ways to escape. She felt every pore in her body stretched in her limits, allowed to crest the air around her as her clothes were burned up entirely in her intense fever. She could feel something slimy climb up her esophagus, slide into and around her mouth, and then seal it shut.

"MMPH!" Nikki futilely tried to cry out, but she hardly make a sound. Her windpipe was so filled with mercury, she could hardly breathe. She glanced down in horror, spreading her legs as a slimy, bulbous substance breached the lips of her inner walls and began to spread, hugging her ass cheeks and holding tight.

As the silvery substance spread slowly across her body in undulating waves, she could feel her hands, her legs, her chest, her back, all draped in a thin layer of ooze. She wriggled as much as she could, but the cocoon was moments away from sealing all around her. Her eyes rose with horror as the slime caressed her facial cheeks, up and up, until her eyes fell under the cover of the ooze as well. 

She was rocked to her core, draped in darkness, unable to see a thing of what was happening to her. She slumped to the floor with a wet flop, bombarded with a myriad of slick sensations that made her sick to her stomach. Her body bent and contorted in strange ways, but without eyes to see, it felt like all of her senses were failing her. 

Soon, it all became too much to bear, and Nikki simply passed out from the shock...

---

Nikki was surrounded in darkness. She couldn't see in front of herself. She couldn't even look below her. Did she even have a body in this still void? She had no idea where she was. Was she even alive?

...Was this death? The thought crossed her mind. Maybe this was all there was after death. The thought filled her with dread. 

Hello!? Nikki wanted to shout out to the voice, but alas, she had no mouth with which to speak. And it seemed like no one was around to listen to her. 

There was darkness as far as she could see. She would've held her breath, if she had breath to give. In this void, she had no body, only some impression of a soul drifting endlessly.

...Or so she thought. Before long, shapes in the darkness began to form. Stars emerged to dot the infinite blackness. Land formed beneath her, craggy and unforgiving. A world was being created, and developing right in front of her.

It kind of reminded her of some nature documentary she watched about Earth. But the most she observed, the stranger things got.

In no time at all, trees grew from the soil and the rocks, towering plants unlike any she had ever seen before.  They were fat at the width, the bark was a bizarre shade of green, the fronds above were purple. A cursory glance to the sky indicated the presence of two suns, their combined oppressive heat beating down on the world below. 

Nikki didn't recognize any of this. She watched silently as an observer, watching the scene play out before her eyes, or lack thereof. Even in a setting as unique as this, she recognized it as some kind of desert, perhaps an oasis...

A horrible storm brewed above, drenching the world below in... it looked like rain at first glance, but it was different. It was caustic, eating through the purple fronts effortlessly. Puddles gathered across the sun-baked stones. 

Boom! A crash of lightning struck one of the puddles, resting in the shadow of an oddly curved, top-heavy boulder. Nikki focused her attention on movement within the puddle, making out some kind of... amoebic lifeform. 

To Nikki's surprise, it expanded quickly, spreading across the sand, absorbing energy from the sun and sand from the rocks below. It was growing so fast, stretching its tendrils along the heated surface, detecting for movement and resources. 

It paused. There was a creature nearby, a wormlike creature that opened its maw, using small suckers protruding from its mouth—Nikki counted at least four—to prod along the ground. The worm-like thing was wholly oblivious to the silent approach of the shuddering mass, and hardly resisted as it was ambushed from behind.

Nikki wasn't sure what she was watching. It was dreadful to watch, but on some visceral level, it was... comforting. She had no idea why. This was all so strange to her. Why was she seeing this?

She stared silently as the wormlike's creature was broken down so thoroughly, so completely, and then added to the slimey life form's mass. It continued to write along the ground, growing more and more...

---

DOODLE DING DING DA DING!

"Wah!" 

Nikki was breathing heavily, shooting up into a seated position. Her eyes were wide open, and she was trembling. Her head turned back and forth, her breathing slowing down on its own...

She was back in her apartment. Actually, she was sitting in the middle of it, sprawled out on the linoleum floor. She felt naked, exposed.

"...Huh??"

Nikki looked down, examining herself and touching her body all over. There... didn't seem to be anything out of place. She was even wearing her tracksuit from the gym!

"But... what... what even was...?"

Nikki was absolutely floored. Was it another dream? A hallucination? It felt so real... and yet, here she was, in the safety of her apartment, like nothing had even happened. She rested a hand against her stomach, a tentative look on her face as she studied herself. 

She staggered back to her feet to look at herself in the mirror. She was all there, just as she remembered from a few moments ago. There was still the concern of those spooky blue eyes. And if those special eyes weren't tricking her, she could've sworn her twintails had grown a few inches since she last checked. Now they practically reached to her knees.

DOODLE DING DING DA DING!

She gasped, turning her head to the right. Nikki was so jumpy nowadays, but... it wasn't anything special. Just her phone going off. She received a text just now. 

"Oh my god... I need to get more sleep. If it weren't for the flippin' nightmares..." Nikki muttered to herself, staggering over to her work desk. Holding her phone in her hand, she looked it over. 

"...hm? It's from Brad."

Nikki!! U left ur clothes at the gym!!! U want them right???? I can bring them over!!

And I got a thermos of chicken soup for u!! It might help u feel bettr!!!

"...oh. Right." Nikki blushed. She was in such a rush to get out, it had completely slipped her mind to hit her locker. At least Brad was the one who found them. She couldn't imagine what would happen if some other creep went digging for her undergarments...

Nikki's eyes drifted to the window, wondering if Brad was heading over right now. Her right hand pecked out a message idly.

OMG thats so sweet, ur a lifesaver! Yes, please, Im at my apartment! 412 @ Burlington ^^

A swoosh punctuated the sending of the text, and Nikki lowered her hand to place the phone down...

...Only, as she raised her downward-facing palm, her phone rose back up with her. Nikki tilted her head, shaking her hand. Why was her phone... sticking to her hand?

As if to answer her question, a sickening shlorp just out of eyesight punctuated her concern. Her eyes shot to her extended hand.

"...wh-what the fuck...?"

Nikki croaked at the bizarre sight. From her forearm down, her arm had shifted from her healthy, peachy skin to a slick, shiny, metallic substance. It was the same stuff from her dream!

...No. The terrible realization struck her. It was no dream. She stared in astonishment, tracing her arm down to where her hand should've been. It had shifted into some kind of tendril, coiling around her phone, sinking into her silvery mass. 

It was connected to her. She could feel it. She tried to shake her arm, trying to wrest her phone away, but the abhorrent material only sucked more and more, pulling to bring the phone into itself.

"Got to... get it out...!"

She reached her other hand over, trying desperately to tear it out. But it was already in too deep, and sinking into the material slowly, slowly. She grunted, closing her eyes as she struggled, only to find another sensation overcome her.

She peeked through one eye and gasped, finding her other hand had deformed as well into the similar goop. It resembled liquid mercury to an uncanny degree, and it was eating her phone! She tried to pull her hand back...

Only for her arms to press against her chest. Suddenly, the cotton fibres making up the tracksuit melted away in turn, into the same silvery sludge as her arms. She had unwittingly pushed the smartphone deeper within her viscous body. Nikki winced, she could feel it inside of her. As if to coax it along, the tendrils that used to be her arms merged with her chest, binding herself together.

"Nn!" Nikki moaned, her knees buckled together as a wave of energy washed over her. All at once, the visage of her human body evaporated, her clothing, her skin, even her hair, washed away to give way to the same silvery substance. Her eyes, glowing blue at this point, winced in a combination of alien discomfort and contented relief.

"...what... why does it feel so..." Nikki muttered, her voice suddenly having a tinny, echoey quality to it. She slumped to the floor, her shins smushing against the linoleum like they lacked structural support. She was shaking, feeling the phone inside her. Feeling the substance inside of her... comprising her, slowly breaking down the phone. Revealing its secrets, its workings to her. Making it part of her. 

A feeling of power crashed over her like a wave, and she moaned, flopping on her back with a wet plop. She writhed for a moment, but the moment passed all too quickly. She gasped, lowering her arms to the side. She could feel her arms reforming their digits as they slipped out from her chest.

She rubbed her hands down her legs, smoother than they've ever been. Her hands created ripples in her skin as she absentmindedly felt herself, a cloud of bliss hanging in her mind. Clarity of thought returned to her, and her bright blue eyes shot open.

She jumped to her feet, now in the presence of a full body mirror as if to look herself over. She examined herself in quiet awe.

The form of her was familiar, and every movement she made, her reflection mimicked perfectly. But it was so alien to her. Her feet had lost their digits, as if she were wearing metallic stockings. She was completely naked, her clothes dissolving into the same silvery muck as the rest of her. She felt herself all over, feeling for any sort of opening.

But she was sealed from her front to her back. Even her petite belly button had been paved over by the slick substance that coated her all over. Her mouth was agape, her eyes glowing brighter still. 

The strangest sensation of all... well, there were two sensations, and they were both attached to her head. The twintails she had worked so hard on this morning received the most dramatic change, each one slowly writhing and hovering behind her, as if she were underwater. The growth was stunning. Each one must've been at least as long as she was tall! Maybe even several feet more than that. It was hard to tell by the way they curved around in the air like a snake ready to strike.

Nikki trembled at the sight of herself. She tried to pinch herself, but felt no pain; her fingers merely dipped into her slick substance. 

Nikki stared herself over for some time. One thought pervaded her mind, her whole being. 

"Wh... what the hell am I...?"

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