Chapter #1First day of the rest of your life! by: Gimlet   This is not a good day!
Your name is Lucy Marshall, twenty three, wants to be a fashion designer (or possibly a graphic artist) and has high hopes of making it in the industry! But you can't live on hopes alone and the last few months have been hard. You've spent more time with books at night, going over everything you can think of to help you get a leg up in the industry, to find the people that might help you get started, to improve your artwork for the designs themselves, and unfortunately have had to work days too. Recently it's been at a Mc Phearson Burger bar, and the work hours, combined with your research & training were starting to get to you... or you thought that was the reason for the aches, pains and muscle cramps.
When you went to your Doctor for something you were surprised at the result. He suggested you visit a Tau Clinic! You, visit a Super-Finder?
Well, after a lot of soul searching you made up your mind and went to the nearest one in the City of Burgsville. The last two hours have been spent in white walled rooms, filling in forms, getting blood tests, urine tests, skin tests, getting scanned, sensored, probed and anything else they could throw at you! It's been rough.
Now you are lying in a fairly comfy bed, alone in a small room wearing only a standard patient smock they gave you.
"Lucy?"
The voice snaps you from your mental wandering and you turn to see a female doctor enter. She isn't one of the doctors you've spoken to so far today. Why someone new all of a sudden?
"Yes, have you got the results yet?" you ask, expectantly.
The doctor doesn't smile, always a bad sign, and sits down by the bed before speaking, another bad sign.
"Miss Marshall, my name is doctor Ingerson. We've gone over the samples you've given us quite thoroughly and the Tau scan, MRI and xrays confirm the results. You may find this a little awkward. First, you do have Tau abilities, and they are a previously discovered pattern. We have mapped them before and have experience in their functioning."
You aren't sure whether to jump for joy or cringe in fear. It's obvious that there is something that the doctor isn't saying yet, something not pleasant!
"Please doctor, what is.. are my powers?"
Doctor Ingerson sighs then looks down at her tablet.
"Well, the combination is an odd one, not terribly common. Firstly you have an altered cellular structure, making your skin, muscles, flesh etc rather stretchy. Secondly any of your bone joints can dislocate painlessly, and several bones can part and move that normally don't, for example your ribcage can part in the middle. Thirdly your muscle structure has started to expand, in strength certainly, but also more muscle groups are forming, complete with nerve linkages. Fourthly your bone structure in your torso, ie ribs, spine, hip bones etc, all have undergone a rather unusual reformation internally. They are gradually forming specialized cists that seem to distort the fabric of reality, bending space. The upshot of this is that the area contained within these bones, effectively the interior of your torso, is becoming larger on the inside than the outside."
At this you gasp. Stretching, yes you've heard of, dislocating bones, sure, better muscles, of course, but becoming larger inside than you are outside? That's weird!
Before you can interrupt the doctor continues.
"Fifthly your body has drastically altered how it metabolizes food. The stomach is now almost useless for this purpose, and even the upper intestine. Now the middle and lower intestine absorb dead organic material, mainly meat, or high protein vegetable matter, directly into the intestinal wall. This has caused a drastic increase in efficiency of your digestive system and your body mass has already increased to slightly over two hundred and sixty pounds, and still rising."
"That's ridiculous!" you but in, "I weighed myself this morning and only weigh a hundred and twenty!"
The doctor smiles at you, the first friendly expression she's shown you so far.
"Quite correct, and it will remain somewhat similar. Weight isn't affected as the distortion your bones create also affects gravity. It doesn't however affect inertia and you will find that you have more difficulty in slowing down when you are moving. Your increased musculature will enable you to walk and run almost normally, even faster than normal despite your mass, but stopping after wards may be a challenge. Most of your extra mass is created as your body grows to fill the distorted cavity within your torso. Already the flesh, organs etc have become shaped to the odd curvature of space that fills your torso so you would no longer survive without the distortion. On the plus side all your vital organs are buried far deeper inside you than in a normal person, and also the extra weight, indeed any extra.. Ahem.. weight you gain will not show externally except on rather advanced scanners."
This is getting incredibly weird and you wonder if there's more. The doctor takes a breath before continuing and you realize there IS more!
"Finally you also have a drastically altered respiratory system. Your body breaths more than usual, though you may not notice any difference in breathing pattern. You take in and store almost double the usual amount of oxygen in the blood, but also have reservoirs of air forming inside you that can allow you to hold your breath far longer. The respiratory system seems also to be connected to an organ we have labelled a metabolic charger. Strictly speaking it takes part of your food that the body normally can't use and... compresses it with distortion similar to the fields that create the enlarged space within you. This creates huge releases of energy which then catalyzes with carbon dioxide running through the respiratory system that this organ weaves around, thus liberating more oxygen for you to breath. In short you will most likely be able to hold your breath almost indefinitely, and will actually have the air inside you regulated to stay breathable."
Most of what she just said made no sense to you at all, but never need to breath again? Weird!
The next few minutes pass almost in a blur, you vaguely hearing the doctor console you that you do not qualify for certain government programs, probably shouldn't apply to the usual accredited Super Hero training establishments, and some other things that seem equally pessimistic.
As far as you can tell the only thing you have is a slightly increased strength and would be more difficult to kill in the torso (though anyone planning on shooting your head wouldn't have to worry too much about you afterwards). The stretching doesn't stretch your bones so isn't much use to capture or subdue super villains. The brief visions you had of leaping or flying over the rooftops, defeating criminals disappear and you realize you are probably going to be an Ord, someone with Super power, but who leans an 'ordinary' life. You wonder what job that the powers you do have will help with?
Finally the doctor smiles, hands you some standard government leaflets of the regulatory issues regarding Supers, and leaves you to yourself.
What are you going to do?  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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