Part 7

The Escapist!

Part 7: The Device

The seventh time happened when I went to remove a mystery device buried in a town park.

This incident happened after PUBES Inc. had finally become successful. We had become one of the preeminent Dcum and alchemy cleanup companies with a reputation of providing quick, competent, and discrete services at a reasonable price. We were often the first people alchemists called when accidents happened and increasingly the first people anyone called when an unexplained transformation happened in their community. It was keeping us busy and proving to be a fairly lucrative business.

We had also, as Avola suggested, started a side business as alchemical safety consultants. It seemed that the companies that insured alchemists were willing to incentivize better business practices to cut down on claims by angry, transformed victims. As a result, alchemists were in the market for advice from the ladies from PUBES Inc. on how best to reduce accidents. Add in Avola’s inherent ability to detect mana and therefore provide inspection services, and we had a business that model that was also profitable between accidents.

All this meant we could invest in some proper equipment. Gone were the days of renting a van, using hardware store garbage cans, and hoping rubber gloves, gumboots, and a facemask would provide protection. These days we had our own truck, PUBES Inc. proudly emblazoned on the sides and the very state of the art in heavy duty containment canisters and cleanup equipment. We had also invested in state of the art hazmat suits with thick, impermeable rubber body suits, helmets, cowls, and shatterproof plastic facemasks. The suits also, when worn correctly, had an airtight seal and an integrated air supply that meant we would be protected from both splashes and airborne transformative agents. After my near miss in ‘The Freyan Temple’ I decided that an alchemy cleanup crew could never be too cautious.

Our business fortunes also meant we could hire consultants like Vikki Time, who was along for this adventure. Vikki was a mechanical engineer by training and made her living by helping alchemists design and build new devices. This meant Vikki was an expert in all manner of transformative contraptions, and so we frequently paid her to come help us deal with leaky or malfunctioning devices. Vikki always gave us a good rate, claiming that she liked spending the day with us and that it was always fun to see other inventors' work. She also admitted that diagnosing the problems in broken apparatus was extremely helpful to her, since it taught her where things were prone to failure and what to avoid in her own devices. Vikki called it a mutually beneficial business friendship.

For this job we were squatting around a small hole in a small park in the centre of a small town in our hazmat suits. Some workers dug up something metallic while putting in a new drainage line and when one of them accidentally pierced part of the thing with their shovel he was splashed with alchemy. The poor man was now a beautiful woman who had single cylopian eye, nine breasts arranged like a diamond on her long torso, and an octopus’ skirt of tentacles for legs. She seemed happy, but the town’s mayor wanted the device removed and park decontaminated lest there be more accidents. Since we didn’t know what we were dealing with, we called Vikki Time, donned our thickest most protective rubber hazmat suits with the integrated air supply, and set to work with the utmost caution. I’d had too many near accidents to be anything but cautious.

Vikki and I were carefully digging the device out of the ground with a pair of small trowels.  As it was likely contaminated, every scoop of dirt was put in watertight containers for safe disposal. It was slow and, with our heavy moon suits, sweaty work. Avola just knelt and watched.

I gave her a look and she waggled her antenna at me. “I’m concentrating on the mana fields,” she said. I just kept staring at her. She waved a hand dismissively at me and snorted, “Please. You know I don’t dig.”

Slowly, slowly, we carefully uncovered the mystery device. While it was still half underground, the visible part was a long metal cylinder with a circumference I could maybe just get my arms around. I couldn’t tell how long the cylinder was, since most of it was buried, but we had uncovered at least four feet of the device. The exposed end of the device had a smooth rounded end and welded to the walls of the main cylinder were a lattice of round metal pods, each about the size of my head. There were dozens of these pods visible, with potentially dozens more still buried. It was one of these pods that the worker had broken open while digging and where the dcum solution had leaked out of. I suspected and Avola’s mana-sense confirmed that the other pods held similarly transformative contents.

“So what do you think?” I asked Vikki.

“Gosh,” she brought a hand up to chew on her nails, her thinking tick, and bounced her glove off the faceplate of her hazmat suit. She grinned sheepishly. “Gosh. Well… these pods here don’t look particularly useful. If you look at the one the worker broke open, there isn’t any internal opening so it’s just a bunch of small, separate metal tanks filled with alchemy.”

“For storage and transport maybe?” I suggested.

“If it is, it’s damn stupid. The bigger a storage tank the more efficient the space, less surface area and more volume.”

“Maybe the little tanks are for all different types of alchemy?” offered Avola.

“Could be,” Vikki nodded, “but you would still expect there to be some sort of opening to charge and empty the contents: a spigot, valve, or heck, even a bung hole. I don’t see anything like that, it’s as if all these storage tanks were never meant to be opened.”

“Why would you make an inefficient storage tank that you’d have to break open?” Avola asked.

“Break open…,” muttered Vikki. “Oh Demons! Fuck! We have to get out of here!”

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“It’s a fucking bomb! A big fucking bomb with a transformation payload! Those tanks, they’re like that to spread alchemy in the blast. And shrapnel.” Vikki had climbed to her feet, face sweating in her facemask. “We need to get clear of this, who knows if this thing is still dangerous!”

“But shouldn’t we… try and contain it? Disarm it?”

“Thesca, we are neither equipped nor trained to decommission an explosive device. We need to get the fuck away from this thing and call… the army or someone. Probably evacuate the town.”

Avola was already jogging away, “Guys!? Why aren’t you running!?”

Vikki and I looked at each other stupidly for a moment and then broke into a run after Avola, sprinting clear of the park and down a quiet residential street. We zigged and zagged around buildings, putting several blocks between us and the transformation bomb. Panting heavily, Vikki waved us over to a particularly strong looking stone apartment. “We should be far enough away now,” she gasped, “going to… try and call… the police.” She fumbled with the seals of her hazmat suit, releasing the cowl and pulling the helmet off her head.

“I don’t know that you should be taking that off…” I said.

“Can’t be helped,” she smiled bravely, face red from exertion. ‘Gotta warn the town.” She reached into the neck hole of the hazmat suit and started rooting around in her shirt’s chest pocket for her cellphone. She pulled it out and fumbling with her rubber gloved hands dialed the emergency number, “Hello…”

And that’s when the bomb exploded!

The entire world lurched, and a roar louder than anything thundered through the air. Windows all around us shattered, and despite the distance and layers of buildings between us and the park, we still stumbled as we were buffeted by the shockwave of the device. Debris clattered down around us, dust and a strangely pink cloud of smoke filled the air. My ears were ringing. “Fuck!” exclaimed Vikki, coughing and breathing in the glowing smoke. “Oh,” she said. And then she started to transform.

The first things that happened were that Vikki’s hair started to fall out and her hazmat suit and clothes started to melt and burn off her body as if she were very, very hot. She whimpered a little and then moaned in pleasure as her eyes grew larger on her face, and merged together into a great, central cyclopean eye. Meanwhile her naked feet and toes grew long, and mobile, and then plunged into the ground, rooting Vikki to the spot. She squealed in orgasm, and her arms crept back into her shoulders and her legs merged together into a central stalk, sealing over her vagina. Vikki panted heavily for a moment, until her mouth sealed up as her eyeball grew larger and larger, becoming a huge ocular globe that took up her entire head aside from a pair of small nostrils and her ears, strangely human and still pierced with small stud earings. Her armless torso became much thinner, her hips and shoulders contracting into slight bulges in her otherwise smooth stalk, the cleft of her ass and asshole the only obvious imperfection and opening. Vikki’s eye lidded with obvious pleasure as her small breasts swelled, becoming much larger, then multiplied as she slowly grew fifteen breasts arranged in three rings of five that surrounded her body. She blinked her eye, and it seemed she was done changing.

Vikki Time, alchemical device inventor, was now a limbless stalk creature, rooted to the ground with nothing but a lot of breasts and a huge eyeball.

“Vikki…” I said cautiously.

Vikki’s eye looked at me with shocked panic. She looked down at her changed body, moving her eyestalk head frantically all around to see her entire altered form. Then she looked up, blinking in confusion. Her eye widened in surprise for a moment and then her entire body became suddenly rigid, her eye looking staring blankly at us.

“Vikki?” Avola asked, waving her arm.

The eye continued to stare at us as if we weren’t there, Vikki either gone or unable to answer.

“Fuck…” I said. “What do we do?”

“I guess we have to call for help… see if anyone needs assistance…”

“My phone is in the truck,” I said.

“So is mine,” Avola admitted.

“And the truck is by the park…” I said.

“At ground zero.”

“Then I guess that’s where we are headed.”

Avola stepped closer to Vikki and leaned forward so her face was just in front of her vacant, unblinking eye. “Vikki, darling, if you can hear me, we are going to get help. Get you help.”

“Hang in there,” I added lamely.

And so we set off, two hazmat clad figures walking through a smoky, too still town. As far away as we were, the houses were all intact aside from the broken windows. Here and there we passed other victims of the blast, townsfolk transformed into identical eyestalk creatures to Vikki, and rooted to where they had been standing at the time of the blast. Some of these cyclopean, multibreasted creatures stared blankly unmoving, but here or there we would pass one that was looking around, eye wide with worry and confusion. Avola would approach these eyestalks and tell them we were going for help and that everything would be okay, often earning a dubious nod in return. As we walked we passed more and more eyestalk creatures, rooted to the sidewalk, or through the floor of their cars, or staring out of house windows. It seemed that everyone in the town who had breathed the smoke from the blast had been transformed in the same way.

And then we rounded a corner close to the park and saw the damage caused by the bomb itself. The buildings around the park, upscale houses, trendy offices, and cute shops, had been destroyed by the blast. In their place were smoking shells of broken buildings and heaps of rubble, but fortunately, bizarrely, no bodies. I breathed a sigh in relief. The park itself, now visible, was itself a ruin: trees, gardens, playgrounds, and landscaping had all been obliterated in a flash. But there, instead of a smoking crater at the site of the explosion, was a massive tower of wriggling flesh.

Right where the bomb had been was now what looked like a huge, five story tall tower built of titflesh, great huge breasts stacked in a pile that were studded with smaller tits of all sizes. Instead of nipples, each of these breasts had grown something else. On the very largest breasts, the automobile sized ones that made the foundation and structure of the tower, were long arm-thick tentacles that ended in penis glans instead of teats. On the medium sized breasts, each as large as a person, the nipples had scrunchy vulva and gaping cunts in the centre. The cock tentacles waved around, rooting for these nipple-cunts, and finding one, began to fuck them. The smallest breasts, those that were the size of tits on a woman, had lipples; smiling, chattering, moaning mouths in place to nipples. We approached this towering monstrosity cautiously, wondering what had happened.

As we approached, I couldn’t help gawking at the scale of destruction and transformation that had occurred. Working as an alchemical cleanup specialist I had seen a lot of transformations and heard a lot of stories. I had been told about a girls’ school that had been visited by a demon, and how the entire student body had been remade by its whims. I had heard about a transformation show where, as a finale, the studio audience had been doused with alchemy and merged into the theatre. I myself had witnessed an entire wedding party that been transformed after their wedding cake had been contaminated by an unnoticed dcum spill in an adjacent alchemist shop. This transformation bomb ravaged town, though, was probably the worst I had ever encountered.

“Thesca Piste! Avola Unteer!” A voice from the direction of the tit-creature.

“What?” Avola asked in surprise.

“Thesca! Avola!” one of the lipples of the tit-pile shouted. “Over here! It’s me! Vikki!”

We rushed over to the breast mouth that was calling us. “Vikki?” I asked, “But… how are you here? We left your body back over there…”

The lipples smiled, “I know. That body… my old body, is now just a, let’s call it a terminal. This is the… nucleus.”

“What do you mean?”

“When the blast happened, when I transformed, the entire town did. I breathed in the smoke and became that eye-creature, along with a lot of other people. Those closest to the blast were struck by shrapnel from the bomb. The alchemy closed their wounds, but made them march here, to the blast crater, where they all merged together into… this tower of breasts and genitals. All of us, the eyestalk creatures and this central breast tower, we all grew roots that grew and grew and touched each other creating a kind of network. Thesca, Avola, the entire town is conjoined into a single body with our minds free to travel throughout it.”

“Wild!” said Avola, clearly interested.

The mouth on the tit continued, “This tower here is the nucleus. It’s where the town’s central consciousness is, filled with nearly everyone’s minds. This body has our shared genitals that we can all feel and take turns controlling to bring everyone pleasure. It’s also the one part of the body with mouths that we can use to talk to outsiders.”

“And the other bodies?” I asked, “your body?”

Vikki’s borrowed lips pursed in thought. “You can think of them as terminals or nodes. Bodies we can visit to away from the central nucleus with eyes and noses. They are places where we can see the world or visit other parts of town away from here. They are also… less crowded. Places in the network where we can be alone with our thoughts or have privacy.”

“And everyone in the town is in there?” I asked.

The lipple mouth pursed for a moment. “We think so. Everyone but you two.”

Avola grunted, “I guess these hazmat suits really do work…”

Vikki’s purloined breast lips smiled, “I guess I should have kept my helmet on!”

Avola and I exchanged a guilty look.

Vikki’s lipples blew a raspberry. “Hey! Don’t be like that! It was an accident. I will accept zero survivors guilt from either of you!” The mouth smiled a brave Vikki smile, “And I’m okay. This is… different, but interesting. I’m part of a whole new kind of community surrounded by interesting new people. I think, I think this will be fun,” she smirked, “or at least never lonely.”

“What will you do now?” asked.

“I think I will carry on as before, as much as I can. I still want to keep inventing and helping others to invent. It’ll be more complicated now… I can’t exactly swing a tool.” She laughed. “But I can still think and see and speak. People can still bring me ideas and prototypes and I can look at them and give them advice. And, actually, with all of the craftspeople, artisans, alchemists, and other skilled professionals in here we can probably give collectively great advice.” The lips pursed thoughtfully, “We can share ideas and thoughts really easily in here, almost perfectly. The kinds of collaboration we can do here could be very valuable to a lot of people and fields.” The lipple grinned, “Huh, now I’m really excited about this!”

“I guess we won’t be able to use you as a consultant anymore though,” I said sadly.

“No,” agreed Vikki wistfully, “I suspect my days of working in the field are over…”

Avola cleared her throat, “So what should we do now? About the situation.”

Vikki chewed her lip for a second. “Everyone is okay here, it isn’t an emergency. But. I imagine you should still call the authorities. Let the townsfolk’s family know what happened, start clearing the rubble and rebuilding the town. Find out if there are any other transformation bombs out there.”

Avola and I agreed to go find help, but as we turned to go, the lipples coughed for attention, “Guys, just, promise that you’ll visit.”

We promised, Vikki smiled and then told us it was her turn to control a cock tentacle and the mouth feel silent. Our friend had gone to fuck her new community.

In the days and weeks after the explosion aid was sent to the town and an investigation was launched into what had happened. It became clear that the bomb was leftover from a long past conflict, an unexploded prototype that had failed to detonate when deployed. It had been buried and forgotten after the war was over, lost with so many other unexploded devices and laid dormant for years, a constant unknown threat. It was just our shitty luck that we had disturbed it and that it had chosen that day to explode. The government of the army responsible offered to pay restitution and rebuild the town.

As for the merged townsfolk, they got on surprisingly well. Despite their traumatic transformation, the constant intimacy and empathy of their bodymates helped the town heal surprisingly quickly. ‘The Community’ as they called themselves, were a very resilient bunch. In the early days after the explosion, townsfolk who were away when the transformation happened were reunited with their altered families and friends. Many of these people opted to undergo complimentary transformations, becoming new, customized terminals in the network and rejoining their loved ones and community. Their transformed bodies that could see, talk, and fuck all at once, became much sought after Community resources. The other thing that happened as time went by is that, like Vikki had suggested, The Community became an important intellectual resource. People from all around travelled to the merged being to consult its many minds with all kinds of problems. So, as the town was rebuilt, it became a centre of artisans, tinkerers, and researchers who worked with The Community to build and develop new things. Vikki Time became a Community leader and a key figure in the new town. She was, and is, very satisfied with her life.

And that is how by investing in great safety equipment and keeping my damn helmet on, I escaped the transformation bomb and avoided joining The Community.

***

Credits

Story and words and transformation concept by Indigocarmine

Setting and transformation advice by Demon-Man

Additional editorial help by KSG

***

Part 8