The Kumo Story

[Shaon]

That white creature has only said one sentence and already she radiates the kind of aura that would make OM vomit. If he could vomit, anyway.

Getting his tongue fixed and being a general for what sounds to be an extremely large and powerful army? Sounds extremely useful.

There has to be a catch...

"... Why would you want me? If you are indeed a mirror version of what created me, why couldn't you create a mirror version of me?"

[3kul]

"Ha! Ever met a creature called HollowEyes? This is his mirror version!" He pointed a thumb at the white and wispy creature, clearly displeased that he'd wound up with her. The creature poked her tongue out and danced about, disagreeing with what this dark stranger said. "So cruel! I'm stronger and more complete than him, how am I not more useful than Byule?"

Ignoring her, he turned back to One Mistake to explain his reasoning. "Listen 856, true to it's name this mirror universe reflects the actions of it's counterparts in the other mirror universe. But there's many crucial differences." He leads the Kumo and the Parasitian through the dark hallway, tapping on a hidden panel tucked away in the wall on his right to open another door there. "The Kumo Team from your universe turned that Serpells down and kicked him out, refusing to acknowledge or use his research to their benefit." He lead them through this door down another corridor as he continued to explain. "This Kumo Team though was dominated by myself, and we have intergrated Parasitian genetics into all of our experiments." The doors opened to lead them into another gigantic room, though the dark stranger was certain that the contents of this room would help the Kumo realize the most important difference between this dimension and his own.

"This has meant that instead of having the ridiculous failure rate that our counter-parts had, we have had a 100% success rate with our Para-Kumos."

This room bore a striking resemblance to the inside of a beehive, and it was crawling with Kumos. "Just under 300 successful experiments..." He remarked, giving One Mistake a bit of time to take all of this in. The white hairy creature seemed happy to be here, quickly scaling the walls to communicate with a few of these Kumos. Several noticed her and began to group around her, seeming to enjoy being in her presence. "We prefer quality over quantity in this dimension, so I trust that you'll understand why we aren't quite up to 856 just yet." The dark stranger said jokingly, relishing the chance to show off his genius to somebody like this Kumo, who'd only ever seen the work of bumbling idiots who'd played experimental lottery, producing as many creatures as they could in the hopes that a few might actually have the right combination of vital organs and such to survive.

Of course, the Para-Kumos that he'd created had improved in leaps and bounds over those of the other Kumo Team - in reality he was drawing very close to an '856' despite the fact that his most recent Para-Kumo was only '298'. It was precisely the reason why he'd brought One Mistake here, to get himself the very best that the other Kumo Team had come up with and improve upon it.

"I was quite truthful in what I said earlier 856 - you are more of a project of interest to me rather than one of necessity, but I believe that you'll yeild some interesting results for me." He took a moment to consider how to best explain what kind of role he intended to have One Mistake fulfil. "What the Para-Kumos currently lack is a leader of the pack, an alpha to dominate and control them. I may have altered myself, but this was more a symbollic act of empowering myself rather than something done to gain control over the experiments. I don't want to have to deal with them on a social level, they're all little more than pawns to myself." He looked at the white hairy creature with distaste, finding himself once more regretting that he let her stay here. "Silk is the only full-blooded Parasitian on board, and as such she naturally assumes the role of a general, or an 'Eldest' as we've taken to calling them, though she's hardly fit for the role. She lacks the kind of intelligence and cruelty that you have, though that's not to say that she's particularily dumb or kind-hearted either."

He found himself wandering off the topic, something which he hated to do. He had no desire to dwell on Silk or why she was here, and quickly decided to give the Kumo a straight answer. "Back to the crux of the matter - yes, I could create a 'mirror version' of you, but I think that it'd be much more interesting to use the you that's right here in front of me as a base. It's much easier for us to have somebody like yourself who already posesses the ideal mindset rather than have to create one from scratch, all we'd need to do is give you a little upgrade to push you up the ranks here. From Kumo 856 to Para-Kumo 299, instant 'Eldest'. What do you say to that?"

[Shaon]

One Mistake, with his genius of a mind, could not find any way this would pose a problem to him.

"I will comply."

[3kul]

"Excellent." The dark stranger replied, grinning widely. Clearly he was pleased with One Mistake's response. "SILK!" He shouted out to the Parasitian, who seemed to be playing with a few smaller Para-Kumos. She looked towards him but did not reply, waiting to see what he had to say. "I'll need your help in bringing this one up to speed when the upgrade is done, give it about 12 hours or so." "Whatever you say! <3" She replied all too cheerfully, the kind of attitude that both the stranger and One Mistake despised.

"Well then, we'd best be returning to the lab, I assume that you'll want this to be over with as quickly as possible. I know I do." He lead One Mistake back the way that they'd come, back into the enormous lab. "Listen up scientist..." He said, grabbing the shoulder of the nearest lab worker he could find. "Convert this Kumo into a Para-Kumo, make sure that he's got all of our latest research built into him." The scientist appeared to be extremely nervous at being singled out like this and looked to his co-workers for help, though they all seemed to look the other way. Nobody wanted anything to do with this job, especially with the dark stranger being the absolute perfectionist that they knew him to be. "Is there a problem with my request? Surely you couldn't have misheard the briefing I gave earlier, that I was going to retrieve this one and bring it back here to be converted." "N-no sir, it's just that... Surely one such as I... I mean, I've only ever worked on the youngest of the youngests before, and you..."

"Nonsense!" The dark stranger shouted, slapping the terrified scientist on the back. "Everyone here is capable of more or less the same things, and I know for a fact that you're one of the group who've been working on the latest Para-Kumos." He turned to One Mistake, making sure that he wasn't getting the wrong impression. "Unlike my mirror counter-part, I won't be operating on you myself. Don't take it personally, but I've got a few matters to attend to, most of which involve your arrival here. As I said to the good scientist here, everyone knows how to do stuff like this, so it's not like he could possible mess up." Though he was talking to One Mistake he looked towards the scientist at this point, further emphasizing on this point. The scientist gulped nervously, not wanting to even think of the consequences of messing up.

"Silk'll teach you how to properly control your abilities once you're done, and I should be back by then." He could tell that One Mistake did not like the idea of spending any time with Silk, though only he knew how much the Kumo would truly hate her by the time she was done with him. "It's a pity that you're a male One Mistake, Silk tends to go a bit easier on the females." He laughed, turning back to the scientist.

He placed his heavy black hand back on the scientist's shoulder, gripping tightly as he hissed into the lab worker's ear. "Get the assistance of whoever you need if you think it's too hard, but don't screw it up." With that he left the lab, going back through the way that he'd initially brought One Mistake in, to the dark portal chamber. "R-right this way please, Mr. Mistake." The scientist said nervously, directing One Mistake towards a private lab. He knew that he'd get no help from his colleagues, and he tried his best to reassure himself with the knowledge that the computer would be doing most of the work.

--------------------------------

The dark stranger had returned early, and was not pleased with the results. "I came back early expecting you to have at least begun working on One Mistake, but perhaps you'd care to explain to me why you sought to work on something other than One Mistake WHEN THAT IS WHAT I HAD SPECIFICALLY ASKED YOU TO DO?!?"

The scientist cringed at his superior's booming voice, the sound of which alerted the other scientists in the lab that it was time to move as far away from there as possible. "Ah, no, wait, you see, I was..." "OUT WITH IT, WORM!" Gulping nervously, the scientist quickly blurted out what he thought would save him from his superior's wrath. "This is One Mistake, now Para-Kumo no. 299"

This changed the mood of the stranger, though the scientist wasn't sure if this was for the better. "Oh, well, I was just a little confused because when I went to look at the monitor that's displaying the information of this creature I happened to notice that IT WAS A FEMALE!!" Definately a change for the worse, the scientist thought as he watched his superior smash a nearby tray of surgical tools aside, raising up his large hand to strike the scientist down. "No! Wait! I thought that you said you wanted him to be a female!"

Realizing that things were indeed about to get much uglier, the other scientists decided that now was the perfect time to take their lunch break. The lab was suddenly deserted, which made the scientist much more nervous - why hadn't anybody corrected him when he'd asked about this earlier? "DO YOU NOT EVEN UNDERSTAND BASIC HUMOUR?!? I was talking in the hypothetical, as in if One Mistake was a female, it would make training much easier on him, because Silk doesn't despise females. THAT WAS NOT A REQUEST TO CHANGE HIS GENDER!! WHY WOULD I EVER ASK ANYBODY TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!"

Screaming like a schoolgirl, the scientist ran out from his lab in hopes of escaping the situation - the one thing that made all of the scientists here safe was their superior's inability to distinguish one from another. To him they were all nameless pawns, minions there to help him accomplish his goals. Of course, his colleagues would probably only help him to be singled out, but there was a slim chance that he could live to work here another day - One Mistake had woken up, and now his superior would have to deal with that.

"Ah, eight fifty- no, I should refer to you as two ninety-nine from now on I suppose... Well, you're awake now, which is good to see. Silk should be here in a few moments to help you with getting used to your new abilities, though you should already notice that you're now much more... comfortable with the Parasitian parts of you." He noticed that One Mistake seemed to be confused with some of these changes, which he could only assume to be natural. After all, he'd gone to sleep a guy and had woken up as a girl... Not that he really got how gender worked with Para-Kumos, most seemed able to pick and choose what they wanted to be, like regular Parasitians. He sighed, knowing that it was going to be a real pain in the ass to have to deal with One Mistake's complaints about this change, especially no that he... she... it had these new abilities.

"Any complaints with how you've turned out should be directed to that scientist who worked on you, he's uh..." Realizing that he didn't remember this particular scientist's name, he was even more irritated with him. "Some worthless peon who's name I don't care to remember. I've got work to do, wait patiently for Silk to get here and we can talk about this later, as I'm certain that you'll want to do." He didn't really have any work to do, but much like his counter-part this dark stranger preferred to leave problems like this to his underlings.

Silk entered the lab just as the stranger was leaving, frowning a little to herself as she realized that she was going to have to take care of the problems here. "Oh, seems that he was leaving in quite a rush, you must be quite scary~!" She said mockingly as she approached One Mistake. Looking at the console displaying 'his' current condition, she noticed something that made her burst into laughter. "Ahahaha, oh wow, you really aren't going to like this, but it makes things much more fun for me! <3"

[Shaon]

One Mistake was confused.

"What? Make it much more fun? What'd they do?"

Carefully, as seems to be the habit, he stands back up, shaking each leg as a way of stretching them.

He walks over to the console.

"What is it that's so-..." she goes silent as she deciphers what is on the console.

One Mistake fumed, as her anger storage committed suicide.

"Who did- how dare they- how could they- I AM GOING TO MAKE SURE THE PERSON WHO DID THIS WISHED HE NEVER LIVED."

[3kul]

Silk couldn't stop laughing for long enough to breath, let alone talk, but eventually she managed to calm down long enough to explain a few things to her new sister.

"Listen up, little miss scary..." She giggled, feeling that this nickname seemed to suit the newest addition to the Para-Kumo family here. "First thing to remember about being here is that nobody except the scientists know who the scientists are. Bunch of worthless losers who only do what the machines here can't, which really isn't that much. The Serpells from here doesn't really give a damn about them, so asking him won't help either."

She turned back to the room entrance, still laughing, and waved a woven hand to signal for 299 to follow her. "Now for the training, it's going to be fun! You're lucky scary, I usually go hard on guys, but since you're a girl we can take it easy <3" She found this hilarious and was giggling away to herself as she led the now female One Mistake back towards the room where the rest of the Para-Kumos were. "We'll pick out a weak one, shall we?" She looked about the room, though the attitude of the room seemed quite different from before - it was quite deserted, the Para-Kumos that had been swarming the place were now gone. "Parasitian stuff is kinda hard for me to teach, it's really more of a thing that you learn by doing..."

She extended several long strands of hair upwards, grabbing on to the edge of a seemingly random opening. "You in there, you'll help, won't you? <3" There was not a hint of malice in her voice, but that's what made it all the more fearful for those who heard it. She was essentially asking this Para-Kumo to come out and die. "N-no! You can't make me!" This was obviously not the right answer, as she quickly scaled her way up to the hole and entered it. "Ooooh, there's a pretty little girl down there who needs your help, you can't say no to her!"

Moments after she entered, the Para-Kumo was sent flying out, along with two of it's severed legs. "Two leg handicap scary, this should be easy." The Para-Kumo slammed into the ground rather violently, but managed to recover on the first bounce. It looked around fearfully, scuttling for the nearest hole as quickly as it could, though the Para-Kumo inside had no intentions of helping it out. "You're on your own, I don't want to get in trouble with the Eldest." And with that, the Para-Kumo was back out in the open, nothing left for it but to fight or die.

"Don't take too long scary, he can grow his legs back you know!" Silk called out in an irritating manner. Whether 299 won or lost, this kind of training was always interesting to watch.

[Shaon]

"Do you underestimate me? Your Serpells must've not told you of my history, he must've been sure you'd be afraid!" Taunted fem-OM right back at Silk.

In fact, this Para-kumo looked a bit familiar... nothing to not be expected, since this is a world mirroring the one he was born in...

Nonetheless, the Youngest proved to be quite easy to capture.

Just wrapped her tentacle-like pedipalp around the poor creature, and lifted it up.

She mockingly examined the Para-Kumo.

"Hmm... You don't look very tasty... too bad, you probably have something useful somewhere."

Still mockingly, she prodded it with the (sharp) tip of her armblades.

"No, nothing useful. Too bad!"

Carelessly, she tossed it into her mouth, assuming whatever new Parasitian instincts she has would kick in at this point.

[3kul]

And kick in they did, though it probably proved to be a most uncomfortable experience for the female One Mistake.

A large tongue exploded forth from her mouth, stretching out until it engulfed the surprised Para-Kumo and swallowed it whole. The massive bulk in the tongue rapidly dissolved as the organ withdrew itself back into 299's gaping jaws.

As she began to digest the Para-Kumo, her brain suddenly kicked into overdrive, processing the massive amount of genetic information contained within her latest meal.

It's hard to explain how the Parasitian mind works (and it's not the sort of thing that Parasitians tend to lend much thought to), but essentially it is like a well organized room. Everything is sorted and kept where it needs to be. Necessary information, like how your organs work, how to use your abilities and such are the easiest things for you to access. Less necessary information, such as how some other organs that you could have would work, genetic blueprints for abilities that you didn't use and the like aren't quite so easy to access, it's more of a memory thing in that case. Useless stuff, like abilities and organs that you don't want, is thrown out, and a Parasitian quickly forgets all about them.

When something new is brought into their system, it's like somebody's taken a big bag of stuff and tipped it all into your neat room. You quickly begin to sort through it, finding a few useful things amongst what you assume to be mostly useless garbage. Depending upon how much is in the bag (ie: how complex the creature that you've just eaten is), this could take anywhere between a few minutes to several hours. After the information is sorted and everything is put where it belongs, the Parasitian can then expand upon that.

Despite their rather primitive attitudes and lifestyles, Parasitians are actually incredibly organized creatures.

"There's probably not much useful stuff in that one, but practice is practice. Try growing yourself some new limbs or something, even just fur colour is fine..." Silk didn't seem very interested in explaining this to One Mistake. This was all pretty boring to her, and nothing that she hadn't explained almost 300 times before to every other creature here. Starting to clap, she said a few 'encouragement chants' - the kind of thing that's meant to stick in one's head as a reminder of the goals that they're aiming for. "Start small, then work bigger. Slow and steady, all that good stuff..." Boooooring, she thought to herself, let's make this a bit more interesting.

Without warning, she suddenly exploded outwards, filling the room with her hairy self. A large face emerged from the ceiling to stare down at One Mistake, grinning gleefully. "Of course, it'll be a long time before you're anywhere near as good at this as me..." As quickly as she'd expanded, she wound herself back up into her original size to drop and land back next to the Para-Kumo, who was hopefully shocked and amazed by her obvious superiority. "You can just call me Eldest Sister until then, I'm sure that the Serpells from here explained what that means to you <3" She snickered away to herself, getting a kick out of being so much better at form shifting than anybody else here.

Of course, having such a flexible medium as hair to work with made burst style form shifting a pretty easy thing to master for her, for these Para-Kumos they'd probably never get up to that level of mastery. It was always funny to remember how much better she was than everyone here.