Just what the hell are you?
Violet turned the exotic black orb over in her hand, its presence a brief distraction from her thoughts. Its surface was simultaneously rubbery and slick, and in the faint beams of moonlight that managed to make their way through to the mouth of the cave where she now stood, she could swear that the surface was shifting on its own like wakes on a lake's surface.
It was just last week that she found the orb during one of her solitary night walks. Since then, it felt like her life had taken a turn for the worse at every stop. She knew it wasn't safe for a young woman like herself to be alone in the woods in the dark, but at this point she just needed to get away for a bit...and something inside of her convinced her that the cave where she and the mysterious object first met was the place to do it.
Silence seemed to fill the air around the two, but unbeknown to her, a subconscious throbbing began to emit from the orb. It felt her angst, her sorrow; it comforted her frustrated mind, caressing it and telling it that things would be ok soon.
Her mind emptied as she breathed in the cool night air. She let it envelope her, even as it filled her lungs.
Closer, a whisper entered her mind, the orb's increased shimmering unnoticed by the entranced girl.
"Yes...closer," she whispered. She needed to be closer to nature. It was nature that gave her comfort, that gave her escape.
Closer....
"Closer...," she echoed again. She had to be free from her garments – garments which constricted her, which identified her as a punk and a nobody.
Closerrrr....
She began to undress, putting her clothes in a pile behind a nearby rock as she disrobed. With her shoes off, she felt the cold rock beneath her bare soles, the cool sensation serving as the connection between her exposed body and the untamed world around her.
Her eyes were adrift, her mind lost yet found. It felt right. This was how she was meant to be. She just had to listen to the orb...to watch it pulse in the light....
Almost....
She was almost there. Just a few steps away. Just a few steps and –
An expletive escaped her lips as her foot caught on a crack, snapping her out of the trance as she tumbled into the cave. She managed to land on her palms with no injury, but reached frantically into her mind to recall why she was alone in the darkness, stark naked, and now on the floor.
Her eyes all but useless in the dark, Violet reached out with her arms, feeling for the orb that had fallen out of her grasp during the fall. Her efforts fruitless, she turned her gaze to the cave's opening, only to notice out of the corner of her eye a familiar shimmering texture....
Only this time, the texture enveloped not an orb, but one of her limbs. She lifted her right leg against the light of the opening, able to make out the familiar silhouette of her foot, the black substance having covered it and each individual toe like a second, rubbery skin. She wiggled her toes back and forth, feeling the alien material sliding slickly past itself in a mix of surprise and curiosity.
The wonder in Violet's eyes abruptly ceased when she saw her toes suddenly and involuntarily splay apart, the sound of cracking bone and tearing tendons echoing in the cave. She cried out instinctively at the sight, fighting hard to suppress the horror as she witnessed her foot's transformation into something other than human unfolding aggressively before her.
She tried her best to process the information rapidly overloading her senses. Was it pain that she was feeling? No, she quickly realized. What she felt did not hurt, but it was most certainly explicit – so much so that she could easily identify the individual joints snapping as her toes elongated several times their original length, the pressure in her toenails as they pierced through the air as shiny black talons, the sensation of muscle and ligaments stretching and weaving to match her lengthening soles.
In mere moments, what was once a slender human foot was now more akin to something found on a bird of prey. As more tendrils shot up her leg, eager to spread the ooze further up her body, a primal urge to run clouded the girl's mind. She got up off the stony floor but, unused to her feet's newfound asymmetry, tripped and landed right where the moonlight first lit the cave floor.
No...
Violet heard the orb in her mind, this time fully aware of its presence. She paused, the black goo having now enveloped her other leg and beginning its conquest of her torso.
Open...
Her breathing slowed. She was beginning to understand. Her left foot began mirroring her right, the familiar feelings of cracking bones and elongating digits now bringing more relief at the restoration of symmetry than the panic she felt the first time around.
Your...
She closed her eyes and stood up, no longer needing to see the changes, for she felt them intimately within her body.
Mind....
Violet's eyes shot open, but what she saw was not those of her Earthly surroundings, but that of an extraterrestrial world. She saw architecture far more organic – perhaps even more primitive – than anything in modern human civilization, and a tall, proud-looking people who looked not unlike humans, and who walked about in simple garments draped over their statuesque bodies.
She saw the discovery of Earth by these people, the numerous councils and debates regarding what to do with the young, violent-prone species. She heard the elder's decision to send the orbs down to the planet, serving as both aid and an experiment, to help the juvenile species in its infighting and self-destructive tendencies.
And finally, she witnessed the orb's impact on Earth near the very cave she now stood in, its initial scan of its surrounding wildlife for a suitable genetic blueprint, and its mission to infuse a worthy host with the combined power of itself and its chosen native organism. For Violet, that native genetic blueprint was that of a bat.
The orb's essence continued merging with Violet's body and mind, helping her comprehend why she was chosen and the changes she was undergoing. She understood that her recent struggles were key to the orb's decision, the foundation for empathy that was needed to right the wrongs of this world. Only one with the right sense of the need for justice could be trusted with this responsibility.
Her attention returned to the black substance, which had now finished coating her arms and hands like it did her legs and feet, and which – no longer encumbered by her mind's resistance – began spreading with renewed fervor over her remaining human skin.
All over her body, muscles tensed up as the material dug in, weaving itself between muscle fibers and augmenting her strength. Clear, lean outlines of muscle lined her limbs and torso as her body continued to be altered, and for the first time she began to feel pleasure from the power manifesting itself throughout her.
A familiar sensation of pressure and cracking resonated from her fingers, and she watched on with calm but focused eyes as her fingers splayed apart, growing rapidly outward as a membranous webbing lined the space between each of her lengthening digits. Like with her toes, large black talons erupted from her fingertips, providing her impressive new wings with powerful weapons.
Tendrils continued shooting around her, wrapping and squeezing in various directions as it continued sculpting her body. The black shimmering skin accentuated her sleek, womanly form, giving her a confidence she had never felt before in her oversized, urban outfits, while from behind, a larger tail-like tendril pushed out from the base of her spine.
As the remaining tendrils pushed up her neck, Violet braced for – even welcomed – the final wave of changes. While the ooze reached up her neck and face from without, she felt the upward spread of the substance from within. She fell to her knees, her enormous hands bracing herself against the ground, as enormous pressure built within her mouth and jaw.
The pressure released itself in the form of a rapidly growing tongue, as she found herself forced to open her mouth in order to set it free. She opened her eyes briefly to witness the slimy pink appendage twisting and dangling before her, before grimacing at a renewed wave of pressure, this time pushing her teeth outward into a set of sharp fangs.
As her face, now covered save her eyes in the black ooze, pushed forward into a snout, Violet felt a wave of feral urges starting to wash over her mind. She growled; she panted. She clawed at the ground with her hands and feet, willing the changes forth, to shed the last of her humanity and become the superior being she had been chosen to become. The last of the black tendrils wrapped themselves over her eyes, temporarily blocking her vision. She could feel new ears forming on each side of her scalp, twitching and catching sounds in the night sky. She felt her thin black lips peel back from her pointed snout, baring her gums and teeth as she growled to establish her dominating presence. Her pointed black nose sniffed at the night air, sensing prey to be hunted down.
When she finally opened her new eyes, two glowing white orbs stared out into the darkness. She could see using both vision and sound; the cave walls, which just moments ago were all but indiscernible in the shadow, now appeared to her clear as day. She crawled forth, wing after wing, paw after paw, having now become the beast, the stalker.
She peered out the cave entrance. She could sense the wildlife outside – unsuspecting, vulnerable....
Remember...
The bat woman stood up, sniffing the air above as her ears twitched back and forth in an effort to seek the source of the sound in her head.
Remember...
Violet's memories began to resurface. It was the orb...it was not outside, but within her. A part of her. It had gifted her with this form. She was not an animal. She was a girl with hope and dreams and ambition.
Remember...
She stared at her hands, her body, her feet. She ran her hands down her body. This was no suit, no second skin. This was her – her flesh, her bone. It was lithe; it was powerful; it was Violet, old and new.
It took a conscious effort, but she was able to suppress the feral urges that came with the final wave of changes. She made a mental note of their existence, careful not to slip into her wild side as long as she could help it.
The transformed girl spent a few moments in the solidarity of night getting used to her new form. She practiced opening and closing her snout, finding speech surprisingly easy despite the new facial structure and long tongue. She marveled at being able to hear sounds miles away with her ears, pointing them in different directions atop her head whilst perched upside down with her wings wrapped around her body, her now prehensile toes effortlessly suspending her weight from an opportune branch.
Her experimentation brought her surprise and joy - but there was still one last thing she was eager to try.
Pointing her snout upward towards the moon, Violet gazed for a moment at the brilliant white orb. She knelt down and, with a great push from her powerful legs, leapt up into the night sky. From the ground, her silhouette shrank with each flap into the brilliance of the moon until had all but disappeared into the night.
***
Violet groggily opened her eyes. Her room's wood ceiling greeted her, and she frowned as she squinted against the light from the window.
Grumbling, she forced herself out of bed. With a series of clumsy steps, she stumbled her way into the kitchen and turned on the faucet. She washed her face with the cold running water and, as she dried it off with a towel, began to remember the previous night.
She recalled flying back to the cave at the conclusion of her test flight, picking up her clothes and taking off for home. Once there, she remembered climbing in through the window, and reluctantly willing her changes to be reversed until the black substance retreated into her body via a –
"Tattoo!" she blurted, and quickly pulled up her sleeve. There it was, a pair of black wings adorning her skin's surface on her upper arm. As she stared, its surface began to shimmer in the fluorescent lighting.
So it was real after all.
She let down her sleeve. When the orb had merged with her, she found out that it wasn't the only one. There were other orbs out there, and presumably, other hosts with the same mission. The mission to find each other, to prove these otherworldly beings that humanity wasn't beyond redemption.
But she was still missing something. Every superhero needed a name, and unfortunately for her, every variation of 'bat' and 'female noun' was already taken.
Besides, those names were too obtuse. As a bat, she was graceful, powerful, evoking. She was the embodiment of the night, a composition of its power and mystery, a –
- a nocturne.
Nocturne. She liked the sound of that. It was subtle, but appropriate. For her, it was a keeper.
So there it was. She had the powers. She had the will. She had the mission. And now she had the name. For once, she could make a difference in the world instead of being an observer – and with luck, she just might make some new friends along the way.
Violet peeked once more at her tattoo, one last reminder that this was all real. Then, she looked at herself in the mirror, and, for the first time in a long time, she smiled.
