Was bored, made a one-shot story based off a character concept I thought up last night. So I wrote something in 20 or so minutes and the critics (at least one of them) liked it so I decided to post it on my blog.
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The initial conditions for the story involve a typical disaster type scenario. Many decades before "current time" in the story, an asteroid falls to the earth without seeming to have much of an effect (it was a rather small asteroid). However upon further studying scientists discover a strange substance that resembled life, yet was not quite like that seen on Earth. Upon further studying the substance, scientists have concluded various interesting and curious properties of this mysterious alien "slime". The slime seems to be self-propagating and grows at a slow rate, similar to bacteria. Also, left alone, the slime will merely spread upon growing, creating an oozy like substance and grows very similarly to a Slime Mold. However, the structure and growth rate of the "slime" can be drastically changed with various voltage pulses not unlike action potentials in nerves. Furthermore, the slime seems to be able to have an accelerated evolution rate where it can rapidly engage in gene transfer, making it possible to adapt remarkably quickly to surrounding environments. However, despite such behaviors studied, the scientists concluded that much of it was too erratic to create any distinct conclusions. For example, one electric pulse can cause a sudden outgrowth of the slime; another of (seemingly) the exact same pulse will cause the slime to shrivel up and die.
Still, many (particularly pharmaceutical companies eager to profit from the unusual discovery) were hopeful for its healing properties. Unfortunately, it was not long before there was a catastrophic disaster that changed everyone's view of the "weird but harmless" alien slime.
One day on a rainy, stormy night, An averaged sized research center at a particular university was conducting studies as usual on the slime specimen when a blackout occurred. This did not seem anything out of the ordinary, but students regardless (being the foolish undergraduates that they are) panicked and began trying to find the source of the blackout, only to find shortly after the lights came back. For a moment they were relieved, but the relieved was to be short lived; for, when the blackout came back on, it delivered a sharp jolt to the machines they were using to stimulate the slime. Furthermore, one student had stumbled and spilled random chemicals. Having been exposed to such random and uncontrolled events, the slime, usually, and to everyone's horror, "exploded".
Exploded wasn't the right term, however the growth rate was remarkably phenomenal and the properties were just as amazing. The slime would change from solid to liquid in the matter of milliseconds, and essentially if any person was present when the slime was in solid form and it grew toward them, the effect was no different than as if they had just been shot or stabbed. The slime eventually grew out of control of the lab and wrecked the building, being exposed to the rainy and stormy night outside. Much to the despair of many, the rain and storm only stood to accelerate the growth and erratic nature of the slime, and eventually it plunged the entire city into chaos (har har pun).
Somewhere in the city a few hours earlier, a young girl, age 4 (or 5, who cares she's a loli) had just been escorted into a limousine along with her parents to visit a skyscraper that the father had recently funded. They were preparing to celebrate on the top of the skyscraper when suddenly, while traveling up the elevator, the building was struck with an immense impact. Immediately they could hear the collapse of the floor they had just past, and then another impact blasted straight through the elevator they were in. By some dumb luck the strike did not hit any of them. However, the tower was soon to fall, and the elevator they were in arched sideways with the hole to the exterior of the building inconveniently placed straight underneath them. The little girl tripped and fell into the gap-- but was caught by her father, struggling desperately to pull his daughter back to them.
And then something sharp slid by. The little girl only had a split second to realize something had sliced through the right arm that her father was holding, and struck straight into her mother. Then she lost consciousness.
Return again to a few minutes earlier. Up upon the same skyscraper, a helicopter had come down to pick up a graduate student. The graduate student had insisted that he should have gone on the plane but the pilot, who had just returned from the military and was proud of his achievement of winning some fancy award that showed how impressive his copter maneuvering abilities were, wanted to show how impressive he was. The student sighed as he boarded the plane with his suitcase, idly thinking that it MUST have been impressive if he could pick him up at a place like this, when then disaster struck. The building was hit and on a verge of collapse. Another blade of slime began heading straight for the helicopter when the pilot lifted up abruptly, causing the blade to miss. Certainly, the pilot picked no better of a time to show what stuff he can do.
The pilot himself was in a rather large pinch. He could not go too high because of the storm, yet staying closer to the ground presented the challenge of avoiding falling debris, not to mention random shots of slime flying out of nowhere. However his split second of indecision was broken after seeing a young child fall not too far from where currently was, and with his epic sense of heroism he goes and flies towards the girl, urging the student to extend his arms and catch her. The student, already having a hard time standing still in the copter, tried his best to grab hold of the one arm that was extending out to him, until by sheer dumb luck another blade of slime slid by and slashed off her other arm. Furthermore because of the blade the pilot had to pull back which send the student flying out of the copter.
The pilot cursed himself and flew down to catch the two. Meanwhile, the student extended his arms to the child and gripped on tightly. Although it was probably a bad time, he had realized something. Actually, two things: first, the girl now had no arms. The second was, amazingly, the arms were not bleeding. The student, who was thinking such thoughts when he was on the brink of life or death, was suddenly brought in back to the copter and hit the (relatively) soft seats with great gravitational force. The pilot, seeing that they were safe, flew off and managed, with all his awesome piloting skills, to escape the disaster safely.
With such a disaster it was natural that conducting studies of the slime was now prohibited... at least in public. However, as everyone knows, there are secret military projects and black market terrorist people now eager to get their hands on the slime, except, they don't really know how to use it. Therefore, with research publicly halted and even the top military and terrorist organizations baffled on how exactly the slime can be used as a weapon, eventually the fad died down and the slime event, aside from being a tragic disaster that destroyed an entire city, was slowly forgotten.
Except for two men and one girl.
Shortly after the event, the graduate student, who had been doing studies on the slime himself, thought about the situation of the girl. He was carrying a briefcase, and inside the briefcase... was a concentrated sample of the slime. Through connections with his pilot friend, he managed to carry out an amazing operation in a military lab: he fused the nerves of the amputated girl, at the amputation site, to the concentrated slime itself. The effect was amazing. The girl was able to use the slime to form new hands, and do even more. They could transform into wings (when the girl saw a bird in a picture), and then be retracted again as if she had no arms, then expanded to create as much as four arms, or even more. But a year or two passed and the military still contained her within the lab rooms. The original pilot, with his noble sense of heroness, thought this was outrageous and proposed an outbreak with his student friend, who already distrusted the military for their desire to use such research in such a manner (he was much more insistent of this being a medical breakthrough than to use it to make super powered soldiers).
And so, the broke out. How convenient.
After that the military tried searching for them as much as possible, especially since they couldn't replicate the student's achievements. But these two guys were awesome and didn't get caught.
10 years later, There is a science teacher at a particular high school that is known to be strict and unforgiving. Always unusually precise in his experimental lectures and stringent on the knowledge he thinks students should know for the class, many students dislike him. One girl in particular was feeling rather spiteful for the low test she had received recently.
She was feeling specially spiteful because the teacher was her (adopted) father.
She couldn't understand why her father couldn't be more like her uncle, who had a freeflowing spirit and brought her on adventures. She also couldn't understand why her father was so stringent on keeping her "secret power" low. Of course she understands its dangerous if people knew about her secret, but because of this, she could be a real Magical Girl!! Just like the shows she sees on TV which her father occasionally watches!!
Of course, she thought, it could be due to the extensive amount of frilly things she likes to by, which makes her father stringent on cash and her uncle bankrupt and looking for jobs all the time. But that was okay, because when uncle was bankrupt and looking for jobs there were more adventures to have!
For example, last night she had to sneak into a ballroom dance for rich people! It was really pretty and exciting there! But of course, they weren't there for just the party and treats, although she had a lot of fun dressing up really nicely and acting as if she was treated like a rich girl. But no, actually, they were there to investigate a terrorist meeting that was located in a room within the same building. There was cool fighting involved and she got to show off her powers! And then the bad guys were arrested!
...So she recalled as she slept in class, drooling and giggling foolishly while the science teacher gave her a look of disdain.
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