(Woman to Cavewoman)
During Angela “Mercy” Ziegler’s time with Overwatch, she’d been shot at, electrocuted, and injected with a number of questionable compounds—among other, worse abuses to her admittedly delicate figure. So it came as something of a surprise to find that she’d been assigned a meeting with the Human Life Cycle Society on one of her meetings.
Of course, Mercy should have known that the meeting wouldn’t go smoothly. The fact that Overwatch’s resident A.I. had seen it fit to send her off to the middle of nowhere—known to locals as ‘Montana’—was evidence enough of that. Still, she’d entered the dropship with high hopes and expectations of an uneventful, if not fun, social night.
After reading the dossier, she exited the dropship in full Valkyrie armor, her pistol at her hip and her medical staff in her hands. Apparently the Society was part of a larger cabal, some organization or other that planned to transform all human life on the planet into… Well, anything. Inanimate objects, animals, and even other humans seemed par for the course.
A lone figure walked to meet her on the platform, his hands held out palms-up as if to show he was unarmed. “You must be the Overwatch interviewer.” He called out, struggling for his voice to be heard over her dropship’s engines.
She waited for the shuttle to launch once more before responding, knowing the shriek of its engines would drown her out. Once it, and along with it her way out, were a safe distance away, she nodded. A mental flick activated her suit’s ‘wings’, flaring a set of angelic projections to life. “Doctor Angela Ziegler, at your service.”
The man applauded with a surprising amount of earnesty, his handsome features breaking into a wide grin. “I hope you don’t mind if I call you ‘Mercy’. That’s the name my brother keeps gushing about to me, anyways. My name’s Carl Demmings, you saved my brother when he was on tour out West.”
The woman didn’t let her surprise reach her eyes, quelling her shock with a good dose of paranoia. Even if the representative seemed to be human, that didn’t change the fact that his company was up to something truly evil. She toggled off her wings, casually listing her staff under an arm as she approached.
“It is a pleasure.” She gave him one of her third-most effective smiles, the sort she used on countless patients to set their nerves at ease. “I hope you don’t mind the fact that I came in uniform. In my line of work, you can never be too certain.”
“Oh, not at all.” He whistled lowly, looking to the gun at her hip. At least, she assumed he was looking at the gun, even though his eyes seemed to linger there for a moment longer than she’d have liked. “Second Amendment’s got plenty to say about that, but I like the oldest rule: ‘might makes right’. Been in place since the cavemen, you know?”
With that, he turned on his heel, marching back into the laboratory. Mercy followed him, occupying the time with a little small talk. “A curious subject. Though, from what I understand, your ‘Society’ is into such odd endeavors, no?”
It was a bold question, the sort that would tip him off to the fact that she was investigating his organization as a whole. Still, Mercy valued knowing the reaction that would come from such interrogation, and his seemed to be a patient amusement.
“Can’t fault a guy for having hobbies, can you? Besides, that’s kind of the point of this whole affair.” He gestured to the building around them, walking to a greyed-out window and rapping on it sharply. A small printed badge slipped from under it, and he offered it to Mercy with a smile. “If you don’t mind.”
The blonde examined it for a moment, wary of the trinket. It was a visitor’s badge just like she’d get from any other building. The only thing of note about it was the photo of herself on the front: one that had to have been taken of her outside the building, on her way in. The wind hadn’t done much for her hair in the image, but she was quietly relieved to find that it wasn’t a bad photo.
“It won’t bite.” Demmings laughed, noticing her hesitation. “Unless this happens to be about the photo. Sorry, it’s a habit. I like photography when it’s at its most real, you know? Really, got to catch people in the middle of… well, life.”
“Sure.” Mercy took the small nameplate and clipped it to her armor. Said armor would keep her safe from any sort of poisoning, her nanobots able to reconstitute her form from their memory. It had the added benefit of giving her an ever-youthful appearance, a small fact she was eternally grateful for. “What is it you do here?”
“Here? We’re a quiet research lab. Follow me, please.” The man marched her down an almost labyrinthine set of white-painted halls. Were it not for that dossier, she’d have thought she was visiting a normal laboratory. They even had that half-clean smell of stale disinfectant right.
“Quite a lot of walking to get to a conference room, don’t you think?” Mercy offered, again eating up the silence with words. She found her listener an attentive one, as he laughed.
“Wouldn’t be the case if we were going to a conference room. But for a VIP like you, I figured I’d show you our lab itself. Keep this between us, but I wouldn’t have done this if Overwatch had sent one of its more trigger-happy agents. I figured a doctor like yourself would be able to appreciate what we’ve built here. You’ll know what I’m talking about once you see it.”
He wasn’t wrong. Demmings led her to an impressively-sized holo-screen, one that was filled with countless equations. There were a number of them that Mercy recognized as relating to her nanobots, and a few others that didn’t seem to make sense. She understood the methods used, but the end results were another matter altogether.
“Mister Demmings, if you wouldn’t mind explaining these… Here, and here?” She motioned to a pair of coding windows that were uncomfortably close to her nanobot technology. One of them seemed to intentionally deconstruct a patient, while the other was more of a mystery.
“Good eye!” He clapped. “Maybe that’s because they’re related to the medical field. See, this first one here’s intended to help get someone’s clothing off for an operation. Quicker, cleaner way of disrobing than using a scalpel, don’t you think?”
“Indeed.”
“And this second one, that’s the real charmer. This one’s something my boss has been working on, a little thing that’s meant to dial back a person, evolutionarily speaking, of course.” He laughed, as if what he was saying wasn’t completely insane. “All we’ve been missing is the nanobots.”
Mercy glanced down to the man’s hands, noticing they were twitching, typing against some invisibly keyboard. Her hand flew to her pistol, and she snapped off a pair of shots which seemed to fizzle and die before reaching the man.
His gaze slid to her in an uncomfortably predatory fashion, and he clicked his tongue. “Now, why’d you have to go underestimating me like that?” His tone dripped with a self-assured confidence, and Mercy had to fight back the urge to hit him with another futile fusillade. “Just because my organization likes to restore mankind to its roots, you think we’re savages.”
He had a point, loathe though she was to admit it. Mercy had underestimated him, her first few shots didn’t do much more than fill the room with the ozone scent of ionized air. Nonetheless, she kept her Caduceus Blaster trained square on his chest. There was a chance that the shield was a manual one, and that she’d be able to distract him enough to lower his guard.
“Regardless, I cannot agree with your motives, or your methods for that matter. I’ve seen the work of your Society, and am singularly disappointed a scientist would resort to such unethical testing.” She probed him with her words, curious if she could get a reaction.
Demmings gave her that same earnest laugh, the kind he’d had just a few minutes ago on the landing pad. “Well, see, that’s your second mistake. I’m a hacker, not really a scientist. Your first mistake was coming here in full attire.”
She didn’t have time to ask what he meant, the effects of his actions visible enough: her pistol dissolved away, disintegrating into small, dust-like particles that themselves soon vanished. The same process spread to her armor, and she found herself uncomfortably bared before the man, armed only with her staff.
“You won’t get away with this.” She tried to sound brave, and failed miserably. Mercy’s brilliant mind flew through a hundred different ways that this could end, and none of them were rather appealing. Most ended with her atomized, which wasn’t exactly how she’d planned to spend her day.
He tutted, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “See, you’re not supposed to be getting dumb for another five seconds. Guess I’ll need to talk to the R&D team about that.”
She opened her mouth to ask what he was talking about, only to visibly shudder. Her hand fluttered to her brow, finding her forehead damp. “What are… This is rather odd.” She felt something in her brain, a numb and almost dizzy feeling. It was hard to concentrate on any one particular thing, her mind seeming to want to flit to and from the flashing lights on the holo-screens around herself, and even her staff.
Mercy fell forward, leaning onto her staff heavily. Her smallish breasts heaved with each gasp she took, and she struggled to come up with words to describe how she felt. “Me… I feel funny. Like brain’s not wired right.” She blinked at those last two words, not entirely sure what she meant by them, or what wires were supposed to do.
“Yeah, I get that. I mean, I can’t really relate, since you’re the first person who’s going through this kind of thing… But I can understand why you’re feeling that.” Demmings grabbed onto her staff as well, and she sent her panicked gaze up to his face. His features broke into a wide smile as he clicked a button on her staff, toggling its beam.
Mercy wobbled in place unsurely, furrowing her brow and struggling to come up with words to summarize her thoughts. “I mean… I don’t feel good? Like, it’s like I’m drunk, but also that I’m not, in a way, but that also kinda… You know?”
Her face reddened. She was fumbling with her words in front of the man, and she knew it. That was another slight embarrassment, because she could tell that he was enjoying the show before him. The woman crinkled her nose, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes.
“It’s like… My head feels slow-like. Words are… Like translating to another language? I keep forget the right ones to use, and be embarrassed when I words wrong.” It was the most ungainly sentence of her life, and her current situation made it all the more humiliating.
“That makes sense.” Demmings laughed. He leaned in close, savoring the look in her eyes as they unfocussed slightly. “You happen to be getting dumber, Angela.”
She blinked. “Angela?” The word sounded right, but as far as she was concerned, she was Mercy. She thought she was, at least. Everyone called her that, and not her other name. Her eyes widened slightly, and she remembered her other name in time for him to remind her.
“Your name. Remember?”
“Yes, me do!” Angela stuck out her tongue dopily, glaring daggers that were as blunt as her intellect. They seemed to have little effect other than earning a good-natured chuckled from the man, and her face only reddened further. Then the rest of his words finally caught up with her, and she gasped.
“Something the manner?”
“Me no getting dumb!” Angela panicked, shaking her head in protest. She could feel horror dawning in her heart, a blind panic overwhelming her thoughts as she realized she might not be thinking much longer. Her hands were shaking, she needed to calm down somehow.
“You could try the staff.” Demmings offered helpfully.
“Oh. Right.” Angela bit her lower lip anxiously, looking to the device in her hands. She couldn’t remember how it worked, but she knew that him pressing something on it made it turn from gold to blue. She liked gold better, it matched her hair. The woman impulsively flipped its setting, unconsciously damning herself.
The second its beam toggled, a warm tingling spread throughout her body. Her posture slouched further as her breasts and belly swelled, the latter gaining a soft curve while the former ballooned out into a healthy pair of mammaries. Before the changes could go much further, Demmings toggled the staff once more.
“Are you okay?” He laughed mockingly, or in a tone that she assumed was mocking her. It didn’t make her feel good, and so she furrowed her brow and clicked the staff back to its golden healing setting.
“No bully. Body heavy, and me not think well. I mean good. Me no good think.” She wavered in and out of consciousness, grunting as that golden shimmer played across her skin once more. This time, her legs grew thicker, muscle and fat in equal part giving her a curve that would have been pleasing in another situation. Her toes lengthened slightly, and she curled them against the tile beneath her feet.
“Cold…” Angela muttered, looking down to her feet and tilting her head. She couldn’t remember them looking this way, but she also couldn’t remember why that was supposed to be a bad thing. “I am be clothes.”
Demmings outright guffawed at that, thumbing the healing selector on her staff. “Care to give that another try? You don’t seem to be too sharp, for a woman with a P.H.D.”
“Me need clothies.” Angela said assuredly, pawing at the staff with both hands, pulling it back from him. “And stop switchy, Angeluh likes color.” She was rather proud of herself for managing to convey that she preferred the golden beam to the cerulean one.
Her hair grew more unkempt, her lips swelling and her face rounding. She took on an appearance that was almost simian, though it still held much of her former elegance. Still, with such broad arms and thick fingers, a bystander would be hard-pressed to mistake the woman before them for a doctor.
“‘Angeluh’, hm? I think you’ve had about enough, in any case.” Demmings flicked off the beam with a casual wave of his hand, and the blonde let out a yelp of protest. She shook her head, not seeming to notice how it made her shaggy mane of hair unfurl behind herself.
“Nuh! Bad! Anga wan pretty!” She fell to her knees, poking and prodding at a device that she’d invented in another life. Now, it was totally unfamiliar to her. Anga smacked her lips loudly, for all the good that did, and grunted up to the soft male. He wasn’t a powerful mate, and she knew that her heavy body was deserving of one.
“Security, take her away.” He spoke, and though she heard the words perfectly fine, she couldn’t focus on them enough to understand them. Their meaning was made clear soon enough, as a pair of strong, tall guards entered the room.
They were better-suited for Anga, though still softer than she’d have liked. The cavewoman dimly scratched at the top of her head, shuffling over to one of them and sniffing at his chest.
“Hey, Bob! I think she likes you!”
Her nose picked up some flowery smell, and she shook her head, pushing the male away. While Angela Ziegler would have liked a man who showered before work, Anga wasn’t interested in that. “Weak.” She grunted, making as much clear. “Need strong mate.”
The other guard’s eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline, and he looked from Anga to the soft man. “Hold up, what?”
“She’s taken a liking to you, David. Be good enough to drop her off at her enclosure, and I promise the two of you will be soon well-acquainted.” Demmings laughed, only laughing harder as Anga dimwittedly pointed at the staff, then at David. “Yes, Anga, very smart!”
“Anga smuh!” The cavewoman’s plump lips curled into a smile, and she loped after the guards, ready for when the glowy stick made the strong one even better of a mate. Each step she took diminished her intelligence a bit more, just to be on the safe side, and by the time she reached her new home she was nothing more than a drooling imbecile.
Not that she was smart enough to care, at any rate. While once Anga had been a brilliant scientist and inventor, she now was barely smart enough to use a rock to open a coconut—and nearly too clumsy to accomplish such a feat. Then again, one didn’t need to be intelligent or dexterous in order to raise a tribe.