Assistant Caroline Benthez hurried into the lab, messing with the labcoat as she went - she was late, dangit! So late that Doctor Winther had probably started the experiment himself. It wasn’t her fault that she was this late, of course - there had been a battle between the Great Machina and Scarlet Soldier on the way and she’d been briefly drafted into the latter’s ranks before getting knocked out of it by a hero, and then she’d had to find where she left her car and get away before they could stop her for a psych check. She was fine anyway, the desire to use her boss’ experiments to conquer the human race had dissipated on the drive over.
As she stumbled into the lab with an explanation already rolling out of her mouth, she stopped. Doctor Sheldon Winther was nowhere to be seen, although there was plenty of evidence he’d been there. Chemical bottles strewn about the lab, a few otherworldly materials out of containment, the mixing station had a giant puddle of sludge next to it. She walked over to it and looked at the notes, taking a read to see what he’d been working on.
Some kind of durability concoction was what it seemed like; the doctor’s goal was to make a formula that would toughen up anyone who drank it, or could even be used on materials like metal or cement during creation to make them even stronger. He was using some interesting materials either imported from other worlds (quite a few heroes had such connections that he could tap) or generated by more supernatural based heroes and villains, and he’d done some math… and then Caroline sighed loudly; he’d messed up the ratios, and this wouldn’t be doing what he wanted. Which was why she always told him to wait for her, but did he listen? No, no he didn’t.
The potion he’d actually developed… well, she didn’t know what it would do, but she could guess from all the piles of goop. She was about to put down the notes and start looking when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Or a something that was vaguely hand shaped. “Ooooh, Caroline, there you are!” said a feminine voice behind her. Caroline whirled around and saw… a something, rising up out of the puddle. It… yawned? “Sorry, was taking a nap while I was waiting for you to show up, science is tiring. Want to get to work on fixing the mistakes?”
“I, uh, what…” Caroline stammered.
“Oh, this?” The thing looked down at itself as it’s body coalesced into a feminine, human shape. “Well, I can take over shapes with effort, but I kinda default to this or puddle. It’s kinda annoying- oh, it’s Sheldon. Or I guess Shelly, now.” The feminine figure grinned sheepishly. “I should probably explain what happened shouldn’t I? Well, let me give you the test log.”
It had been nearly two hours since Caroline was supposed to be there, and Doctor Sheldon Winther was simply done. He loved the girl like a daughter but she really had to be more punctual, or at least less late. Sure, there was that battle out on the street, but she should know by now to go around instead of shaving a few minutes by going through - the detour would be shorter than the transformation!
So he was moving on without her. He’d made all the preparations already. The plan, as it was, was to make a chemical concoction that would allow the more mundane and thus not superhumanly tough heroes to take a hit, or even enough for police to put up a fight. He was… pretty sure it would work at least. And, while he was quite assuredly a mad scientist, he was a firmly good mad scientist, which meant that he didn’t use random people off the street for his experiments; he used himself.
“Bottoms up…” Winther muttered to himself, before drinking the potion and heading to the testing room, and got to work. Sitting down on a chair, he opened the test log and got out a needle.
The plan had been to stick himself with it every 5 minutes to test his resistance to attack. That turned out to kinda break down as, after the first test, his body shifted and molded around it. He blinked and stared as the needle sorta just, pushed his body around with entering it, like it was a blunt object pushing against jello. “Test log. Not even 5 minutes post consumption, the body is showing an increase in durability and flexibility. Will continue to experiment.” he said.
Well, that had been the plan. But his body started to continue to shift and move. It felt like weight from his waist was shifted around and moved up to his chest and down to his hips, pinching in the waist and expanding his chest and buttocks. His shoulders seemed to droop and slim, and he noticed his legs had changed as well, becoming slimmer and longer. “An odd effect of the potion is that I appear to be transforming in a way quite unrelated to the intended effects; my figure has turned female, and I can feel my genitalia changing as well. Perhaps it is an unintended side effect caused by the specific mix of substances, or alternatively a hallucination. As well, I believe my facial structure is changing, and I am quite certain that my voice has-”
He, or rather she, was interrupted by a dripping sound. Doctor Winther looked down and saw not a bit of blood like she expected (she was still trying to prick herself as this went on after all) but a drop of something pink. She got off the chair to take a look, but found she couldn’t actually change. She stared at the blob that used to be her legs and a flash of inspiration came across her mind. “Reporting: Assuming this isn’t a hallucination, I believe I’ve accidentally tapped significantly greater transformative properties than intended. My body seems to be slowly turning pink, and gaining several properties of slime beings. I believe this might be caused by the mixing in of small amounts of the hero Great Gelatinous’ slime residue, which has reacted dramatically with other ingredients.” Doctor Winther said; the slime-themed hero didn’t have any transformative powers, but other materials in the concoction did. She also remained quite calm; while this outcome was unexpected, she could still feel her legs; or rather, the puddle they had become. She just wasn’t sure how to move them.
Her body continued to melt and jellify; she’d already turned nearly completely pink, and was rapidly losing coherency. The last part of her that wasn’t a puddle was her face, which rapidly vanished into the goop as well.
And she was still perfectly conscious. Thinking about what to do, she tried to move a bit. The puddle of goop seeped along in the direction she’d tried to move. She went in a different direction to confirm that wasn’t just coincidence, and she moved that way. She had definitely become a slime-being of some form. Having read several papers about such beings, she decided that she should be able to reform into a humanoid shape - she just wasn’t sure how.
The next twenty or so minutes were spent rebuilding herself from the slime. She found that while she could hold any form she wanted, she had two forms that didn’t take conscious effort to maintain; the pink gooey version of her female body and the puddle. After that she started dictating notes to the recording systems, ideas for further experiments and what went wrong, and then got to work… and fell asleep at the station, collapsing into a puddle of slime again as the tiredness caused by the rapid bodily shift finally outstripped her zeal for science.
“...And that’s why I’m a slimegirl now!” Shelly finished cheerfully. “Now, I think I’ve isolated the cause, and the next potion will probably not have any negative side effects. But I figure you should check now, and I hope you won’t mind volunteering since my body isn’t really good for testing the baseline human anymore-”
“...Are you really not that concerned?” Caroline asked, staring. ‘Shelly’ was a slime, so she didn’t really need clothes… but well, she was still naked, and had a notable… anatomy.
“Nope! I’m still myself, just made of slime and female. Who cares, when there’s science to be done?”
Caroline shook her head and nodded. This would take some getting used to, but Shelly seemed fine with things, at least for now. They’d look into a cure later, assuming she didn’t decide she liked the form. For now, she’d be stubbornly pursuing this goal until she made it, even if she did it as a slime.