"Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bug hunt?"

- Hudson, Aliens

Sophia slinked out of the cocoon like a tiny kitten crawling out of her pen for the first time. Her wobbling arms and legs carried her weight for a few seconds before she crumpled to the ground. The glowing purple villi lining the floor brushed against her naked belly and chest as she senses slowly returned. She sat up in the neon weeds and gradually caught her breath, filling her dozens of tracheal lungs with fresh air.

She was lucky to have survived the metamorphosis, even if her genetic code would disagree. Her magic wand and her clothing—anything that wasn't a biological part of her—had been the first things to get broken down in the cocoon's volatile bacteria, followed by her prone human flesh. Her skin tone had changed to the color of bright caterpillar fur. Her cheeks were covered with flat whisker-like markings. The top of her head was adorned with a pair short triangular horns or antennae that implied kitty ears. Her eyes had turned into flower petal irises with pollen-colored pupils. Her long brown hair was highlighted with silver, pink, and violet pastel streaks. Various parts of her body were marked with small square patches that suspiciously resembled scrambled pixels. A thick string of jelly ooze stayed stuck to the end of her tailbone as she crawled away from the alien cocoon. She wiggled her pert little bottom to shake the debris off.

The old Sophia would have been shrieking with embarrassment and shriveling up in misery. The new Sophia only lowered her eyes and blushed lightly.

"Ooooh, and it looks like the the adorable mage fails the dice roll and turns into a cute little love bug!" Welch's disembodied voice cheered from the walls of the ship. "Let me just take a peek at her gene patterns to make it official."

Sophia curled on her thighs. She stretched her neck sideways to let the nutrient slime and the cocoon membranes drip from her hair. She could feel thousands of eyes anxiously staring down on her like a squirming grub under a microscope.

"Well that's not what a human DNA strain should look like! That's another automatic forfeit! She's the last contestant down!" Welch chimed again. "This week's Boss Event is over! Team Linegold have been defeated! Who would have thought the entire team would wind up in the Chrysalization Zone and three of them would even be completely converted into monster sprites? We haven't seen an ending this icky since the Season 4 finale!"

It had all started with Fayt's party accepting a basic guild assignment to investigate a mysterious structure in an obscure location on Elicoor II. They thought it was going to be a typical case of enter the ruins, slay the big scary monster, and collect the reward.

As soon as they saw the massive disc-shaped structure with their own eyes, it became apparent that this was actually a space craft half-hidden under the local geology. The ship's bioluminescent interior décor was part alien jungle, part ocean floor, and part electronica nightclub. If they had known what they would encounter here, they would have worn stronger poison wards. Or at least packed extra bug spray.

They had only explored the ancient crash site for a few minutes when they were attacked. The ship was inhabited by a pulsating insect monstrosity that looked like a gigantic millipede had mated with overgrown monarch butterfly and had their young raised by an electric eel. If Mothra gave herself a synthwave makeover, she would be this thing.

And then the battle had kind of turned into a gameshow.

There was never any clear explanation for why a holographic grid suddenly appeared on the ceiling of the ship, nor why its eleven blocks were filled with information pertaining to each member of Fayt's team. Each block contained a headshot of a party member's face, their first name, a small biographical breakdown, and a funny green bar simply labeled "HP." They would have been right if they blamed this on some form of Fourth Dimensional trickery, but they still hadn't learned what the Fourth Dimension actually entailed. Now they would never know.

Blades clashed. Spells fired. Chitin crackled. The fight seemed to be going in Fayt's favor until a moment where the giant butterfly began to wave its abdomen in a strange motion. Had the team been a little more cautious or paid a little more attention to alien insectoid body language, Sophia probably would have lived through this day without finding out what getting enriched hypopharynx extract wedged between your boobs feels like.

She had seen a shockwave heading toward her and felt a cold, slimy feeling crawling up her ankles. And then her world had become significantly more gooey. Paralysis had set in as her equipment disintegrated in the alien yolk. Unconsciousness had set in once the proteins were working under her skin. Her natural magic resistance made her body ripe for the cocoon's transformative powers.

A glubble, a pssh, and a messy plop later, Sophia came to be where she is now. She watched a colony of morpho peleides girls—mostly likely the results of previous expeditions gone awry—gathering around a grinning Cliff. They swooned over his flexing biceps, his rigid pectorals, and his other flexing biceps on the extra pair of arms that had grown out of his abdomen.

Clair was being cleaned off by a group of humanoid silkworm hybrids. The Aquarian runes on her legs and arms had molted into swirling luna moth patterns and a third eye had grown on her forehead. The silkworms helped her fit comfortably into an outfit that resembled her old fighting attire weaved out of raw strings. They would have to knit Sophia a new miniskirt and thighhighs next.

And then there were the failed experiments. Fayt's and Albel's cocoons had ruptured from organic complications, leaving their half-transformed corpses as skinless muscle systems with looks of agony and horror frozen to their crimson faces. Near them lay the remains of what used to be Peppita. Her high evasion abilities had helped her escape her cocoon entirely with all of her gear intact, but evasion wasn't enough to take on the giant insect queen and her minions alone. By the looks of things, the poor circus acrobat had probably only lasted a few seconds before she was swarmed by giant maggots and devoured alive like a delicious soufflé. They were still nibbling on a few tiny scraps of her by the time Sophia hatched.

The others had succumbed to a relatively peaceful death as they slept inside their cocoons. Any combination of genetic incompatibility, blood type mismatches, internal organ failure, or insufficient air supply could have brought about their demise. Their preserved remains looked like a set of ooze-covered statues carved out of honeycomb.

The transparent scoreboard floating on the ceiling summarized the outcome of the battle.

Fayt: Fatal error 47023 || Cliff: Organism Assimilated || Albel: Fatal error 47021

Mirage: Fatal error 28344 || Sophia: Organism Assimilated || Peppita: Game Over

Roger: Fatal error 39790 || Maria: Fatal error 47021 || Nel: [ACCESS VIOLATION – PROCESS TERMINATED]

Clair: Organism Assimilated || Adray: Fatal error 38554

The panels that represented each party member had all been blue when the battle began. Now most of them were crossed out and switched to grayscale. Cliff's, Claire's, and Sophia's panels were highlighted in dark yellow.

"This brings Sufferfly's record to 58 wins, 6 losses, and 45 successful player-to-pupa code splices! Nice going, girl!" Welch announced from the other side of her own dimension. "Looks like some of our lucky viewers will be winning some decent Spherecoins on... uhhh, where's that bidding log? Ah! 48% of you wagered on a victory for the monster side, 31% correctly guessed the number of contestant permadeaths not caused by system crashes, 14% called the right match length, 22% were right about the number of uppercuts Cliff would perform during the fight, and 11% bet on the correct type of camouflage pattern appearing on Clair's tushy if she wasn't careful and got that booty snuggled up in a cocoon for too long. Congrats to the biology nerds in the audience!"

Sophia twitched her antennae and blinked. Her human reasoning gave way to a more alien instinct to swarm and infest. A more insect instinct.

"Don't forget to submit your bets for next week's Simufight! We'll be sure to have our Guildmasters round up another team of dopey NPC adventurers! They're never too hard to find, teehehehe!"

And so began a young sorceress's new life as Sophia, the Dreaded Catleech of Aphidion.

Author's note: I've written so many things where Sophia gets debugged that I thought it would be a cute twist to literally turn her into a bug.