OK, here we go! This is my first fic so please don't be hatin'! If you are, I will hire Gabriel Tosh to assassinate you. Or kill you myself. Just Kidding!

Very minor spoiler for Origins. In fact, you probably won't get one thing if you haven't played the game. You can still appreciate the story.

Once Human

Chapter 1: Jason Dogga

A young man stormed out of his family's home on Ziba. He screamed, "THANKS FOR NOTHIN', MOM!" into the house and slammed the door. The faint light from the Nanairo sun that just barely reached the planet's surface poured over the town, setting it in a permanent dusk.

The young man stormed through the town, hardly responding to his friend Elia's shout of "HEY THERE JASON!" Elia hopped down from the crate of metalium she was sitting on. "Where ya going?" she asked. "Little ways outta town." Jason said, "I need some peace and quiet."

"I'll come with you!" Elia said.

"What part of 'quiet' do you not understand?" Jason snapped. Seeing his friend's hurt and confused face, he sighed. "Fine. You can come." He turned his back and trudged on, not seeing the slight, cruel smile his friend flashed before following.

"MMMMMMMMMPH!"

"What was that?" Jason asked, spooked.

"Probably just a Corib." Elia reassured him.

Behind a nearby crate, Elia screamed again and strained against the cocoon of strange goo that covered her body.

Jason and 'Elia' walked off together into the nearby quarry and sat down on one of the boulders. It was going from dusk to night as Aoboshi moved further up the horizon. A cold wind blew through the quarry generating an eerie whistling noise and making Jason shiver. 'Elia' remained perfectly still.

"I heard you shouting earlier; what was all that about?" 'Elia' asked.

"My mom and I were arguing. Her new job gives us more than enough money for me to go to Collin U next year. But she insists that I have to go to that shitty little university in Oraca. Oraca! That place is even more backwater than this dump of town!" He gestured to small mining town they lived in. His mom, Professor Marry O'Nell-Dogga, had just been appointed the head of the town one government research station, a job the paid over 1 million Gura a year. More than enough to send him to Collin University, the most prestigious college in Nanairo. But his mom insisted on sending him to the public college in Oraca, a short ways to the south, which offered three courses: engineering, prospecting, and abstract art. Jason wanted to be a xenobiologist. "The big city will ruin you," his mom had said, and refused to discuss it any further.

"Stingy bitch…" Jason muttered.

'Elia' laughed. And laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed.

"Tha-heehee That… is…. PATHETIC!" she let out a cackle as her voice become a strange, guttural gurgle and she transformed it a thin, amoebic organism, with pustules all over it, red insectoid eyes, and a bloated right arm. Jason let out a scream as the now fully changed Morpheela lunged at him. Then there was silence.

Jason awoke strapped to an altar, clear tubes inserted into his arms, legs, neck and chest. He tried to move, but found he was paralyzed. A man in a long dark cloak with a strange metallic mask with glowing red lines for eyeholes approached the altar. "Hello Jason." He said, a mean tinge to his voice. Then, to no one in particular, he yelled, "COMMENCE THE OPERATION!" Strange purple liquid, as well as amoebic flesh began to pump into him through the tubes. Jason screamed in pain as he felt something move within him, writhing. He blacked out.

When he awoke, he was not Jason Dogga. His skin was blue with black lines. His hair and teeth had sharp points, and his eyes, now just white circles with black dots, the left slightly larger than the right.

The cloaked man approached the altar. The being who was Jason Dogga sat up and looked at him.

"M-Master Krux!" He sniveled in a subservient tone of voice. "What may I do for you?"

"Jason?"

"N-No, Master Krux. I… I am Jado."

I had been playing around with this idea for a while, so I thought I would use it. Clearing some things up:

Corib – domesticated animal native to Ziba. About the size of a Dachshund, with very long white to gray fur and blue, green, or yellow eyes.

Oraca – Town on Ziba that I made up. A square, about twenty city blocks long on the sides. Most of its building are derelict from lack of repair.

Morpheela – Krawl designed by Krux to infiltrate human society. It can transform into people by stealing DNA from them, and can temporarily access their memories though stolen brain tissue. The DNA and memories are lost when it returns to its true form.

Please R&R – Lest my plot Shakoblads cut you up and eat you.