Rebirth
The hills
"Where're we going anyway?" asked Laura who was seated in the back, the Larva resting on her lap. "Well the good news is, the place I have in mind is somewhere in nowhere. The bad thing, it is an half an hour ride through the hills and through various villages for that matter."
"Couldn't we just take the train?" Raymond asked who was placed next to Jack.
"Nope, no train whatsoever. Bus station yeah, but you'd still have to walk there for 45 minutes. A few people wander there every now and then, but mostly only during the summer. The rest of the time we should be for ourselves."
"Okay, then how do you know so much about this place, if it is so safe?" Laura questioned. "My mom's friend lives in the next best village of the place we're heading. She and my mom forced me and the son of my mom's friend to wander with them when we were children. Finally comes in handy."
XIII
Apparently somewhere...it's a forest with no name, 'kay?
Jake drove off from the road and parked the car next to a small lake. "The middle of nowhere. Next stop: some cave." Jake got out of the car and the rest followed. So far for his two friends it looked like a forest you could find anywhere in the middle of Europe. Nothing really stood out and the road was a ten minute walk away.
Someone dropped a metal barrel in the lake and it looked like it has been in there for quite some time. "The thing is still there? Lol." Jake shook his head, smiling nostalgically. The Larva seemed to inhale the fresh air and looked around its new home.
"Okay man, where to?" Raymond asked. Jake pointed towards a way, which leads upwards. "We're going to walk for a while." he explained. He opened the trunk of his car and took out three bottles of water and three flashlights (the flashlights had been prepared in advance). "Luckily I forgot to take them out. Alright let's go."
Jake lead the way and the other two followed. By now Laura had long lost her fear of the Larva and even Raymond started petting the little thing. Jake in the meanwhile focused on the way ahead and tried to remember which path would bring them towards the place he had in mind. It was tricky for him to remember because the place had changed a little everywhere and the only signs he could use was the path they walked on.
Whether they walked left or right, how bright the path itself was, if it got up a little or down.
He sighed in relief when they finally found the small river. He noticed they had taken a little detour. As a kid he walked a part of the way off the path and took some shortcuts.
Laura gave the Larva some water from her bottle and giggled as she saw how much difficulty the Larva had when trying to drink the water. "What do you think happened causing the Larva to take a ride on an asteroid?" Raymond ask as he was carefully avoiding the deeper parts of the small current in order to keep his socks dry.
"Hard to imagine the Zerg actually got defeated." Jake made his statement and more enjoyed the view of everything. "Maybe it's the last one of its brood?" Laura suggested looking at the thing like it was an injured animal that needed attention.
"It could be that the last battle against Amon already happened. This would certainly support both theories." He mused.
"Uh, kind of no?" Jake intervened. "Remember? Starcraft 2 starts at the year of 2504. That is a little bit in the future, you know? Unless of course either time travel or alternate dimension." Jake was a fan of the multiverse theory, mainly because you can make so many great jokes with it or just talk bullshit.
"Good point. Then what if something not canon happened? Like the protoss won somehow against the Zerg?"
"Hey little guy." Jake called out the Larva. "Can't you just communicate with us via mind to mind contact?" he asked. The little thing shook its head. "Too bad."
"I bet it would have if it could." Laura said and cuddled with the little thing, creeping the other two out.
"Whatever brought the Larva here, let's hope it wasn't something hostile and decides to look around and find the earth." Raymond stated sternly. "My vote goes to Protoss. You know, maybe this whole blowing up the planets thing worked out in the end." Jake said.
"As crazy as it sounds..." Laura began, but made a little pause before continuing "I think this thing here comes from the Starcraft universe and somehow got transported into our dimension."
Raymond thought about his answer a little more. "I think here's some kind of third party involved. Dunno how and why, but I think that's how it is."
Jake suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked around.
"What's up?" Laura asked. Jake drank some water out of his bottle before speaking up. "Nothing. I'm just trying to remember which the easier way up was up."
He was looking up a hill with multiple trees they would have to use to support themselves in order to climb up. Then there was the way that went through a lot of bushes. On both ways he had the one or other accident as a kid because of his own stupor.
He decided for the left way with the trees because it was the faster one. His two friends followed him, careful not to slip up on the moos or loose leaves. "Hey Jake, are you sure this place even exists?" Laura asked.
"We're almost there." he called back.
It took them about 5 more minutes until they finally reached some kind of overview point. Raymond and Laura wowed at seeing what was on the overview point.
"That's the way I reacted the first time I was here." Jake said as the three stood in front of a cave. The light from outside revealed about 1/3 of it. The ceiling was pretty high, but luckily the rock was hard enough so it wouldn't collapse.
Jake luckily advised his friends to bring flashlights with them, stronger ones. Jake finished his water and flinched at the thought of going back without additional water supply. "I always wanted to throw a barbeque party here, but...last time I was here there was a bear in this cave." he gulped at the memory. "Not nice, I can tell you."
The other two laughed and wanted to press for details, if not for the Larva jumping off Laura's shoulder and crawling into the middle of the three. All humans looked at the thing curiously as it curled up into a ball and something began to grow out of it.
All of them let out sounds of surprise and awe, when within seconds a complete green cocoon formed around the Larva, looking like a Zerg egg from the game. It pulsed and with every 'breath' it was glowing green.
"Awesome..." Laura whispered.
"How long do you think it will take?" Raymond asked, not removing his eyes from the egg.
"In the game a worker in every race takes 17 seconds to spawn." Jake looked at his watch. "17 seconds already passed. This might take a while."
All of them placed themselves on the ground, keeping their gazes on the egg, which slowly grew. After five more minutes they started making bets on how long it would take for the Drone to spawn. Only 15 minutes in total passed when suddenly the egg exploded and a drone came out of the egg. It had the size of a full grown German shepherd and with the 'wings' it was as wide as two of them.
Everyone gathered around the Drone in order to take a closer inspection. Laura held out her hand and carefully stroke with her fingers over the wings.
After a while the drone, uhhh...walked(?) (Seriously, do these guys walk or do they kind of fly or swim a little?) into the middle of the cave and started morphing. Violet fins seemed to come out of it and grew in size very quickly. When it stopped expanding, a little bit of creep appeared around the fleshy mass, which was closing in over the Drone.
The Hatchery had started morphing.
XIII
The Hatchery was only growing very slowly. In fact it was so slow, that the three humans had time to visit the next best village, eat in a small restaurant and come back with more supplies. The Hatchery or what would be soon a Hatchery was as wide as a hut. The violet light that came out of the cocoon was enough to illuminate the entire cave.
No one dared to touch the thing, so they were all just sitting in a safe distance and watching the thing slowly growing, sometimes catching a glimpse of the shadow of the Drone inside the Hatchery.
Slowly but steadily everyone was growing impatient and the sun started to set.
"Should we call it a day? I need to work tomorrow you know." Jake called out to his friends.
"What? Tomorrow is Sunday." Laura pointed out.
"I work at the bakery/café at the train station. We're opened even on Sundays. And I gotta be there early and for that I need the car, since the busses don't drive that early." He looked at his watch. "I already won't get much sleep, so-" He was interrupted by a sudden rumbling from the Hatchery.
Everyone's attention was now at the pile of flesh and moments later the Hatchery broke out of the 'cocoon'. It was as high as one third of the cave and in a matter of seconds the three found themselves surrounded by creep.
Laura, Raymond and Jake stared at the command structure of the Zerg, their jaws dropped. Laura was the first one to recover and slowly approached the building, making sounds with each step she took, due to the creep on the ground.
Three small Larvas already spawned out of the building and were lying in front of it, each watching one of the humans. They made Laura some space when she was in front of the Hatchery and touched it.
"Feels warm." she commented. The building all of the sudden trembled a little and something came out of it from the ground. She took a few steps back from the thing that came out. Everyone gathered around the strange object.
"Looks like it is something to step into." Raymond observed.
"Is it just me or does that thing look like the downer part of one of those Zerg cocoons?" Jake asked. "Any volunteers?" he added after a few seconds of silence.
No one made a move for the next couple of minutes.
"You guys know what? YOLO!" Laura cheered.
"Wait!" he two friends shouted. "You do know there's no going back afterwards?" Jake pointed out. "Plus we don't know if you'll be still yourself." Raymond asked worried. Laura shrugged in response.
"Don't worry guys. It takes a lot more than a simple virus to change my personality completely. Besides, I can't leave the lead of the swarm to two Zerg noobs." she grinned although she was a bit exaggerating. Jake was at least good enough to play the Zerg campaign on highest difficulty, but that was actually it. Raymond was a little better than Jake with Zerg, but far from being a pro player.
Before any of her two friends could react, Laura stepped inside the thing and immediately afterwards a cocoon started to grow around her. She barely managed to stand still, being overall excited.
After the cocoon closed Raymond and Jake stood there dumbfounded. Someone Laura's confidence had been big enough to stop the two from intervening and now it was too late. The two looked at each other and then worriedly over to the cocoon.
The Larvas gathered around the cocoon, somehow being drawn to it.
"All or nothing." Raymond sighed.
"Kerrigan's transformation took a few weeks." Jake stated as a matter of fact, trying to keep calm. "We might as well go back." Raymond nodded solemnly. "When does your shift ends?"
"Around nine. Luckily short day.
...
What are we going to say if someone asks us where she is?"
"Let's worry about that later. I'm too tired to properly think. Let's go back and get some rest."
XIII
Shortly after the cocoon closed, Laura couldn't hear anything from outside anymore. She couldn't see anything, but feel how something connected to her exposed body parts. It tickled a little and she had to admit it was a little disturbing as to how she could feel the Zerg stuff going under her skin.
A few minutes later all of the sudden some kind of warm liquid started filling the cocoon. She could feel how her shoes started to disappear all of the sudden. Well Zerg had no use for clothes anyway.
She was afraid that she would drown until she remembered that the cocoon would most likely give her the oxygen she needed. Speaking off, she wondered if she could survive in space after the transformation. How did the Zerg survive in space anyway? Maybe she would get the answers later.
The liquid covered now her legs and she felt something stirring inside them. It was almost as if they were melting from the inside. She realized the virus was already starting to work. She hoped she wouldn't feel much pain.
Just as these thoughts left her mind she felt sleepy all of the sudden. Almost against her own will she curled up like a fetus and closed her eyes. Her lasts thoughts were that this whole situation was just awesome, before she fell asleep.
XIII
Main train station
Jake didn't get any sleep that night and arrived at his workplace half an hour before he had to be at his workplace. Thing was, the door was still closed and needed to be opened by one of his seniors. The station itself would open 45 minutes later, the time he and his co-workers had to prepare the basic stuff.
He drank his third coke f the night, hoping the sugar and caffeine would keep him awake. He would have never guessed that he would ever worry so much about someone in his life. Well you learn something new every day.
His hometown mostly got its money from tourism and there was a high chance people from all around would just come to see the place the comet made contact with earth.
His co-workers arrived on spot and opened the door. Working at the bakery meant one thing: all of your co-workers are women. There was one time another man was working with him, but the dude only made some practical training for a week.
The result of all of this was, his co-workers every now and then teasing him as to why he didn't have a girlfriend or giving him some unwanted tips. Truth to be told he couldn't see himself in any kind of relationship, because he thought no girl would be happy with him.
Raymond had had some girlfriends in his life, but nothing lasted. Even Ray tried to give Jake some tips, but so far he didn't fell like having a girlfriend. He had a crush every now and then on a girl, but suspected it were only his hormones reacting. So far he had been proven right.
Work was as boring as ever and Jake was as slow as always. The reason people liked him at his workplace was not because he was a fast worker, but rather that he did things right and was reliable. He always stepped in for others who got sick and never has been late so far, except for one or two minutes sometimes.
Today was like any other weekend day. The drunken people laughed over stuff that wasn't funny and for some reason were the most patient customers. Luckily his senior declared Jake would be at the cashbox next to the coffee today, meaning no annoying sandwich making.
It was six, when Raymond appeared at the counter, the lack of sleep obvious in his eyes. "'Sup? Coffee?" Jake asked. Raymond just nodded before yawning. "Sorry, I couldn't sleep."
"Yeah, same here." Jake replied before handing over the coffee. "Anything else?"
"Maybe later."
"1.90."
Ray took out his purse. "I thought I might as well wait here until your shift ends."
"Just don't fall asleep or I'll have to kick you out. Speaking off..." Jake sighed looking over to the tables. He then checked the counter and saw there were no other customers. His co-worker would be good alone for one or two minutes.
"Wish I could throw those people out, like they do in the disco."
XIII
Swarm Cluster
Laura was asleep, she knew that much. But she could feel things. She could feel the Larva in front of the cocoon, the Hatchery behind her and everything the creep touched. It was a completely new feeling for her. Her mind felt strong and with every passing minute it grew stronger.
She experimented a little, touching the creep with her mind, feeling every cell working. She got bored pretty fast and let her mind wander a bit. For some reason she couldn't feel anything outside the small hive, most likely because she was still changing.
After some more experimenting she found out how to look through the eyes of one of her Larva. Something appeared in her mind, information about into what she could order the larva to transform.
At first she didn't get the gist of it, but then it changed inside her mind, showing her the same HUD she was used to from playing Starcraft 2, with more additional options. Of course there wasn't a mini map or anything, that would have been too nice. Maybe it would work with several Overlords in orbit.
Speaking off, the information shown to her told her that she needed an Overlord in order to even start spawning Drones. Another piece of information showed her that there was just enough bio mass there for her to create one Overlord and five Drones afterwards. Almost starting options. Only the 50 minerals were missing.
In exchange of course there was herself. She grinned inwardly wondering just how strong she would be after the transformation was done. A thought crossed her mind. Instead of building five Drones, she could build one Drone and one Spawning Pool.
But then again she had no idea as to how she would be able to use the Drones. There were no resources to harvest. After these thoughts crossed her mind, seemingly out of nowhere information popped up. It was like the picture of a Drone had been selected and detailed information was shown to her.
Drones were workers, but they didn't only harvest resources. They were able to create underground tunnels and make the cave they were in even bigger. Drones could be considered small building engineers. They could figure out where to dig and were to create rather fleshy supports in order to prevent the cave from collapsing.
After over viewing the info she got, Laura mentally ordered the two Larvas to turn into Drones and one to turn into an Overlord. She herself was already more than strong enough to keep the connection to two Drones. Seeing as this would take fifteen minutes (Overlord 22), Laura experimented a little bit, 'looking around' her HUD and finding something that looked like a DNA-helix. She couldn't remove anything, but there seemed to be some free spots. Upgrades? Or maybe something the swarm had to get from another life form.
The thing was there weren't many interesting things on earth. Maybe around the tropic parts of Earth, but else? Well there were the wolves with their very good hearing or toxic creatures that basically lived all around earth. And of course the plant life.
There was a lot to explore and it would take some time, but of course there was also the thing with the other humans. Jake ones told her that there was an old US-Airforce base 25 km away and still operational. Apparently Jake drives that far in order to get a haircut. Jake was just weird sometimes, whether he did it on purpose or not. He also told her there were still soldiers despite the cold war being over.
Then there were the local barracks. The three of them had been there last year, when a few tanks and their functions had been shown to the public, without shooting targets mind you. It was not big, but the fact that it was there at all, meant the higher ups would be informed pretty fast of the Zerg.
It wouldn't matter whether Laura's personality would change after the transformation or not, humans were paranoid in general. And who could really blame them? Zerg might be cool in a computer game, but in real life they were frightening.
Laura would at least need a small army and steadily increase it, along with building up her base, which most likely will be an underground tunnel system and finally looking for sequences to improve her swarm.
Speaking of the base and the swarm, she wondered why she needed all those buildings in order to spawn new units. Turned out under the creep there was a huge connection with the roots, almost like the internet. It didn't stop at the creep, but it had limits to a certain 'map area' as Laura called it. There were two reasons the buildings were needed. For one they provided the information needed to create the new units, which was bullshit, but there wasn't much she could do. The second thing was: these buildings actually had purposes as living quarters, so she'd most likely build more than one for example Spire.
The three Drones were finished by now and she ordered two more to spawn. The other three initially got to work, having already heard the thoughts of their leader during the morph phase.
Supplies were a little problem, which could be easily solved. Drones were no hunters. They had means of self defense, but only if it had to be. She made a mental note to look into the matter, when she had more free time.
No additional bio mass had to come through her friends or herself. But as much as she was eager to test out her new skills once she was finished, she didn't want the authorities to know of her, when she didn't even had one fighter.
A thought crossed her mind. Once they discovered the tunnel network, which was being built at this very minute, they could always get the idea and blow things up. Defensive structures were a must be, but again supplies. If only Earth had minerals or vespene gas.
By the thought of the gas, information about the Extractor popped up. Sure it was mainly used for getting the green stuff, but it could also be used like drilling for other stuff. Mineral, underground water (not necessary but always welcome) other gas that might be used in on or another way. It was almost like plant life with some additions.
It didn't take much building that thing, but her resources were zero. Raymond's and Jake's purses would have to bleed for the swarm Laura realized.
She didn't know how much time passed already, but by now she could feel the world outside of the hive. And to her delight her two friends were just returning to the Hatchery. Well, Jake slipped up a little and rolled down the hill, taking Raymond with him. Laura would have laughed, but she couldn't move a muscle. In fact the only thing she could feel around her body was the warm bio-chemical liquid.
The Overlord already popped up and out of habit Laura wanted to send him scouting the area, but luckily she reminded herself that she needed to hide for now. But she knew already her patience wouldn't last long. Once the first Zerglings were out, she most likely wouldn't be able to withstand the temptation of going outside anymore. But for that matter her transformation needed to be completed. She wondered how long that would take and got the information inside her head: 9 more hours. Even she was surprised. Her entire transformation took her only 24 hours.