Team Bananafishstickers' "Grudge Match Redux" Post #11! by Goddess-of-Da-Cheeseburgers
*cracks knuckles* I skimped out on the bentoture a couple posts ago, yeah. Since today was a snow day for me, I had planned to spend the whole day writing it. My friends, however, decided to kidnap me and weasel me into a snowball fight of epic proportions. If this seems disjointed somewhere along the line, that's probably the point when I was dragged out into the snow and used as a moving target.
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"Thinner cuts...They leave more delicate, artful scars." Sagark explained slowly, barely tracing the tip of the knife down Ben's back. Though his scream had faded, the alien could still sense the faint echoes around the room. He flashed a smile to his sister, "Unlike the 'tattoos' that humans decorate themselves with, these will last longer. They won't fade as badly or otherwise taint the skin with ink."
Ben gritted his teeth, breathing shallowly after his ragged scream. Torture scenes in movies and on television always seemed so much easier to deal with—hell that one part of 'The Punisher' had even been funny—but this was something else. These two bugs weren't torturing him for information, they were just torturing him. Drawing pretty patterns on his back with a knife, what the hell was this? He choked back a strangled sob, breath hitching in his throat, and bit down on the bunched up sleeve that had been pushed down his arm.
Silla ground her heel into the base of his skull, "It's no fun if you don't scream, human." Ben made a muffled grunt, though the sour expression on his face was hidden by the jacket pulled over his head, "Brother, he'll bleed to death if you keep cutting so deeply...Bear in mind that the human nervous system is easy to damage as well..." The dragonfly-lady eyes the gash adorning the brunet's lower back.
"I know what I'm doing, sister." Sagark growled back snidely, "That is, however, part of our customer's emblem. He requested a deep cut, but it's not deep enough to cause permanent damage. I made sure of that!" He threw the knife aside, irritated, and Ben heard him reach for something else.
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Kevin snarled as two small pinpricks struck his back. He struggled to reach it whatever had landed on him, but stopped when the objects let loose a pulse of electricity. Blame it on the old familiarity of his malformed arms or just plain instinct, Kevin absorbed the energy without a second thought. His shoulders jerked at the sudden, pleasant charge to his tired body. It was an excess of energy—probably meant to kill him—and Kevin wasn't quite certain what he should do with it. His body took the choice away from him, however, and Kevin felt the muscles of his back ripple and grow.
Layered shirts tore and hung limply from Kevin's shoulders, exposing skin that definitely bore a reddish tint now. Unlike the voluntary shift Kevin had taken before, swapping out his arms for stronger stuff, this change stretched his muscles awkwardly and ripped his clothes apart. A stubby turquoise and black tail strained uncomfortably against the seam of his jeans, thin, translucent wings hung limply from his shoulders, and an extra set of thin, hairless arms dangled uselessly beneath his Pyronite and Petrosapien arms. When Kevin turned to face the roach that had launched the stunner at him, the alien recoiled. The mutant's dark eyebrow had caved in to form a second eye socket above the first, containing a patch of useless nerves without an eyeball to control.
Kevin scowled and crossed the hall in a few short strides, "If you're going to start something like this, you better learn how to finish the damn job." He grabbed the roach by the throat with his Pyronite hand and what he could only assume was a taser with his Petrosapien hand. Ignoring the bug's choked whine and the smell of burning exoskeleton, Kevin pulled the trigger. Another pulse of electricity arced through his body, had he used the charge to finish his transformation.
A solid yellow eyeball filled the empty socket while his other eye bulged into the gecko-like Galvan eye. The long, flexible tail ripped clear through the back of his now-shredded jeans and whipped about happily, while the second pair of weak arms bulged with muscle and grew thick orange fur. Kevin grinned wildly and stretched, throwing the roach aside almost lazily.
"I forgot how fucking good this feels."
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"It isssss asssss you sssssay, my dear friendsssss." A third, oily voice cut in, "And the cussssstomer issss alwaysssss right." The way the speaker dragged out his "s" sounds was prominent without being obnoxious, like a heavy foreign accent.
Ben flinched, alarmed by the voice. He hadn't noticed another person in the room! The involuntary twitch, however, brought Ben's bared and bleeding back into contact with the damp rag that Sagark had reached for. The cooling sensation against his throbbing back was nice...But then Ben realized that the rag was soaked in iodine tincture.
His scream drowned out the Omnitrix's weak declaration of "Genetic anomaly detected."
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Notes:
--This is why I have issues with transformation sequences/evolutions. What happens if they get stuck somewhere in between?
--Lots of legends about dragonflies associate them with snakes, namely as servants to snakes ("gwas-y-neidr" from Welsh, meaning "adder's servant" or the term "snake-doctor" from the Southern U.S.), so I figured HEY WHY THE HELL NOT?
--I'm pretty sure iodine stings like a mother when it's put on open cuts. I wouldn't know, I was on Vicodin when I used it for my stitches. XD
-- Iodine tincture does increase scar tissue production, though, which seems like it would work for our (evil) purposes.
Cybra, take the wheel!