BLOOD SONZ {Madness Combat Church/Jorge TFTG MC}

She didn’t recognize that voice. Too deep, much deeper than the voice of anyone she knew, something that reverberated in her crackling ears, slowly growing clearer as she began to awake. Her entire body stung with cold pins-and-needles that burned around her arms and legs as she attempted to yawn and stretch. She’s restrained, her back flat against a simple metal table, wetness dripping across her face from her scalp and nose, a vibrating pain in the left side of her skull. Her head pounds. Her pale blond hair was a mess that she was unable to clean up in her bound state, matted with wetness, or, considering the strange pain she was in, blood.

Her eyes fluttered and she attempted to turn her head to move around, ending up gritting her teeth in pain and wincing from straining her neck. Her vision is… blue, for some strange reason, and strangely distorted as if looking through too-big, partially obscured goggles. She looked down at her body to the best of her ability, vision partially obstructed by what seemed to be a gas mask filter fitted to the middle of her face, to see that she was wearing something unfamiliar and all much too big on her: A thick, dark leather jumpsuit with bright blue accents, dark armor plating strapped to her front, and her body and limbs wrapped loosely in shiny caution tape decorated with yellow-and-black hazard stripes. It felt like her head was vibrating. Her restrained chest felt tight, yet at least she knew that she wasn’t alone.

Another table was beside hers, strapped to it being another girl, someone familiar even with her auburn hair cut considerably shorter and a strange synthetic plate lodged in the left side of her head, wearing a strange mask that was noticeably too large for her face with luminous blue, barred lenses and filters on the sides under them. She seemed to be wearing similar armor to hers, though lacking caution tape. Stitches and metal staples snaked across her head and what skin was exposed elsewhere, also shared with her own flesh. She didn’t seem conscious yet.

“Jacinta-” she awkwardly croaked as loud as her burning throat would allow, noticeably muffled through the single-filtered gas mask on her face. She attempted to yell her name again, but was interrupted by a deluge of blood from her nose and mouth that dripped from the edges of the mask.

“Chriiiii… Chriiiiistian?” slurred her friend, mouth and nose spilling blood, looking around aimlessly through the luminous lenses of her goggles.

Her vision spun, her ears rang as her friend jumped awake and momentarily struggled against her metal restraints. Everything stings, harsh synthetic light glared in her eyes and burned into her skin. She needed to get out. She needs to-

A rough, inhuman hand gripped her jaw, forcing her to look at an entirely unfamiliar silhouette. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you.”

That deep voice. A single red light in the middle of a head… shape. A round eye.

“And you, to me.”

That same voice, though sounding from a small bit farther away from her, moving her eyes to see Jacinta’s face seized and turned to another figure with the same shape and red eye. Captured by overachieving twins? Normally it would be an entertaining thought, but she sure as hell wasn’t laughing. Not even smiling, especially not with this guy’s fingers nearly digging into her cheeks.

Even though the dark gas mask on her face concealed her expression, it was clear that Jacinta was panicked. She was supposed to be the one that was better at keeping her cool of the two, yet she cracked at these… floaty-limbed cyclopean goblins. Despite everything, her wide eyes and intense heart rate easily revealed that she wasn’t faring any better, her breathing fast and heavy, feeling her jaw pop from the pressure of the figure holding her face. She was half-tempted to take a bite to try and give him a piece of her mind in some way.

“What-” Jacinta’s voice was a strained, fearful whimper, interrupted by a yelp as the other figure gripped her face tighter for a moment. “-Who are these people?”

The inside of her mouth stung, definitely having been pierced by her teeth. “I don’t know!”

“Learn silence and We will enlighten you!”

Silence hung in the air, both of the figures letting go of the girls and stepping back. They were posing dramatically, something that would normally elicit laughter from the two girls if not for their current state. Christian and Jacinta’s heads still vibrated painfully, blood dribbling from under their masks. The tinted lenses of their masks obscured from their sight the unnatural orange tinge that their blood now carried. Neither of them really had any other choice but to listen to these… strange figures. Bah.

“Do not worry about your current forms!” one of them boasted, booming voice rattling the fluorescent lights.

"Such frailty! What weakness!” they sneered, taking after each others’ speech as naturally as a single person saying it all, one of the two twin figures bowing to grip Christian’s jaw for a moment before letting go and pulling back. “Your forms must be reshaped, bolstered further to be worthy of working under Us!”

Christian coughed violently, eyes watering under the luminous lenses of her squint-lensed mask, Jacinta and the two figures turning to face her.

“Don’t you realize that your patchwork vessels are incomplete? As We complete your Enmeshment, you shall reawaken with vigor beyond your wildest dreams!”

“You shall be reborn with power far beyond even the strongest human!” they bellowed, both gesturing wildly. “You shall be among Our talons for seizing this world for Us, God Emperor Phobos!”

Jacinta was silent, muted from fear. She couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. It hurt to breathe, it hurt just to exist. Reborn? Beyond humans? Not human…?

Christian’s ears popped and her vision spun, barely paying attention to Phobos… the Phoboses? Referring to themselves with both singular and plural at the same time, she didn’t have the brain power to try and sort that out. She wasn’t unaccustomed to her mouth being filled with blood. She always liked getting up close and personal, knocking some poor bastard’s lights out with a knuckle sandwich, maybe even knocking an eye right out of its socket! She was always excited to hurt people. She’s gotten into enough scraps and physical altercations to know one thing.

While it still carried a familiar metallic iron taste, it was now shared with bitter, unappetizing, all-too-synthetic sweetness, like what people said that engine antifreeze tended to taste like. She knew that people called her brash, hot-headed, foolhardy, but she wasn’t a moron, she would never drink such poison! If it weren’t for the mask on her face, she would have attempted to spit the substance out in disgust. Just what has this Phobos, these Phoboses, done to them? It certainly doesn’t feel magnificent…

Jacinta whimpered, voice a strained gurgle as she fought against her restraints.

“I-” she grunted and grit her teeth. “We will not-”

The twin figures laughed, cackled, punctuating it all with a room-rattling stomp and an entertained yell.

“Did we say that you had a choice in the matter?”

A long, intense silence followed, ringing in the girls’ ears. Neither of them could will themselves to respond. All they could do was wonder why…Why them?

“Begin the procedure.”

…Who was he talking to?

“Do not worry.” the other chuckled. “This process should be swift.”

There’s a pause.

“Should be.”

The two figures both laughed. Christian and Jacinta were merely wide-eyed, eyes lined with sickly orange veins under the blue light of their masks. Why them…?

Everything shook. The entire room rattled and the two twin cyclopes remained unmoving despite the electric mayhem that cascaded throughout the room, blue light twisting like snakes, sparks dancing across and seizing the girls’ physical forms. Their bodies burned and the room echoed with agonized screams, like Phobos had caught lightning in a bottle and had trapped the girls within with it.

It burns.

It almost felt like their blood was boiling from within. Their bodies convulsed, thrashing against their restraints in a combination of electric nerve impulses and their own desire to escape, the various metal staples and plates augmenting their forms barely able to restrain the re-opening of such perfunctory stitchwork and spilling synthetic orange blood. The charge resonated and crackled in their very bones as they cracked with growth, both thickening and growing in size, all the while forcibly straining and stretching flesh. Deep red wounds were wrenched into ragged openings as their pallid skin was stretched past its limit. Even when various synthetic components fused into its structure and thickened it into a near armor-like strength, their skin stiffened and noticeably dried out, wound openings becoming jagged and any further strain damage looking more akin to cracking old leather.

The electricity nipped at and singed whatever hair it touched, color entirely draining away from their skin as much of their hair burned away entirely. A near-white shade of silver remained, any physical traits that were not surgical marks, such as freckles and belly buttons, being eaten away, proving to be nearly blinding combined with the sickly pallor that was already present and the intensifying rain of sparks. Their teeth were exposed and yellowed as the skin of their lips seemed to peel back and away, cracked red flesh lining their mouths. Jacinta hacked and wheezed and her eyes watered as a flash of electric sparks coupled with a plume of smoke arced from her head, head left entirely hairless, sparks dancing across Christian’s head and entwining with her hair to cut at it before pulling it upward and dyeing it a shiny grey-black as it was reshaped into a thin mohawk.

The clamps and other restraints felt tighter and tighter and yet any of their attempts to break them were in vain. Their bodies were most certainly growing to fill out the large armor strapped to them, though it still remained ill-fitting.

Their bodies seared, accentuated with pins-and-needles that roiled within their arms and legs and which prickled across their skin. Deposits of body fat and other tissue melted away and redeposited, breasts and their nipples entirely melting away, even the pectoral muscles underneath and the muscle definition of their shoulders dissolving, their hips crunching to compress, their morphing mass giving them a homogenous body shape like that of a tube. Leathery, clay-like skin continued to be painfully stretched as blotches of a significantly darker grey burned across their torsos, creeping up their necks and partially down their limbs but not spreading across their heads or hands. Their necks, deep into their throats, cracked and burned with electric fire as they shortened and thickened into the same size as their torsos, forcing their heads to hunch farther forward. Their assaulted senses meant that they barely processed as their arm lengths from their wrists and shoulders entirely melted away into clay-like slop that merged to increase the size and thickness of their body mass and remaining hands. Their silvery hands retained movement and feeling even without connecting lengths.

Awkwardly cracking for a few moments, their voices dramatically deepened into coarse roars that shook the room, though the twin Phoboses were unwavering. The merging of flesh and bone twisted their hands as their palms widened and finger digits fused together while becoming more square. Large, rough, four-fingered, inhuman, decidedly not made for a delicate touch. Their feet were pulled up under their torsos as their legs cracked considerably shorter and the excess material was added to the bulk of their burning bodies.

“HEEEEEEEYYY!” Christian called through grit teeth, her gravelly voice resonating painfully in her ears, both her and Jacinta gurgling to restrain orange bile as their bodies became entirely sexless. “YEAH, YOU! BOTH OF YOU! BOTH OF YOU KIRBY CHARACTER-LOOKIN’ MOTHERFUCKERS-”

She was unable to finish her attempted interrogation as both of the girls roared from the electric pain that seized their skulls. Their humanity continued to be burned away by the eye-watering rain of sparks, dry flesh morphing across their heads as almost all of their original features save for their mouths melted away, all without inhibiting the senses they were tied to. Their ears degenerated and smoothed away as their skulls cracked to twist themselves into being much rounder in shape like that of a tall oval, their faces burning as black markings, thin and ragged, formed and intersected where their eyes and noses previously were as crosses down the middle. Electricity that burns at the brain, burns at the mind…

Christian bellowed, head pounding, ripping her body free of the restraints around her torso and her floating hands proving to be unbound by what had previously been clamped around her wrists. The room shook as she leapt off of the table and thrashed in electrified pain.

“I SAID-”

She yowled and gripped the sides of her head, gritting her teeth under her gas mask. Her clothing, nor the attire of her still-bound friend, was not safe from the structure-altering abilities of the “procedure”. Primarily structural changes, correcting modifications that were meant to temporarily fit them on the human form, arm holes being smoothed over and pants almost entirely dissolving away, shoes refitting into large, dark, heavy armored boots that fit on the almost penguin-like structure of their feet and remaining legs. Anything that was previously held up by arms or ears, such as their strapped-on armor and masks, restructured to attach to central caps on the back of their heads and torsos and gain adjustable straps. Heavy packs formed and strapped to the back of Jacinta’s shoulders as she slowly pulled herself up, easily breaking and slipping from the restraints, head pounding as she watched Christian’s frenzied state. She held her own head as a low growl emerged from her sore throat.

His sore throat.

His. His body relaxed slightly, electric arcs on it slowly dying out. His… That feels right.

Christian thrashed wildly, growling from the horrid headache that resonated deep in her mind. With the dramatically increased strength of her new form, she barely felt any increase in encumberment as black fingerless gloves formed on her hands, electric sparks coiling and congealing into dark wires that connected massive, hazard stripe-lined defibrillator gauntlets to a simple pack decorated with thin coils and a yellow lightning bolt strapped to the back of her shoulders that acted as their power source. Blue electricity sprang to life and arced between the electric pack’s coils. Outside of the exposed sparks of the pack and weapons, the electricity that had filled the room had entirely died out.

She was massive even compared to both Phoboses, who were already considerably bigger than whatever other grey folk followed them around. Her thoughts swam… Their thoughts swam. They could easily just…They just wanted to…

They lunged towards the captors, the instigators of this mind-burning agony, blue sparks crackling in their wake.

“DIE!”

“Church!”

Everything froze. They stopped in their tracks, their eyes would be wide if they were still visible. They winced as pain surged through their skull, gauntlets shutting off for a few moments. It was a deep, gravelly voice similar to their own, though noticeably more metered and not as coarse. Not Phobos’s. Still familiar. The voice, that name, if felt right, it was…

“Church?”

Very familiar.

“Jorge?”

“You woke up swinging, didn’t you?”

They held their head. Woke up swinging… They’re really close to Phobos. Er, both Phobos. Phoboses? To hell with it, they’re a fighter, not a goddamn linguist! They pulled their hand back away from the two cyclopes, slowly moving to help Jorge off of the table. What the hell were they doing? They aren’t supposed to be killing their boss!

“My head hurts…”

“Hey, don’t act like I ain’t hurting more than last rezz!” Jorge gestured to his chest, sparks dancing across it and engraving the phrase “SIZE MATTERS” across the front in jagged writing before he pointed towards both Phoboses. “And I think I’m seein’ double!”

They both laughed, patting each other on the back, electricity turning back on for Church’s gauntlets and power pack. Both Phoboses looked at each other, sighing and facepalming in irritation.

“Church, Jorge.”

The two G03LMs perked up and turned their attention.

“Good to see that you two are back.” the other stated. “The process for this instance had to be… modified.”

Church and Jorge tilted their heads.

“Your S3LFs had to be rerouted from Nevada to here, which required a larger change in vessels. Push the pain and any strange thoughts out of your mind, they are no longer relevant.”

Church scratched their head while looking themself over, raising their hands and shrugging. “I don’t look any different. Jorge doesn’t look any different.”

One of the twin Directors grumbled a sigh.

“The modified process is complex beyond your measly capacity for understanding. That strangeness shouldn’t happen again once We begin properly cloning the both of you here.”

The G03LMs turned to each other. They keep on mentioning “here” like it’s a different place, a different dimension, a completely new world…

“What are we here for?”

“We are going to need you to… retrieve special, compatible individuals. This is not the best place to elaborate.”

They both turned their bodies away, looking over the collar of their capes back at the two G03LMs. “Follow Us, the both of you.”

There’s an awkward silence for a few moments before Jorge nudged Church’s shoulder.

“C’mon Church.”

Church paused before shaking themselves off. They don’t even know what humans are, they need to shake off those weird human feelings and get back to work! They chuckled before lumbering ahead as both of the Directors began to make their way out, Jorge quickly following behind. Not like they had any better to do, after all.