Angry_Crustacean’s barnacles

[Angry_Crustacean]

I wake up, and the first thing I notice is how fucking cold it was. Shivering and shaking, I reach for my blanke- wet. Why is my hand wet? That finally snaps me out of my drowsiness, and it it wasn't for the almost painful cold I would have thought in dreaming. I'm in a forest, naked (that would explain the chill) and with no signs of civilisation in sight.

What the fuck?

I leap to my feet. Give myself a little slap just to be sure I'm not dreaming. Then I start to panic
"Wha-how?! Where am I? What's going on?"
I had no friends, and there was no way my family would-or could- have done this. I don't even think England has forests like these.

My family.
Are they alright? Are they safe? Could whatever have taken me taken them? Ohmygodtheucouldbeindang-

It took awhile to calm down. Deep breaths, and pacing around the small clearing I found myself in. It was only after I didn't feel like I was going to throw up from nerves did I realise the strange awareness I had, like a new set of eyes, ears and limbs rolled into one. Even that didn't do it justice.

Complete and total awareness of my body, beyond the cellular, right down to the chemical reactions that decided weather my cells should kill themselves to prevent cancer or not. For a see minutes, it was all I could do to just take it all in. It was beautiful, on a scale I couldn't describe, because the words did not exist in language. I could try, but it would be like explaining colour to a blind man. And beyond that, was the absolute knowledge I could improve upon it.

A violent shiver took me out of my introspection (heh). I was cold. Actually I'm the early stages of hypothermia. The morning sun hadn't warmed up the chill left by the night, and the dew certainly wasn't helping. Well, now was as good a time as any to test out these new powers.

A thick coat of hair erupted from my nude skin, rapidly growing to the point I could pass as Bigfoots hairier cousin. Itched like a bitch, but I suppose that's on me for not deadening my nerves.

Good news, I wasn't at risk of hypothermia anymore. Bad news, i was absolutely ravenous.
All that fur had to come from somewhere, and the fat I had been trying to loose for the last two months weren't enough to cover it. Thankfully, with my newfound mastery over my body, I should be able to counteract any toxins I ingest, so no dying to mushrooms.

Speaking of mushrooms. There were some by the base of a nearby tree. Walking over, I crouched down and plucked them. Now or never. Down the hatch they go. Yep, those were toxic. I could see how the chemicals the mushroom cells secreted went to my stomach, intent on making me shit myself to death, how to counteract the effects, how to make them stronger. With a mental flex, it was neutralised. 'At least I won't starve'. Giving the mushroom some more thought, I realised I could now see its biology like my own now that I had eaten it, whereas I couldn't when I was holding it. Knowledge on the frankly increasingly mycelium network inherent to fungus flowed through me. 'I wonder…'
Copyright the mushroom, I incorporated the mycelium into myself. Taking root like a plant, tiny threads emerged from my feet, silvery-gray compared to the black of my head and the rest of my body. The treads reached where I'd plucked the mushroom, and wow, my power was even better than I thought.

I was part of the network. The network is part of the mushrooms, and therefore part of me. In about ten minutes, I'd managed to hook myself onto every shroom in a network spanning two miles.

'I shouldn't be able to process all this. It's not possible for the human brain to take in so much data all at once.' And yet I did. Something to look into later, because I now had access too literal tonnes of biomass.

---

In the end, I only absorbed a fraction of a percent, both not wanting to damage the ecosystem and because I even after running wild I still hadn't put a dent in my supply. I was actually quite proud of myself. Gone was the 6'3, out of shape 18 year old black boy who couldn't see past his nose without his glasses (which I really missed in those first few minutes) and in his place…some kind of freaky looking monster.

Listen, with the power to change shape easier than scratching my arse, I'd had a little bit of fun. At 3 meters tall at the shoulder and four meters long, I looked more like some sort of monster used to scare children in disturbing bedtime stories than a human. My body could loosely be described as like that of a centaur, only made of human parts. Thick, dense muscle fat lined my lower torso, frame sturdy like that of a bear rather than that of a bodybuilder. Arms erupted from my strengthened torso and back, some skinny and some rippling with muscle. My modifications let me add a long, thick neck, my head almost a meter higher than then rest of me. A hundred hands surrounded my face like the petals of a demented sunflower. I removed the hair from my face and shortened what was on my head down to a manageable length . As a finishing touch, the mycelium threads free into a thick cloak(which I promptly severed from myself, loosing the ability to change it), allowing me to do away with the fur entirely.When all was said and done? I was fucking estactic at my new bod

Spoiler: Image ref

It was surprising how fast I adapted to my new body. Despite being so far removed from normal, I had completely adapted within half an hour. Another anomaly to make note of.

However, while I had fun shattering the laws of nature and reality as I knew it, I also wanted to find people. I knew from random bits of trivia and late nights on the history channel that people settled around water, and with my nose being enhanced to bloodhound level it was simplicity itself to find the shore.
Let's hope I'm in the modern day, and not be slingshotted back through time.

AN: this was an absolute bitch to get out. First time I wrote it in the description box. When I tried to copy and paste it the site lagged out and when I went back it was blank. Second time? Copy paste button broke so I had to type it all up again, and then the site lagged out again. Because mobile. Finally got this done the next morning.

Anyway, this is my first attempt at writing, let me know what you think!

 

[Angry_Crustacean]

Inspired by The Forever Winter and Moonshot. AN at the bottom

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When I first woke up in the alley, I was confused. Then, ecstatic. The ROB it's met wasn't a dream. Unlimited power was waiting at my fingertips. With Inspired Inventor, I'd conquer the world in a month! Only… I didn't get inspired inventor. No infinite power. While my tinker skills were still outrageously powerful in their own right, it took time to build up, and no magic effects for me. If I wanted a laser that turned people to jam, my power would tell me to kick rocks.

Still, it wasn't all bad. I'd managed to get a job in a repair shop, outside the territory of the major gangs. The last guy died in a gang shootout, and there were surprisingly a lot of ways to get a legal identity from nothing in Bet. Something to do with Endbringers regularly wiping cities and any documentation in them off the map. Sure it was in Merchant territory, but those guys were only kept afloat by their constantly high capes. Plus, as a black mixed teen, I'd get lynched by the Empire and probably enslaved by the ABB. As long as I didn't ask questions about the shady people the owner occasionally brought upstairs or the ramshackle lab equipment I sometimes fixed, I'd get ebony to put food in my belly and put a roof over my head.

Though I never got an apartment. Almost a third of my pay gone to useless expenses where I could spent it on tinkering resources. I slept in an abandoned low rise apartment building. Street got torched by lung a year back, and it wasn't in good shape before either. Now with the road being completely unusable and a few neighbouring buildings destroyed, it was ripe for the taking.

Before made my debut as a rouge (if I ever did, the world was never kind to lone tinkers) I'd built up my lair. It was barebones, made of scavenged electronics and bare concrete, but it was home. On the seventh floor, I'd set up shop in an apartment. With an auto turret made of a 9mm I'd found in a dumpster and an old camera, it would stop any rando from finding there way last the front door. It was barely more furnished than the rest of the units, with a sleeping bag in a corner, I dented fridge I'd found on the side of the road and managed to fix up, and a notepad full of schematics I'd scribbled down.

I'd made my first creation, a computer, using a few unsalvageable tvs and an old games console I'd gotten from work. With the owner being preoccupied with what could only be his upstairs drug lab and me being the only store worker, I had free rein to steal items that wouldn't be missed. It was a big, ugly thing, but it was good enough for what I had planned.

After two days of work, it was read. A worm program. As I finally ran the program, I watched with glee as it infected the cell network. The tinker tech device id attached to a cell phone tower allowing me direct access to all phones connected to it. Through that, account information was compiled. Social media, and more importantly, bank account information.

In an hour, it got every cell tower in the city. Skimming a cent of every account in the city would be flagged immediately however. Banks carefully monitored that sort of thing since it was revealed a tinker had made billions of dollars through that method. They still hadn't found her.

Instead, I added 5 cents to every credit card purchase made by 50,000 random people. I wanted to escape reliance on my job as soon as possible. Already, I had witnessed 3 stabbings, and tweakers lined street corners. Going out wasn't safe


As if to prove my point, next day, I was mugged. Just a couple houses down from my block. She was barely coherent, strung out on too many drugs than I could shake a stick at. Emaciated and trembling, the woman pointed a filthy gun in my direction. "Gimme money!" Shit. Shit shit shit. I couldn't get my own gun out now, not with her own trained on my face. "Okay, okay, just take it easy-"

"NOW!"

Without wasting any more time, I fumbled for my wallet. Well, there goes my savings. Five hundred dollars down the drain.

As the druggie stalked off, I was hit with a burst of inspiration. My power had never reacted this way before. Dozens of ideas flooded my mind. The one thing the had in common? They all required a human as a core component.

I knew what I had to do. Before I could stop myself, I pulled out my gun and shot her in the back.

She ran for a few steps, before collapsing. I quickly made my way over. "You, you shot me." She sounded shocked, as if she didn't truly believe it had happened. Blood pooled out beneath her. I must have hit an artery. "You shot me…" her voice was already fading away. A few shuddering gasps, and then she went still.

…
Fuck. Why did I do that? I didn't really just kill a woman so I could use her corpse for tinker materials did I? No, it was to get my money back. She would have killed me if it benefitted her, she even had a gun herself! Guilt temporarily subsiding, I took stock of my options. Grab the wallet and run, or drag the body back to my lair for tinkering. Yeah right, like that last one was an option. Grabbing my wallet, I turned to walk away, when I had a realisation. It was early morning, so the gangsters and homeless weren't awake yet. I would be completely unobserved if I grabbed her now. Struggling with indecision, it was only when my power sent another wave of inspiration did I cave.
I grabbed her under her arms and dragged her to the front lobby of my building.

AN: And there we have it! I'm feeling a lot more confident in this story, and it's probably what's going to get updated next. Please comment your speculations and ideas, I'm motivated by comments