Gold Digger Fan Fiction ❯ Transmorph ❯ Transmorph ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: Gold Digger and it's characters do not belong to me, they are the property of Fred Perry. HOWEVER, the term Transmorph, the Morpheralda Syndicate/Complex, Kale himself, and all concepts referring to the syndicate/complex, and Kale DO belong to me.

Prologue:

Blackness......
It seemed to surround him. That, and the feeling of… floating?
Great. I'm not awake two minutes and I'm gonna drown.
It was, if he had stopped to realize it, THE most ridiculous thing he'd ever thought. Then, something else occurred to him.
If I'm drowning, why am I still here.....and what the hell is on my face?!

While the unnamed form was thinking these thoughts, outside the blackness, several scientists were studying the being.
"Astonishing. It's holding this time! We may finally have come to a true success at last!"

Who the hell was that? And what's with that nasal voice? It's killin' my ears!
If they had known his hearing was that sharp, the scientists would have either jumped for joy, or looked extremely nervous. The glass the being was held in had been nearly five inches thick, due to an earlier failure which had nearly caused enormous disaster for them. A button was pressed, and the form could see, for the first time. Hazel eyes blinked out at the world. He recognized the scientists. That was apparent by the way those eyes narrowed. He knew these people. Vaguely. Hard NOT to know people who'd basically had you hijacked off the street for no discernable reason at all. Also hard to not be completely pissed off at the situation in general.

Not much to look at around here. These guys have no sense of aesthetics, it would seem. I mean c'mon! White tile and brown carpetting? What is this, Leave it to Beaver or somethin?!
He still wondered why he bothered to think about those ridiculous re-runs anymore. Of course, most would have said that if such things DIDN'T cross his mind from time to time, it just wouldn't be him. Of course, that was the plan.
"Welcome to the world of the waking, Kale."

Who the hell is Kale?

End Prologue

Four Months Later

"Excellent! Codename: Kale is fully adjusted. And with only the odd discoloration, I think we can say the experiment went without a hitch!"

Kale opened his eyes, looking around. He was in the tank again. He was starting to wonder if his creators had a hang-up about test tubes. Cause they seemed to be everywhere around him. He hadn't really had much of a clue about what he was. They'd never given him any access to a mirror, so what they meant by discoloration, he had no clue whatsoever, and hadn't gotten the time or opportunity to ask. Powerful fingers flexed lightly as he floated in the tube. He knew that if he wanted, he could have crushed the last test subject that they'd pitted him against. And they said that bulls were among the most dangerous land animals on Earth! Hah! Dangerous indeed. The thing might as well have been a snail for all the good blindly charging at him did for it!
He had been tempted to just snap the fool thing's neck and put it out of everyone's misery. But they had stopped him.
"Wouldn't do to have our 'volunteer's' owner getting upset after all. No need for a lawsuit." They had said.
Not that he cared. He was starting to get hungry at the time anyway. But he reluctantly relented. Of course, without one of it's horns, it was gonna look really stupid for the next couple months or so, till the other one fell off and the new ones grew in.
"Ah! Awake again, are we, Kale? We have one final test we'd like to run for the week. That is, if you think you're up to it."
The only response was a low growl over the small intercom attached to the breathing apparatus on his face. He felt a little insulted that they had even asked such a thing.
If I'm up to it. Gimme a break. I wonder if they're that dense, or if they're really that condescending. Either way, they're way too arrogant for their own good. I'm getting sick of the 'false concern' routine. They know I can handle whatever they can send my way. When do I get to REALLY enjoy myself? They always stop me just when it's getting good!
Whether the lust for battle was something his creators had instilled in him from the beginning, or whether it was just the result of being cooped up and experimented on, who can say. But he could fight, and he was damned good at it. And since the fights were the only experiments where he did something other than just sit there while they did some kind of scan or whatnot, it was really his only emotional outlet, and it had caused him to develop a taste for the adrenaline high. Simply put, he was addicted to fighting because it was the only fun thing he got to do in the complex!
The Complex. That still bothered him. His creators called themselves the Morpheralda Syndicate, and had said he was never to leave the Complex. They had never named it, so he assumed it to be called "Morpheralda" as well.
"Shall we see what our little Transmorph can do against this new foe, gentlemen?"

Transmorph?

Half a month later

Kale looked back over the road from which he had come. It had been about two weeks since he had engineered his escape. Pretty simple stuff, really. The fools thought he was content to be their lab rat, and all it took was one or two seconds to punch out a guard on the way out, and he was gone. He snickered and wondered if anyone had actually noticed his escape. Probably not. They were brainiacs, and evil to the core, and possibly one of the most deadly organizations of people on the face of the Earth, but they were also idiots.

"Till next time, gentlemen."

Weeks passed. Kale made his way from one place in the City that Never Sleeps to another. It was said that New York was a place where one could easily hide himself. Of course, this was hardly true for a six foot, ten and one half inch green, black, and silver furred being, with a three foot tail. He had quickly arrived at the conclusion that New York would always remember him as the phantom delusion of around six hundred people. All of whom had first spotted him roughly two hours after his escape. After finding some clothes which were large enough to suit him in an abandoned warehouse, he began trying to blend in with the citizens. For roughly a week and a half, he was third page news in the times, as a noted psychiatrist commented that these people were either suffering from heatstroke, or perhaps hallucinations brought on by the recent chemical spill at a nearby factory which had occurred weeks before his escape. His hair was easily explained away. He was a Gen X'er, or he was just someone who liked the idea of having green hair with silver spots. That didn't faze anyone in this town. Hey, it was New York, after all. But what he kept hidden behind his hair at all times, were the hazel, catlike eyes, and the silver stripes which ran in vertical lines above the eyes, below the eyes, and on the eyelids themselves. Even though obscured by his green hair, they still gave him an ominous look.

Understandably, he rarely moved his hair out of his eyes, both to maintain his ominous look (it was great for getting people to leave you alone), and to hide the fact that his face was covered in black fur, rather than being the normal skin of an ordinary human.

Hidden in a disguise that was part desperation, part strange taste, the Transmorph vanished into the crowds, intent on finding himself and his purpose.

In the Diggers home, in faraway Atlanta, things were actually pretty slow. Gina was working on yet another of her inventions, this one intended for perfecting the alchemy of turning lead to gold. Brianna was off in the gym, working out to pass the time, and Britanny and Stripe in the living room. The elder diggers being out for the week in Jade meant that each of the four passed the time their own way. Britanny was flipping through the stations boredly. Stripe was flicking through the pages of the recently delivered New York Times. The Diggers clan had made it a practice to get newspapers from all over the nation, so that they could be alerted if a new discovery was made, or if one of their many enemies tried something. Stripe found things that varied from paper to paper to be very interesting. From the New York Times to the Chicago Tribune. He was simply a sucker for news stories. Britanny meanwhile was flipping through TV stations. Finally settling on the news since nothing else seemed to be worth watching, she set down the remote and leaned back into the couch.
"Hmmm. This is interesting. Third time in the last two weeks…" Stripe muttered to himself, as he read.
"What'cha reading, Stripe?"
"The Times. Turns out they have another article on this creature they've been calling 'The Superbeast'." Stripe replied, still scanning the article.
"Oh please. Like something like that exists in New York. The Cops or my old friend Danielle would have met him by now. I mean, Dani's the Pink Avenger, after all, and New York's got some of the best cops in the world, right? Sure, Dani's a Vigilante, but she's on halfway decent terms with the police. From what you told me, the first time this guy made a public appearance; it was to nearly beat the crap out of some punk kids who were holding up a grocery store. Hardly what I'd call an endearing way to debut. Those kids were in the hospital for days with broken bones right? And nobody got a look at this thing, right? You know what I think? I think someone's making these stories up and paying people off to help make it seem like something like that really exists. It's just a hoax."
"Not this time, Britanny." Stripe said, as he caught the next few lines of the story.
"Whaddaya mean 'not this time'? You don't mean someone's finally managed to come up with a description?" The werecheetah asked, looking somewhat annoyed.
"Better. They got him on videotape."
At about that moment, their attention was drawn to the TV as the news came back from commercial.
"In a shocking turn of events which is still sending shockwaves through much of the borough of Brooklyn, New York.. for the first time, video footage of the mysterious vigilante who has been dubbed 'the Superbeast' by those who first encountered him, has been provided. This footage" the newscaster continued as the footage began, "does not give an altogether clear idea of what this mystery man really looks like, but video experts who analyzed this footage some three hours ago have concluded a few things. Firstly, this individual is between 6 foot ten and seven feet tall, likely weighs in excess of three hundred pounds, and is male. Due to the speed with which this 'Superbeast' moved, and the fact that we could not get a truly clear look at his face leaves more questions as to his identity, but police report that this alone will help in eventually identifying this individual." By this point, Britanny had stopped listening to the newscaster, and was instead staring at the footage with something between fear, curiosity, and revulsion.
"Stripe…" She choked out.
"Yes?"
"Th-that thing's…that thing's a cheetah!" She said, still trying to wrap her mind around the concept.
"What?" He said, almost deadpan. He knew how good his wife's eyes were, and how she could see things that could move faster than the human eye, and since this 'Superbeast' was obviously moving faster than the camera which had recorded him had been programmed for, he certainly qualified. But the only other cheetah-humanoid he knew of was Raphael. "You're not saying that thing is Raphael, are you?"
"HELL no! Raph wouldn't dye his fur green like that! I didn't get all that good a look at him, but the way he moves, that thing is definitely a cheetah!" Britanny said.
"But I thought you and he were-"
"So did I. C'mon. We better go tell Gina and Bri' about this."

Meanwhile, Kale was headed out past the Tri-Borough Bridge. Despite the fact that New York felt like home, he needed to get the hell away from the city. He had become too well known, too recognizable, and since his recent wardrobe change, finding him would be a snap. He had lucked out, hitching a ride with a group of Goths, who not only didn't care that he wasn't human, they believed he was just a goth who had gone a bit overboard. He didn't feel any need to correct their mistake. As long as he got out of town, he couldn't care less.

Little did he know that his destiny was about to cross paths with that of the Diggers family, and that everything he knew, or thought he knew, about himself, would be thrown into doubt. Nothing would be the same again.