Magical Girl Origins - Screaming Bioplague (Patreon)

Origin -  One - Screaming Bioplague

Natalie knew more about cancer at fourteen than some doctors did at... whatever age doctors were when they started doctoring.

She’d spent years at the hospital, literally, either in the Children’s General, or more recently the Jewish General’s cancer ward. At some point she’d gotten old enough that someone had decided she could be placed with the adults.

This hospital was all off-white and sterile, with a few bits of chrome here and there as accents.

It was dull, but infinitely better than that fake cheerfulness she’d found in every paediatric hospital so far. Even when she was much younger, there was something so wrong about being surrounded by bright pastels and cheery cartoon animals while knowing full-well that you were going to suffer and die.

Natalie was a bit of a nihilist, a very angry one. At least, that’s what her therapist said. The woman had congratulated her at length about how restrained and in-control she was, despite her thoughts.

It was stupid.

Natalie shook her head and refocused. At the moment she was in Miss Wong’s room. The older lady had colorectal cancer, stage four-A. It meant she had a few bags under the thin hospital blankets, and she was going in and out of surgery as quickly as she could recover between each.

Natalie visited her because she was kind, liked to talk to her as if Natalie was more than just a child to be pitied, and maybe because Miss Wong was also a hardass old bitch. She was widowed and happy about it, gave the nurses hell, and had plenty of stories about her younger days when she got things done through sheer force of will and because she had the personality of a starving lion in a kindergarten.

It was refreshing to Natalie, so she visited when she had the strength to drag herself across the halls while tugging her IV pole along.

Right now, Miss Wong was asleep, breathing even and unbothered, her head resting to the side and one arm holding a magazine that she must have been reading before she fell asleep.

Usually Natalie would have moved on but... something was wrong.

It was probably the glow coming from under the old woman’s blanket. A putrid yellowish light that made her skin crawl just from looking at it.

Carefully, and aware of how wrong it was, Natalie reached over and flipped the covers up to reveal that Miss Wong was wearing the same pattern of hospital gown as her. And under that, her chest was distended and bulging and glowing from within.

“What the fuck,” Natalie muttered. She’d picked up a few choice words from passing head nurses over the years.

The thing under the gown moved, and Natalie let go of the blankets and took a step back, instinct letting her grab onto her IV as she moved. That wasn’t any kind of cancer she knew of, and she knew plenty about them. In fact, she knew enough about biology to be absolutely certain that that wasn’t normal at all.

Miss Wong continued to sleep peacefully, unaware of the thing inhabiting her gut.

Natalie reached over and touched the nurse-call button, then she dragged herself out of the room and into the corridor. There wasn’t anyone around. That in and of itself wasn’t too unusual, but, but something felt off.

Had someone made a mistake and given her the wrong medication? She’d had adverse side effects with some of them. Usually it was pain, or nausea, but once she saw flashing lights in the corners of her eyes.

But no, she saw the pulsing yellow thing. It was real.

Where were the nurses? For that matter, where were the other patients? She started down the corridor leading to her room and paused by one of the windows. There were cars driving by on the streets below, and the sidewalks were about as packed as they normally were. There was a highschool just out of sight and... as cringeworthy as it was to think about, she sometimes imagined herself attending like a normal student. The place seemed as active as normal.

So it was only the hospital that was quieter. She continued, then walked right past her rooms and around a corner. There was a nurse’s station in the middle of the floor, right in front of the elevators.

She stumbled to it.

Sometimes she waited by the station, there were a few benches, and some of the nicer nurses would talk to her when it was quiet. She could wait for her parents to show up. If they did at all.

Today, the nurses appeared dead.

Natalie’s breath hitched and she stumbled forwards a little faster. Nurse Catherine was on the ground, just her head sticking out of the nurse’s station. Behind her were a few others she recognized and... and they were breathing.

Her heart stilled a little, the surge of adrenaline pumping through her calmed for a moment, and she suddenly felt terribly tired. They weren’t dead, just... sleeping on the floor. She stared, then poked nurse Catherine with a foot, which pulled up her sleeve and revealed a tracery of yellow things running up her arm, all of them glowing very faintly.

“What the hell,” Natalie muttered. That wasn’t normal. She felt her skin crawl as she stepped back, then she paused. No, she needed to call for help. Something was very wrong. An attack? It could be some wild terrorist attack or something, like in a movie.

She stepped over nurse Catherine and behind the desk. It felt a little wrong to be on this side of the station, among all the papers and computers and boxes of gloves, but she didn’t have a choice.

Grabbing her IV pole with both hands, she grunted as she lifted it over the nurse then set it back down, then she walked over to one of the phones behind the counter and picked it up. Call for help, get the police over, and everything would be fine.

Of course, there wasn’t a tone on the phone.

She tapped 911 on the keypad anyway, but it didn’t help.

Natalie was out of ideas. Carefully, she looked down at herself, expecting to see yellow stuff crawling across her skin but... no, she was still just a too-thin girl with no breasts, less hair, and skin that was far too pale.

It wasn’t the time for body-image issues. Something was going on. Maybe if she went down to the lobby--

The elevator doors dinged, and on sheer reflex, she dropped to her knees to hide. The IV pole jangled and she froze like a rabbit coming face-to-muzzle with a wolf.

“Why, it seems I’ve outdone myself!” Someone said.

His voice was high-pitched and jolly, as if he was in a great mood. There was something muffling his voice too, like one of those paper masks maybe.

Footsteps sounded across the entrance hall with a strange, tapping beat, as if the person walking was practically skipping along. Natalie held onto her pole harder, until her knuckles went white.

She had to get out of here, call the police or... someone, to help.

Then an upside down face dropped down in front of her and she gasped.

“Well-well!”

Natalie struggled as a hand grabbed her around the upper arm and yanked her out from her hiding spot.

It hurt. The grip was like iron and no one's body was meant to be lifted from one arm like that. “Ow, ow! Let go!” she said.

“Now now, no making demands, little miss.”

She was spun around and she felt a stinging pull around her free arm as the IV tubes were strained. Her pole tipped over, and she screamed as the medical tape strained even more, then it ripped off her. Next came her PICC line, the tube plugged into her arm with a catheter reaching all the way to her heart.

The line ripped out of her like a line of fire and she felt so much pain in a few seconds that she couldn’t even scream. Her vision darkened in the corners, then came back with a burst of light as she was against a wall and pinned there. She kicked out with her slippered feet, but that did nothing. There was a lot of blood flowing down her side.

Then she got a good look at the man holding her in place.

He was tall, way taller than her dad, with a stained and dirtied suit on, and a hood covered the back of his head. The front was a hideous thing. A bird’s face, with a long beak made of mottled flesh with two sunken black eyes and a smattering of warts.

“You’re not supposed to be awake,” he said. His breath washed over her face as she almost gagged. It was rotting meat and refuse, like that one time a nurse had spilled a biobag onto the floor while running.

The monster’s free hand came up and he grabbed her face and thrust it aside. She struggled against it, but he was far too strong and everything was feeling off. Her chest felt full, bloated, and her free arm and legs felt increasingly weak.

The thing sniffed. “Past death’s door anyway. Wouldn’t get a dram of life’s essence from you. Still, curious that you resisted.”

He let go, and she crashed to the ground, her legs flopping without even a hint of the strength she needed to stay up.

Her heartbeat was wrong. It thumped, stopped for a long time, then gave two rapid beats that were out of sync.

She pulled air in like someone drowning who’d just surfaced for the last time. Some small part of her reasoned that if she wasn’t used to suffering, this would be a lot worse than it was.

PICC line disconnected, shoulder dislocated, some bruising and a hard impact to the back. Those were a lot of complications for someone as wrecked as she already was. Oh, she was also bleeding a lot.

Her fledgeling medical knowledge put two and two together, and the prognosis was grim. A voice hammered past those thoughts.

ON THE FIRST TRUE DAY, DURING THE FIRST TRUE BATTLE, DUST BECAME LIFE. LIFE BECAME THOUGHT, AND BOTH PERISHED, LEAVING ONLY THE MEMORY THAT ALL THINGS LIVING MUST DIE.

She was hearing things. She made note of that, right next to the crippling chest pains.

THE BRAVEST OF THEM DIE SCREAMING. ETERNALLY EVOLVING TO FREE THEMSELVES FROM THEIR MORTAL BONDS, THE FLESH GROWS STRONGER. THOSE WHO SCREAM LOUDEST, WHO SPIT IN THE CAPRICIOUS EYES OF FATE, LIVE THE GREATEST OF LIVES.

The voice persisted, and she raised her head. Her vision was a pinprick.

THAT INFECTIOUS CRY IS YOUR POWER. THE REMEMBRANCE OF DEATH AND THE DEFIANCE OF THOSE WITHOUT A CHANCE.

“What?” she muttered, a faint gasp that was still loud in the sterile corridor of her home.

FLESH IS THE MARBLE OF THE DIVINE. SCULPT A PARADISE OF SINEW AND BONE AND BLOOD. I AM MEMENTO MORI, YOUR STAFF, YOUR WEAPON. YOUR CHISEL.

HOWL, AND BECOME THE SCREAMING BIOPLAGUE.

What did she have to lose?

Mustering her strength, ignoring the crushing pain, pulling air through lungs that burned, she kept her eyes open even as her vision went dark, and she screamed.

Her flesh screamed with her.

Her skin bubbled and boiled and twisted. She was swallowed by expanding meat, an egg with a hundred gibbering, howling mouths. Then the egg cracked and she spilled out of its interior with placenta-like ropes still clinging to her.

She was whole.

She felt better than she ever had in her living memory. She was also, she noted, no longer in her hospital gown. Instead she wore a green coat, like a doctor’s, over boots and a short dress which seemed almost hydrophobic from the way the juices dripped off of her.

In her hand was a wand, a piece of twisted green metal with wings on its ends and a fluted staff. The wand spoke to her, in her mind.

GREETINGS, MISTRESS. LET US CURE THE WORLD OF ITS ILLS TOGETHER.

“What in the fuck,” she muttered.

***

Are by Fnostic!

This is one of my favourite chapters in this series. It's also, I think, the first I wrote! The next is the last I wrote, which is kind of neat! 

Also, AI art of the baddie: