WORM Create Your Own Adventure

Bokuboy I went a bit over my normal with 3,650 words.

It took me four days to find out that the Goblin King had two decoys. One for greeting the people and one for meeting in the throne room. He almost never appeared personally and it was only when his favorite creation named Polka appeared. The switch from decoy to real Nilbog was seamless and no one noticed... except me.

You see, I couldn't copy the powers of the other Goblin Kings and that was how I knew they were fake. When Nilbog himself finally appeared, I felt the half-strength power become my primary and I immediately negated the six viruses infecting my lungs and my body.

After a few minutes, I felt my other suppressed powers and kicked myself mentally for forgetting I had Miss Militia's power to create weapons and Vista's power to create spacial distortions. I had also picked up Othala's power before the Endbringer attack and hers was a very interesting one. She could grant another person one superpower, usually temporarily, and only one at a time.

The powers would last anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on how powerful the power was and how they affected the body. The stronger the power, the less time the body could handle it and it would fade away.

I mentally sped up my mind and went over the records I read during monitor duty. The powers she was registered to have granted someone else, usually her husband Victor in the E88, were pyrokinesis, invincibility, regeneration, flight, super-speed, and super-strength.

The downside was she couldn't grant herself those same powers. I laughed inside my head, because out of that short list, I had them all except pyrokinesis. Being unable to manipulate fire was not a huge worry for me. The best part? Nilbog's power allowed him to grant powers to his creations. It merged almost completely with the power I already had from Othala and removed the limitations on both.

That was exactly why I wanted to copy as many compatible cape powers as possible, because each of them had an odd limitation and I had hoped combining them would change the nature of the powers themselves. Like Amy's body-shaping power that could affect everyone but herself. It was such an odd limitation that it didn't make sense. Shouldn't her body become perfect to utilize the power better?

I pushed all those erroneous thoughts aside and considered my latest singular problem. How do I defeat a man that had the complete devotion of an entire town's inhabitants that would rush to his defense as soon as he was threatened?

It took me only a few seconds to come up with a plan, an hour to perfect it, and a few minutes to stop myself from grinning. It was so stupid that it just had to work. All of his creations had the mentality of children, even the faux-orcs and monstrous guards. Nilbog probably limited them because children had the tendency to make friends easily and would become vicious when a friend was threatened.

I checked over my costume and decided that it wouldn't matter, because of my mask and hood hiding my normalicy, so I left it on. I walked out of my hiding spot, bold as brass, and hobbled with a fake injured leg over to where Nilbog was holding funeral services and his bare hand sucked in a dead creature.

A large sack grew out and formed on his back after the body was absorbed and then another sack appeared next to it as the first shrunk. I could easily tell that it was a conversion process and something started to form out of his other hand. When he was done, a distorted four foot tall humanoid stood there, partially hunched over, and the gathered crowd cheered and welcomed their new goblin brother.

I joined the crowd and waited for my chance. I didn't have to be sneaky about it or anything. The others were patting Nilbog and thanking him for doing such a good job and I just slipped right in there and tagged him once on the shoulder, waited for him to finish with the conversions, and then touched him again. Nilbog fainted and dropped to the ground and all of the cheering stopped instantly.

“Oh! It looks like King be tired after helping so much! Polka! I help you carry him to bed!” I said right away.

Polka nodded and lifted his feet and I grabbed his shoulders and lifted him easily. She led the way and we went back inside the town hall and she took us to the mayor's office. It looked fairly neat, except for the huge throne behind the desk. We went off to the side and Polka opened the door to reveal a bedroom.

As soon as I dropped Nilbog on the bed, Polka started to tend him by removing the man's scarecrow-like costume. I almost laughed at how laughably easy it was going to be to take the man's place and waited until Polka was done before I lightly touched her shoulder and activated my full copy of Nilbog's power.

I felt a sudden surge of biological information enter my brain and I was very glad that I hadn't tried to heal one of the creatures or copied their powers. It really would have ruined me permanently, because of all the redundant biological safety features they had. Spore sacks, virus pustules, pandemic level expulsion mechanisms if they were killed, and even their blood was laced with a dozen more viruses that I hadn't known about.

I immediately fixed and filtered my own blood to remove them, since I had been regularly eating the wolf-like and canine-like creatures. I couldn't go without food, so neutralizing them had to be done. When I went through her stomach and intestines, there were more dormant viruses there that would only activate during expulsions or when she was vaporized.

I shook my head at how incredibly pessimistic, narcissistic, and prepared for retaliation Nilbog was. If the PRT or Protectorate decided to bomb Ellisburg or, worst case scenario they nuke the place, he would have his revenge on everyone for killing him and his creatures by releasing a virulent and deadly mutating virus that would infect everything.

Well, it would have. I thought with a smile and sucked Polka in. Unlike Nilbog, a sack did not split part of my back open and grow there. Instead, her entire mass just seemed to disappear. I sped up myself mentally and replayed in my head what happened and laughed. I had picked up a compressed dimensional pocket from somewhere and that bio-flesh was sitting inside of it.

I went over my PRT files again and couldn't really find anyone that had one, except someone named Circus. He was a magician that did shows and robbed people, and no one could figure it out. Now I knew how he was doing it. He dropped things into a dimensional pocket and would retrieve it later.

I dropped my mental acceleration and looked down at the pudgy balding man on the bed. One of the most feared villains on the eastern seaboard, an S-Class threat to humanity, was a normal middle-aged man that just wanted a few friends of his own making. I put a hand on him and found a hundred more dormant viruses and things inside of him.

And I thought I was a moron. I thought and sucked him into the dimensional pocket and he was converted into a generic biomass that joined the other biomass. I cleaned the inside of the man's previous costume and took mine off and put his on. I had to stuff a few things into it to make myself look like I had the same shape as him, then I went out to the office and waited around for several hours.

Anyone that came into the office, I greeted warmly before I absorbed and converted them. When I felt it was time for Nilbog's nap to be over, I left the office and went through the building and absorbed anything living I came across. A simple 'call' with Nilbog's power brought everything to me, even the two decoys and all of the plague rats, and I absorbed them all.

Once I had the building cleared, I locked up and went outside. That was when my real work began.

*

A week later, a slightly disturbed Dragon made a very discreet call.

“Director Costa-Brown? Do you have a moment?” Dragon's voice asked the head of the country's PRT.

Rebecca glanced at the camera on her laptop as she worked. “It's three in the morning, Dragon. Is it urgent or are you just a night owl like me?”

Dragon chuckled. “Should I ask you why you bother changing for bed if you never sleep in it?”

Rebecca chuckled, too. “Appearances and habit, mostly. I also like wearing silk when I relax.” She said and made a bit of a show of it as she stretched out on her bed and her little silk camisole rubbed her nipples and they popped right out. “All right, I worked out my stiffness from sitting still for so long. What's going on?”

“There is a disturbing lack of movement in Ellisburg.” Dragon said with a soft voice.

“There have been bouts of inactivity a few times over the years.” Rebecca pointed out.

“Yes, there have been. However, there has never been an overall reduction in the amount of light that the inhabitants use at night.”

Rebecca sat up and looked into the camera of her laptop. “If you have a live feed from one of your surveillance drones, pipe it to me here.”

“I'll share a time-compressed video first and then the feed, so you can see the nightly progression.” Dragon said and Rebecca nodded.

Rebecca watched the short video and Dragon was right. If you weren't looking for it, the gradual extinction of nightly warming fires and smoke from chimneys would have gone completely unnoticed, as would the increasingly dark homes where they knew the humanoid creatures lived. In fact, there was only one left at the town hall.

“Analysis?” Rebecca asked as she did several records searches on her own.

“I have two prevalent ones and one ridiculous one.” Dragon said, doubfully.

Rebecca looked at the previous population count of about 3,000, not counting the various free roaming creatures that were impossible to count or know how many there actually were, since they were so varied and mostly unidentified.

“Tell me the most plausible one.” Rebecca ordered.

“Nilbog screwed up one of his fail-safe viruses and his population is dying off faster than he can fix the problem.” Dragon said.

“The second one?” Rebecca asked.

“Nilbog inadvertently created a large hunter creature that sees the Goblin King's one foot tall to three foot tall creatures as food.”

Rebecca actually considered that and had to nod. “That really does sound plausible. What is the ridiculous one you've come up with?”

Dragon sighed. “It's kind of a combination of the two plausible ones.”

“Really? A hunter creature that is both hunting the smaller ones and also releasing a virus to kill the humanoid population?”

“Yes, unfortunately.” Dragon said, sadly.

“Explain that.” Rebecca ordered.

“I believe that Myriad survived his fall and has been mutated.” Dragon responded and Rebecca caught her breath. “Because of his previous powers, becoming a Nilbog creature would make him the alpha predator among the goblins.”

“That... that is not a comforting thought.” Rebecca whispered. “If the thinkers were right about each of those creatures releasing a different deadly virus when they die, that place is going to become the largest disease and plague factory in the history of the world.”

“What are you going to do with this information?” Dragon asked.

Rebecca didn't say anything for almost ten seconds. “What are the odds that someone like Myriad is going to break the quarantine as soon as he's finished... hunting... the rest of the creatures?”

“It all depends on if he is going to leave Nilbog alive. If he does, he could have a nearly perpetual creature creation machine and would be able to hunt as much as...”

*BEEP! BEEP!*

“Hold that thought, Dragon. I've just received a priority call.” Rebecca said and took out her encripted cell phone. “Director Costa-Brown here.”

“Director.” An unknown man's voice said. “I apologize for contacting you. No one else seems to want to touch this and I was transferred up the chain to talk to you directly.”

“Spit it out.” Rebecca said.

“I am the night commander of the Ellisburg guard detachment. I think it's best if you hear this for yourself.” The man said and there was a click on the phone.

“...I repeat, this is Alex Powers, Ward Number: 1138, Code Name: Myriad. I request the immediate nuclear bombardment of Ellisburg. All hostiles have been eliminated, as have Nilbog the Goblin King and his decoys. The only way to ensure the removal of all viruses from the area is with nuclear fire. I repeat, this is Alex Powers...”

“Is this a recording?” Rebecca asked.

“No.” Dragon said. “The cadence of his voice is changing with the repeating phrase. It's live. He's using a standard PRT wide range radio.”

“Director? What do we do?” The night commander's voice asked.

“Get your tech guys to patch me through.” Rebecca said.

“Already done.” Dragon said and there were several clicks on the cell phone. “Go ahead.”

“Myriad! This is Chief Director Costa-Brown!” Rebecca almost shouted and the constant talking stopped.

“It's so nice to hear a normal human voice after so long.” Alex said and paused. “Is this line secure?”

“Give me a minute and it will be.” Dragon said.

“You have it.” Rebecca said. “Thank you, Commander. Return to your duties for now. You will be contacted as soon as a decision is made.”

“Yes, ma'am. Understood. Good luck.” The man said and clicked off.

There was a beep on the cell phone and a buzz in the background.

“All right, you're secure.” Dragon said. “Go ahead, Alex.”

“Dragon? It's really, really nice to hear from you.” Alex said, his voice full of sincerity.

“This isn't really the right time for pleasantries.” Rebecca said.

“I think it's the perfect time, considering I'm begging you to drop a nuke on my head.” Alex said.

“Why are you asking for that?” Rebecca asked.

Alex was silent for a moment. “Is Dragon aware of your secret identity?”

“She has been briefed in that, yes.” Rebecca hedged.

“What about my kidnapping attempt?” Alex asked.

“No.” Rebecca said.

“Kidnapping? What are you talking about?” Dragon asked.

“Cauldron arranged to take me from a locked down PRT building to conduct medical experiments on me instead of having me heal whomever it was they implied needed healing.” Alex said.

“That is a Protectorate secret and you are ordered to never reveal it, Dragon.” Rebecca said.

Dragon sighed. “Very well.”

“Wait, you can order her like that and she has to listen to you?” Alex asked.

“It's part of her directives to obey the orders of the PRT and Protectorate officers.” Rebecca said.

“Part of her... oh. Oh, wow.” Alex said. “Dragon, I am very sorry that I can never visit you in person like I planned and to meet the real you.”

Dragon felt quite appreciative of his sentiment. “Alex, I feel the same way.”

“Again, not the time for pleasantries.” Rebecca said.

“Really, Alexandria?” Alex said, pointedly. “Wouldn't you feel bad that a friend you've come to admire can't give you a hug when you desperately need one?”

Rebecca opened her mouth to deny it and suddenly remembered her good friend Hero that had been killed by the Siberian. She sighed instead. “I do.”

The three of them were quiet for a moment, as if in mourning, and knew they needed the quiet.

“I can't request for you to come and get me, because everything here is contaminated with Nilbog's viruses. It's in the local air, too.” Alex said.

Rebecca sucked in a sharp breath.

“Don't worry, I've already negated them inside of myself. It's the air I can't purify.” Alex reassured her and Dragon. “Even if my lung capacity didn't limit me to more than a few minutes without air, it would take me about a decade before I could walk around and suck in as much of the virus as I could and breathe out cleaned carbon dioxide.”

“And we can't get a sample to produce a counter-virus, because it's too virulent to expose anything to, let alone people.” Dragon said.

“Six counter-viruses.” Alex said and Rebecca made a choking sound. “One for the brain, one for the lungs, one for the other organs, one for the skin, one for clothing and anything porous, and one to stick to everything else like metal, wood, and plastic.”

“Good lord.” Rebecca whispered.

“It gets worse than that.” Alex said. “I found his notes for world domination and his plans if anyone killed him and his creatures. It's not pretty.”

“And you want us to nuke you anyway?” Dragon asked.

“I assume you've got a clean nuke somewhere or can have someone tinker one up. You could also install a roof to the wall shields and blow the entire town up in complete safety.” Alex suggested.

“Except that you're inside of it, you idiot.” Dragon said, affectionately.

Alex chuckled. “I'm completely invulnerable, remember? Armsmaster will love getting a copy of your drone readings during and after.”

Rebecca thought about everything he said and took a deep breath. She sighed and said what she didn't want to say. “How do we know you're you and not one of Nilbog's creatures trying to create the very situation you're warning us not to create?”

“Is that what you're worried about?” Alex asked and didn't wait for her to respond. “Dragon, send in one of your disposable drones with a full sensor suite.”

“Director?” Dragon asked.

“I authorize the expenditure and will sign the order for both the action and the replacement resources.” Rebecca said.

“Thank you.” Dragon and Alex said as one.

A minute later, one of the small camera drones flew down to float near the fire barrel.

“What the hell are you wearing?” Rebecca asked when she saw him on her laptop and he looked like Nilbog.

“A surprisingly comfortable disguise.” Alex said and put the portable radio down and pulled off the Goblin King's mask. The slightly stuffed top was next and neither Rebecca nor Dragon commented on the extra clothing that fell out. The pants went off last and Alex slowly turned around to show off that he was perfect fine.

“Why hasn't your body reverted to its normal state?” Rebecca asked. “You copied those powers several weeks ago.”

“This is my body's normal state according to Guesswork.” Alex said and covered his genitals. “Unexcited, of course.”

Rebecca stared at the young man... no, the man on her screen. He was an Adonis. If they stood side by side, she guessed that they would be the perfect examples of the male and female forms, except he had white skin and blond hair and she had brown skin and black hair from her Latino roots.

“Vista will be very happy to find out that you are still you.” Dragon commented.

Rebecca clamped her mouth shut as a very prominent erection appeared on Alex and it could not be hidden by his hands. Her nipples grew hard instantly as well and she tried to not imagine him using his weapon on her. She tried very hard to stop her eidedic memory from memorizing everything as he quickly dressed again. She failed miserably.

“When can I expect the strike?” Alex asked.

“I'll call the president in the morning. If I can convince him the place is empty except for the airborne viruses, a cleansing bomb should be on its way to you about noon.” Rebecca said.

“Dragon sacrificed a drone, so I can lead her around and show her where the large biotanks were stored that used to hold a hundred gallons of fluid that had millions of viruses inside.” Alex said and Rebecca made another choking sound. “Don't worry. I drank it all and my pee was bright glowing yellow for only two days.”

Rebecca covered her mouth and she didn't know if she wanted to laugh or throw up.

“You really are completely invulnerable, aren't you?” Dragon asked with a laugh.

Alex smiled and led the drone into the town hall's basement. “I couldn't let it get vaporized and weaponized like the lunatic wanted, so my kidneys came to the rescue.”

“I can only imagine whatever grew from where you relieved yourself.” Dragon said.

“Grew from it? It practically burned down the monster forest like acid!” Alex said with a laugh. “I was wondering how I was going to get rid of it all and both problems ended up solving themselves.”

“You have got to tell me that story.” Dragon practically demanded as she kept the drone focused on Alex and it flew to keep up with him.

“I've got all night and half of the day tomorrow, so why not? You can include the video in the debriefing I'll have in a few days when it will be safe to walk out of here infection free.” Alex said. “Well, after I go through decontamination protocols for both viruses and radiation. I'm not taking any chances.”

“Of course. That's the smart thing to do.” Dragon commented.

Rebecca kept the feed on her laptop and watched and listened as the young man that must have gone through hell for nearly a month, told Dragon a fantastic and somewhat unbelievable story of living and moving trees that died from him pissing on them and their roots.