Prologue
27th December 2010
200 meters below sea level
Atlantic Ocean
The sensation of floating in the abyss of the ocean was an odd experience, she could feel the coldness of the surrounding sea brush against her hide. Felt the current tugging at her limbs and her hair wave about her face, ticking her skin like dozens of little feathers and making her contemplate brushing the irritation aside.
Glancing upwards, she watched the shimmering refraction of light cut through the water, its ghostly hue illuminating the surrounding corridor of sea life and old crumbling remains of half a dozen sea vessels of various size and tonnage.
From a glance, one could tell these vessels weren't exactly old, the paint was still clear as day for any to see, writing could still be seen across the bows of the vessels and barely an ounce of sea vegetation or marine life had made the vessels hull their home. However, that didn't mean the ships were entirely in one piece.
One of the largest vessels, a reasonably sized cargo hauler, sat riddled with gaping holes within its side. Metal plating sat scared with deep gashes, in some placed the hull appeared to have been liquefied, leaving frozen clumps of slag skewed across the ship, particularly around the gaping holes.
The other ships were less fortunate than the cargo hauler, such as the shattered remains of a luxury yacht resting amongst a clump of coral. It's once sleek fiberglass hull reduced to splinters and unrecognizable chunks of floating debris.
It was an interesting sight, something she didn't really care about as she continued to float amongst the cool water. Eyes once more closing to cut off the glare of the sun far above, yet as she felt her limps brush against the sandy surface of the sea floor. She felt something was amiss.
"Taylor…. I know you don't want to… but you need to wake up" sung a gentle feminine voice, but Taylor cringed.
Limbs clawed at the sea floor, sending a sheet of dust and sand into the surrounding water and obscuring her form from view. Yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't escape the voice.
"Please…." Whispered the voice in distress "you need to wake up… 'I' need you to wake up!"
'Go AWAY!' Taylor tried to scream, but no noise escaped her lips. The sea drowned her cries of distress, leaving her alone in the silence depths of the ocean.
"I can't go away Taylor I'm PART OF YOU!" cried the voice, sounding equally as distressed as Taylor herself.
Taylor cringed, burring her face in the ocean floor.
"We can't do this anymore Taylor, hurting people is not what I gave you these powers for!" shrieked the voice, making Taylor want to scream in pain, trembling. Taylor glanced around, watching as the dust cloud dissipated to reveal the sunken vessels around her.
How many people drowned on board those ships, how many families had she ruined from her careless acts of destruction. How many screaming sailors had disappeared from existence, all because of a hunger that consumed her waking world?
Even as she consider this, she felt her gut gurgle and contort, letting loose a demanding bellow loud enough to be heard underwater. For a moment her mind slipped into consideration, mainly where could she go to eat, or what she felt was ingestible at this time… Parts of the vessels around her looked kind of edible, maybe bland in flavour but possibly dense enough in minerals to quell her arching gut.
"NOOO" with a vengeance, the voice screamed in Taylor's mind. Sending her reeling back in alarm, unintentionally crushing a nearby wooden boat in the process beneath her tremendous bulk.
"Please…. I don't want to be a monster….. Not again" gone was the overwhelming voice, in its place Taylor discovered a pleading, scared little girl that didn't sound much older than Taylor herself.
'I…. Can't… There's nothing to go back to h…e he burnt Everything!' Taylor cried, her voice threatening to fail her and devolved into a fit of unintelligible sobbing.
'Dad's dead…. My home is gone, my cousins are gone… my grandparents disappeared years ago… there's nothing.. Left for me to go back too!' choking on her own words, Taylor let herself fall limp to the ocean floor.
For a moment silence once more consumed her world, the only noise being the faint 'thump dum' of her own heartbeat. For a fleeting moment, Taylor had hoped she'd finally driven away that cursed voice, only for her hopes to be dashed as the voice filled her mind once more.
"I knew a girl like you once, she had her life stolen away by monster's just as you have" whispered the voice meekly, the sound drawing Taylor away from her silent brooding.
"They broke her, twisted her very soul until she was barely human" the voice sounded almost mad as she spoke with a tone that sent a shiver down Taylor's spine.
"But she didn't give up, she kept fighting even when monster's tore away her limbs or destroyed her home." The voice paused, allowing a moment for Taylor to absorb what she just heard. "She didn't fight because she had nothing left Taylor, she kept fighting so nobody else would lose everything like she did... like you have.."
Looking around, Taylor gazed out at the ruined vessels. Taking in the silent graveyard of likely hundreds of innocent people young and old, her mind gently chewed on the voices words. Processing the meaning behind the story and comparing this far away stranger to herself.
Slowly, Taylor glanced down at her hands.
Instead of smooth, pale flesh. She was greeted with the sight of lightly tanned scales engraved with odd rectangular shaped markings, small hooked claws sprouted from her finger tips, while a thin length of webbing stretched between her fingers', creating an effective paddling devices perfect for swimming beneath the waves.
Gazing past her hands, Taylor examined the rest of her body, finally working up the courage to actually look at herself for once and see just how much she'd changed in the past few months.
Layers of thick scales covered her flesh, locking together to form an interact set of protective armour while still offering enough flexibility for her to move without restraint. It was an odd sensation she'd ignored for a while, but now she actually stopped to examine the scales she noticed how sharp they appeared. Almost like miniature knives jutting out from her flesh.
The scales varied in colour, with a lighter shade of tan covering the underside of her chest, neck and insides of her legs. While a darker colour covered the rest of her body, thick black lines racing across her flesh, forming circles and rectangular like shapes across her skin.
Glancing at her legs, Taylor noted they had changed considerably during the course of her transformation.
No longer appearing anything human like in nature, her legs had adapted into something more suited for a dinosaur than anything else. Large predatory like claws decorated her feet in the place of toes, a single talon like digit extended outwards from her heel. Reminding Taylor of the feet of some predatory birds like eagles or owls, just thinking about it brought up old, painful memories of happier days.
"We…. Can remove it if you like?" offered the voice hesitantly, reminding Taylor of its presence and thankfully drawing her away from the old memories.
'I… can deal with it.'
Shaking her head, Taylor examined her chest more closely. Quickly realizing that her scales now covered her like a second skin, obscuring her privates from view almost like a wet suit. Sadly her scales were very form fitting, and her breast seemed to have, gotten a little larger than she remembered?
"Err sorry…" mumbled the voice apologetically and rather hastily, making Taylor imagine the voices owner was blushing madly as it spoke.
Shivering slightly in discomfort, Taylor found herself tilting her head to gaze over her shoulder. Discovering a large shark like fin protruding outwards between her shoulder blades, oddly there seem to be a notch missing from the fin, yet no visible signs of scaring as if it was supposed to be like that.
'Okay… that is a little strange' Taylor internally muttered to herself, eyes wondering further down as she tilted her head back to an almost unnatural angle.
Sprawled out behind her, sat a long, powerful looking shark tail with her scale colouration. Blinking in confusion, Taylor poked 'her' tail with a claw experimentally.
'Sooo I'm a shark… thing?' mumbled Taylor in disbelief, taking a moment to better examine her new features.
"Currently you're an Anthromorphic Shark girl to be technically accurate" Taylor noted a hint of pride in the mysterious voice.
Unconsciously, Taylor swished her tail side to side in agitation. The motion unintentionally sending plumes of dust and sand into the surrounding water, this also had the unfortunate side effect of sending the monstrous shark girl staggering forwards from the propulsion of her own tail.
Regaining her balance, Taylor focused on something that had been bothering her since she first went into hiding months ago.
'Who are you anyways, you never told me your name' her voice sounded more like a demand than an actual question, Taylor could practically feel the mysterious voice fumble about and before bristling in mild irritation.
"Ifyou'dactuallylistenedthefirsttimewemetkid…..My name is Gabby, a pleasure to make your acquaintance" she didn't quite hear the first part of what the voice said, Taylor did however noticed the slight mocking tone 'Gabby' used upon her introduction.
'Taylor….. Taylor Hebert...' Taylor mumbled in reply, feeling slightly awkward as she imagined herself speaking those words but not actually hearing them with her ears.
"Cute" Gabby giggled "Now you're going to feel strange in a moment, I've been blocking off your mind from a majority of your bodies new sensory organs for a while now so this might feel a little…. Overwhelming."
'Overwhelming?' Taylor asked in confusion, a moment later she got her answer as a wave of information assaulted her like a rushing tidal wave.
Her sense of awareness practically tripled itself instantaneously, things she didn't even know existed became present to the poor girls mind. A new ghostly sensation made itself known, resulting in Taylor having a vague awareness of the terrain in the blind spots of her vision. The poor girl's mind was practically screaming in distress, unable to process the sensory material of at least a dozen new organs all designed to see the world beyond human comprehension.
Temperature, water displacement distortions, electrical impulses from the nervous systems of surrounding sea life, echo location. She could see it all even when she closed her eyes, no matter what she tried she couldn't block out the influx of sensory material.
Each new sense had a different range, some went out to less than 100 feet, and other's reached far out into the distance for miles. Taylor wasn't sure why she would need to sense something that far away, thankfully the greater the distance the less information her new organs relayed to her brain.
Then there was the stench, the smell of the surrounding ocean that made her want to gag in revulsion. All Taylor could smell was the scent of rotting fish and decomposing sea weed, sadly that wasn't the only thing she could smell, Taylor wasn't sure if she wanted to know what the lingering scents trailing in the water meant or 'who' they belonged too.
Taylor couldn't really focus on the smell, the jack hammers crashing against her ear drums left her practically deaf to the world around her. Unlike the peaceful silence she felt before, this sounded like someone was playing dubstep right into her ear at full volume.
After what felt like hours of trying to process the barrage of sensory material, Taylor felt it all suddenly vanish. Leaving her in the silence of the abyss, the only feelings stabbing at her mind being her vision and the sensation of water brushing across her scales.
'WHAT…. Was that?' Taylor squeaked in fright, hands clutching at her throbbing skull.
"Ummm the advance awareness upgrades I got from Alex and gave to you…. I just remembered I was introduce to those upgrades one at a time not all at once" informed Gabby rather sheepishly.
Taylor barely paid Gabby any attention, instead focusing more on her splitting headache and her efforts to massage her skull in a desperate bid to relieve the pain. In doing so she discovered her ears had elongated into long, horn like objects from the side of her skull. While her face now sported a short, wedge shaped muzzle bristling with sharp fang.
Using her tongue, Taylor poked around the inside of her mouth. Getting a feel for the long serrated blades lining her jaws, strangely her fangs felt disorganized. Several of her new teeth were curved in nature, while others felt triangular in shape and even a few felt like rounded lumps in the back of her mouth.
Taylor's self-exploration was sadly interrupted as Gabby spoke up once more, activating one of the sensory organs as she did so and making the poor girl cringe at a new wave of information tore through her mind.
"You should probably duck."
Sensing the water displacement of something truly massive moving in her direction, Taylor did as advised and dropped to the ocean floor. Landing hard on her hands and knees just in time to avoid something metallic in nature silently glide overhead.
Glancing up, Taylor was greeted to the sight a dark, black coated hull of a vessel plough through the abyss. It took a second for the vessels shape to register in the girl's mind, when she did realize what the black hull represented, it prompted Taylor to duck slightly lower amongst the coral and shipwrecks that surrounded her area.
Drifting through the water, with its propellers spinning almost lazily in its wake. Loomed a giant submarine easily as large, if not possibly larger than the nearby cargo hauler.
'Isn't that, a NUCLEAR submarine?' she balked in disbelief, jaws hanging open with an air of disbelief as she watched the massive submersible craft glided through the sea.
As she watched it get further and further away, she noted something wrong about the ship's hull.
'Its hull looks broken, I think I can see bubbles coming out between the plating' noted Taylor meekly, her enhanced vision enabling her to see the damaged and deformed panels covering the submarines side.
'The pressure hull has been breached, they can't submerge too deep without the vessel crumbling under the weight of the water…. I'm surprise their even got the damn thing this deep or even moving without those panels being sheared off the hull" remarked Gabby rather bluntly, displaying a knowledgeable source of information on the vessel, well more than Taylor herself possessed anyhow.
'What… do you think happened to it?' asked Taylor, unsure if she wanted an answer to that question.
"We didn't do it that I'm sure about, those look like impact points, reminds me of old shipwrecks caused by Kra… DUCK!"
Once more Taylor practically buried her face in the sand, sensing the displacement of something else dart through the water like a missile after the submarine in the distance.
"Shit that's a fucken Category 5 we got to leave!" howled Gabby, enhancing Taylor's vision slightly so she could make out the creatures darting towards the submarine.
A silent gasp escaped her lips, eyes widening as she watched something around half the size of the Nuclear Submarine zip through the abyss with an unnatural number of limbs. The creature was nightmarish to behold, with dozens of glowing orb like eyes and a set of jaws large enough to swallow her whole.
'What is that thing?!' Taylor screamed, her hands and feet clawing at the sea floor for purchase as she tried to run in the opposite direction.
"A Category 5 Shape Shifter, think horror monster material and combine that with old Japanese kaiju movies and ta-da instant murder machine" Explained Gabby "You and I are a mid-Tier Category 4 Shapeshifter, sure we could fight that monster but I don't think we could win without seriously getting hurt."
Remembering she was submerged beneath the ocean, Taylor abandoned her slow sluggish attempts to run and instead began kicking her legs and paddling with her hands. Resulting in the satisfactory act of propelling herself more rapidly through the abyss and away from the other Shapeshifter.
Meanwhile, totally oblivious to the shark girl nearby. The monster finally reached its target, crashing head first against the vessels hull and crumbling the thick plating designed to withstand the tremendous pressure of the ocean. While the metal was strong, even it couldn't survive the force of over 100 tonnes moving at a significant velocity.
"Oh fuck, it's going to detonate the reactor!" cried the horrified voice of Gabby, distracting Taylor from her task of swimming and causing the girl to glance over her shoulder in bewildered curiosity.
'What?'
A blinding flash of light filled her vision, followed by an overwhelming force colliding with her back.
To be continued….
Authors note:
Please note before you start yelling at me for getting the character wrong and other things, this is an AU. I've rejected your reality and substituted my own! :3
In other words the story is 'based' on Worm, it's not going to follow the plot or have entirely the same setting, please keep that in mind if your going to criticise my writing I'm creating this for fun and to share with people not to be driven into depression by angry rants again... sorry...
I awe most of my inspiration for this from a mixture of recently watching the 2018 Venom movie and reading over the recent updates of Taylor Varga, a rather comical crack fic based around some shapeshifting lizard shenanigans and OP powerset that's like... ridiculous.
Also of note, it's sad how little Changer fics their are on Worm Fanfiction, it's hard to find Taylor centred fix with her having shapeshifting abilities that aren't OP right off the bat. I know it's a little hypocritical of me to say after I just nuked the Main Character of my own fanfiction but we'll get to the at next chapter and you'll see the shortcomings of being a giant shark girl.
I'll try to keep this interesting for everyone, hope your enjoy and take care people be safe and stay out of trouble.