(Hanna)

I opened my eyes underwater, or at least some kind of liquid. That bitch had just kicked us out with no information, no planning, no preparation for what we were getting ourselves into at all. Our only real information was that we needed to survive an hour in potentially hostile conditions and “help is on the way”. I floated for a minute thinking about the situation. The best option I could come up with was to explore and gather information. And with that I realized that I had been under the water for a while, but for some reason I wasn't panicked… In fact I realized that I had been breathing just fine on my own the whole time. Well I can either breathe underwater now or this is that weird breathable water stuff, how convenient.

Trying to take stock of the outside was difficult, the water and glass distorting it so much I could barely see anything more than a few glowing pulsing lights almost like failing office lights and a green blinking one right in front of my tank. Well fuck it I’m not getting anything done sitting here floating hopefully no one notices me move around a bit. Looking down at my hands was an odd experience. You see something so often that when it's not there or unexpectedly different it hits you hard. My hands were about as unexpected as could be. They were a dark black for one thing and I used to be as pasty as a bag of flour and for another they were coated in scales from fingertips to elbow. I flexed my fingers slightly and where my nails should be shot out inch long claws. Weird and unusual but also bad ass so far this new body was ok. Breathing underwater, built in weapons… Suddenly I panicked and looked down letting out an underwater bubbling sigh as I checked to see that I was both still human shaped and female. The scales coated my legs to the knee as well it seemed, but my torso was as white as ever. Man it would have been awkward if I met Marco as some strange outlandish quadruped fish or something.

Thinking about it a bit more I had scales and as far as I could tell could breathe underwater now. Maybe I was some sort of weird humanoid fish. I definitely wasn't a mermaid. I had two legs still, though they felt weird somehow. I needed to get out of this tank before I could find out more. Hopefully I could still breathe outside of the water. Watching carefully for any movement in the room and not seeing any I tried to slowly and carefully swim to the surface. Tried being the key word. With one gentle kick of my legs I shot upwards at an insane pace blasting right out of the top of the tank through some kind of thin layer of coating and into the air. OK not how I wanted to do that. And now I'm falling just wonderful.

I land straight down next to the tank, my legs bending as I get ready for a burst of pain but I feel almost nothing from the twenty foot drop right onto stone. I inhaled deeply and let out a loud relieved breath. Well I can breathe outside of water I suppose. This weird new body just keeps getting better and stranger all the time. Looking back at my tank it looks like a cloning vat from a scifi movie just much much larger. Almost 20 feet tall above the ground and it continues for a way down as well and is nearly a hundred feet long. Looking around this room just seems to contain the tank and the flashing light but some tubes run out of the tank into the wall so this must be part of a larger facility.

I walk over to the blinking light as I notice its color shift from a vibrant green blink to a blue that is quickly becoming purple. On the way I stumble a few feet, tripping over myself, almost falling flat on my face, before I realize what the problem is. I don't have normal human legs anymore. They are oddly shaped like an animal’s legs at the bottom… Do I have paws? Great… It was kind of cool before but now I'm not so sure anymore. I need to find a mirror and make sure no other weird changes happened. I do a few quick steps up and down the tank getting used to my new legs as the purple starts to transition into pink.

Now seems like a good time to get out of here. I have a feeling that I don't want to be around when that light gets to red. Creeping out of the only door I saw I found myself in some sort of cave-like corridor. This place looked straight up like an evil lair from a bad 80s movie. I moved down the tunnel in the direction the pipes had left my room and a few hundred feet later found another door. I opened it quietly and found a vacant room with several crystals similar to the one next to the tank. They were all cut in the exact same way I noticed there must be something special about that. The biggest difference to the one in the vat room was each one was roughly the size of the tank I had come out of and all had no color or glow at all.

Slipping in the door fully and turning my attention from the massive obvious features of the room I realized that right next to the door was a small rack with what appeared to be lab coats. Finally some clothes. I felt like I hadn't dressed in years. Pulling one on I realized it was more like a mix of a robe and a long lab coat that came all the way down to just above the floor on me. At least it would hide my presumably distinct features from casual inspection. And it comes with a convenient hood I can pull over my head. I still haven't seen my face so I didn't know if anything would stand out there. With no more clothes in apparent sight I sneak around the room and take a look. The same massive tubes from the tank room come from the wall each one connecting to the base of one of the huge crystals. Each crystal also has a number of smaller tubes almost like wiring running back into the wall. I have no idea what any of it could do but it's nice to see something technological I would hate if my years of study meant nothing in this new world I seem to be stranded in.

Going back to the door I open it and peek out and see someone slowly coming down the hallway. They are wearing a light blue robe and seem to be looking upwards. I quickly and silently shut the door again. I know nothing about this facility or the people in it or what the different robes might mean. I assume because the robe was down here I am allowed to be down here but what if blue robe isn't and is suspicious I don't say anything. Or what if the blue robe is a higher rank than white and he asks what I am doing? What if I am supposed to address them by title or in some other official way? I take a long deep breath and decide if I am going to get anywhere I am going to run into someone eventually. I might as well make it the lone man in a long hallway who I can probably take down if I get the drop on him.

I open the door again and confidently step out. The man is walking with his hood down and is definitely staring up at the ceiling. He hasn't even noticed me in the door yet. I glance up at the ceiling and notice many small tubes running just like the ones that came from the crystals in the room. I look back at the man and finally notice how extremely slowly he is moving. It's like watching someone casually walk in slow motion. After a few seconds of watching him I look down at my cloak and give the hem a small toss. I take a moment to look at just how slowly it falls before it really hits me. Holy shit im seeing and moving at least four or five times faster than normal.

The man finally notices me and waves his steps increasing in pace slightly as he calls a greeting. As I try to focus on the words his speed increases until he's moving and speaking at a normal pace. That surprises me enough for my concentration to slip for a moment and he slows back down but a moment for me now is truly a moment and I don't even miss a word. “High mage! What are you doing down here? The celebration is still going on upstairs.” I fall into step with him as he hurries up and we continue down the corridor. He's shorter than me by at least a foot so on top of how fast I can move I have to take smaller steps. “I’m really not much of a celebrating type.” I reply cautiously. Shit High Mage sounds important. Like in charge types of important. “There is always more work to be done. What are you doing down here?” I continue asking a question to redirect his attention in an attempt to make sure he doesn't question me too much. He grins and answers. “Much the same as you, I suppose, not one for social gatherings and this facility is just fascinating. I can't stop studying it.” He gestures around at all the wiring as we come to a cross section. “You built a fantastic place here. It's simply amazing how you take different arcane frequencies and convert them for different uses.” I stop and look around. If I understand him correctly, these are like wires. Maybe my electrical engineering degree wont go to waste after all. “I didn't build this facility.” I correct. “Though it is fascinating that is true I came in just recently as a consultant on facility optimization. I wasn't trained anywhere near here so some words I use might be different.” As we walk through the maze of tunnels and study various devices and discuss the powering of the facility I am amazed at how close many concepts are to electrical concepts and how some differ. I learned the man's name is Jamis and he is tasked with keeping all the conduits running smoothly though he doesn't know where all of them go and what they do. The facility is very clearly specialized, each room needing different frequencies and amounts of energy. All sorts of research seems to go on here making me wonder what kind of experiment I had been.

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Eventually we reluctantly make our way up to the celebration going on upstairs. Upstairs is apparently the ground level and I see an arch leading out to a forest. A few people are standing around drinking in the arch and outside. I could just make a run for it now but I decide I might as well wait for whoever should be showing up soon. I might need allies and I definitely have no idea where I am besides an underground lair in a forest. Just a few doors down from the arch we walk into a massive room with a stage built in on one side with dozens of robed figures in varying different colors but no one in white like me. People glance at us and try to avoid me as we walk in. Clearly High Mages are very very important people and luckily most people don't seem to know who they are specifically. Me and Jamis ignore them all and he grabs us both a drink and find a corner to hide in and continue our discussion. Fortunately most people ignore us as I convert familiar concepts like amps and volts into their magical equivalence of frequencies and Owains.

Suddenly the doors on the stage burst open and a group of white robes came out and began looking around. Damn I should have just slid out the front door while I could. The entire room went quiet and quite a few people were looking directly at me. The white robes also turn to stare right at me looking quite furious. “You there, take down your hood!” The leader shouts pointing at me. Jamis quite intelligently slides away from me leaving a good clear area as I slowly lower my hood turning to face the stage. The leader's eyes widen and in moments there is a fireball in his hand and he's throwing it at me. That shocks me enough to break the concentration I had been working on holding for a while now and everything around me slows. The fireball however was still moving at a pretty good pace. It had been less than a second and it was already almost to me. On instinct I brought my arm around and slapped it out of the air with my forearm. It flew off to the side and hit the wall where it exploded. Before I could really process more fire was flying my way forcing me to slap them away with my forearm or step out of the way. Three of the white robes were throwing fire as one tried to sneak around the edge of the room to get behind me. I didn't have time to deal with him for now but I made a mental note. Everyone else in the room was running like hell. Five or six white robes didn't get into the combat and quickly ran right back out the door they had come in and just about every colored robe was evacuating out every door as quickly as possible.

That was probably a good idea. All this fire pouring at me and being deflected off had made sure that just about every wall in the room was blazing with fire and there were quite a few holes in one or two walls with fire spreading on the other side. Suddenly I realized that Jamis was standing behind me against the wall still. I can't tell if that was the safest place because of the stampede to leave or the least safe place because as soon as I moved there would be a wall of fire heading straight towards him. Speaking of walls of fire the barrage of fireballs had stopped and the white robes were stepping together putting their hands near each other. Together they were putting together a supremely large mass of fire. I decided it was a good time to go and grabbed Jamis and moved as fast as I could since I woke up. It turns out that was very very fast as I reached the door we had come in in just two strides. Before the last white robe to add his fire had even taken a step towards the other two. Getting past the crowd was a little more of an issue but when they saw me they got out of the way as fast as possible. I'm not sure if they would throw that giant fireball at their own people and I really didn't want to find out. Suddenly the sneaky white robe jumped at me from the side. I stopped paying attention with all the people about and he had snuck up on me. Stupid. He had a knife plunging directly at my chest but he was slow. I grabbed his wrist and realized something I probably should have before. I was carrying Jame with one arm and I had casually picked him up and tossed him over a shoulder. He might be shorter than me but Marco had been almost as short on me and I couldn't have done that with him. As I grabbed the white robed wrist I felt the bone crumple in my grip. I had accidentally broken someone's arm before during sparring but that had taken a kick hitting exactly right. I just broke this man’s arm accidentally just from the force of my grip. I dropped his arm and pulled the kick I had been instinctively about to slam into his chest. I still felt his ribs creak and perhaps one or two broke but I didn't have time to worry about that. He was down and I needed to go.

I jumped out the door as quickly as possible after that, running as fast as I could. And while I could move extremely fast with a stride or two my running speed was insane. I had to stop only ten steps outside the arch because I had been moving so fast I had hit the edge of the woods probably about two to three hundred feet from the exit. Turning back I could see a large building of wood and stone set against a hill, smoke pouring from the roof now. The underground facilities had been massive but the building itself was probably no larger than a small school. In fact that's kind of what the building reminded me of. It was a research facility, it might be a part of some sort of college or something. Suddenly a bellow sounded from the woods behind me. “DRAGON!!!”

I turned to see a group of five walking through the forest at me. They looked straight out of a fantasy game. I mean the leader was short stocky bearded and wearing plate armor and carrying a hammer and shield. Classic dwarf. Behind him were two people wearing robes one of dark blue and one of white. Probably two spellcasters and if they had healing magic here I would normally associate the one in white for that sort of thing. Next to the dwarf a fair distance to the left was a tall man with an enormous bow. And the fifth person… Well the fifth person was gone so I just assumed they looked like some sort of shadowy rouge type. I set Jame down next to a tree. He had passed out at some point but I could still see him breathing. I really hoped I hadn't accidentally done any damage to him in my flight. I turned back to the four I could see and held out my hands. “Are you talking to me?” I asked in as innocent a tone as I could. God dammit I did have scales and weird legs. And I could totally see how it might look like I burned down that building. The dwarf’s eyes narrowed “Aye. You chose a very bad time to show up here you see. We had already been dispatched on a contract and running into you might net us a nice bonus.” I held my hands in front of me. “Wait wait you had a contract to com…” I had to cut off as the dwarf launched himself at me. He was damn fast even in plate armor. He swung his hammer directly at my chest and much like with the white robe earlier I grabbed his wrist. Unlike with the white robe his wrist didn't crumple. In fact his strike didn't even stop. I was still holding back but unlike the white robes this group was strong. I straightened my arm and let his continued swing throw me backwards and put some distance between us. Next time he closed the gap I would be ready. But he didn't need to close the gap. In less than a second I was forced to dodge four arrows and slap away two fireballs. He had a team and I didn't and he knew it. His first attack had just been designed to keep me back from the rest of his team. I was about to close the distance again when I felt something. It was kind of like intuition but apparently more accurate. I swiped behind me on instinct with my tail… When the hell had I gotten a tail??? And felt it connect solidly as a short person flew away from me into the forest past the spellcasters. Instantly the white robed one went running. Huh I was probably right, a healer of some sort.

The dwarf growled and advanced on me again. This time he stayed close as we traded blows. Trying to force me in a circle to put my back to the caster and bowman. For a few seconds during our clash I didn't let him. That was an obvious plan to divert my focus too many directions. But then I realized something that I had known since the start. I was faster than him. I was fighting reactionary so he might not have noticed as much but I still had plenty of speed. So the next round of blows I let him turn me and dashed directly at the archer. The archer was fast with his bow firing multiple shots a second but when he tried backing away I could see that his firing was the only thing supernaturally fast about him. I reevaluated that and he might actually be backing up faster than an olympic sprinter but with my new speed I could only describe him as slow. I caught him almost instantly and aimed a punch at the arm holding his bow. I felt the bone shatter under my punch and winced a little. I couldn't have him putting an arrow through me but these people were supposed to be my allies and we were in a fight less than a minute after meeting. Pushing him away from his bow as he dropped it I turned just in time to catch the dwarf’s first swing at me. This was a reckless wide open swing with all of his power behind it and it sent me hurling at incredible speeds back towards the burning building. I landed bouncing and rolling for fifteen to twenty feet before I regained my feet. My blocking arm and hand hurt like hell. I don't think I could take another strike like that. The dwarf was already hurling himself after me with rage written all over his face but he had forgotten my skills and my goal in his anger. I launched myself to the side and past him running full tilt at the spellcaster leaving the dwarf behind me again.

The spellcasters eyes widened and the red glow around him disappeared turning purple for a split second then his eyes hardened and the glow shifted white. The world disappeared and I found myself in a library of impressive size. The shelves towered around me filled with various items as well as books. There were two doors at each end of the row I was in. I spun around looking for a threat and noticed something. My hands were back to my hands again and my legs were normal legs. Was this some sort of illusion and my brain was filling in what I expected to see. Was I about to get my head taken off by an angry dwarf from the shelves. I felt something click around my wrist and looked over my shoulder to see the spellcaster smiling at me. Then the library vanished and I was back on the grass by the treeline as me and the mage fell to the ground together and everything went black.