When Brooke awoke again, she yawned and then realized that she could yawn. She had a mouth, and lips, and a face! She tried to move her hands up, but found that there were no hands. Or legs. Or a torso really, though she did feel like she could wiggle her spine. It was very unnerving, and she moved everything she could to try to figure out what was going on.

It really felt like she was a skull on a short bit of spine, which creeped her out.

As she moved she thought. She was in the process of integration, also known as replacing her nervous system with tiny silica and metal cell copies that operated similarly to the original. Perhaps… perhaps this meant that her full brain capture and the nerve cells in her head transference was successful?

A rush of relief and hope hit her, and she wiggled some more. This probably also meant that she had a functional cervical spine, and facial nerves. Also, with that rush of feeling, her endocrine system was being successfully integrated as well!

Boom, more good feelings. More happy wiggles. It was getting a little out of control so to distract herself she did her best to observe her surroundings.

She couldn’t see very far, there was some sort of squishy membrane up against her face, and she found that by wiggling her spine she could smush her face into it. So she bit it, just to see.

-1 BITE DAMAGE

She watched as the words floated up from where she bit and disappeared. Well, now. That was interesting. She bit again and again, just to see what would happen if she managed to get the thing’s hit points down to zero. As she did, she started to get ghostly senses of tastes, of different tastes for each bite. Before long, she started to feel full, and sleepy, and the membrane was still there even if she did have more room to wiggle in. Such a weird way to do her integration, she mused as she fell asleep.

The next time she woke found herself with a bit more spine and a sense of a belly, but no neck or arms or legs. Brooke wriggled around but could still not see much, a few shapes and not much by way of color.

Oddly, she felt hungry, so she went back to wriggling and eating at the membrane. She tried to find where she had started at already but couldn’t in the diffuse light and poor visuals. She found a shape to focus on and did her best to attack the membrane while targeting it. As she chewed she noticed that her teeth felt weird this time, and the flavor experiences were stronger, if just as random as last time. By the time she was full she was exhausted and with an aching back. Sleep came for her just as swiftly as last time.

This repeated several times, and each time she gained a little more sensation, a little less space, and a broader palate experience. She had no idea how much time was passing, but she quickly grew bored of the “eat the wall” mini game and grew more anxious every time she woke up with more feeling of torso but no hips, no shoulders, no arms, no legs, no hands, no feet.

She definitely started throwing fits for lack of anything better to do, any better way to express herself. She screamed into the membrainous void, made demands, and threats. Growing bored with that she started to make “creative” threats, but wasn’t very good at it.

Example: “I’ll dip your gonads in chocolate and feed them to a Squirtle!”

So when she FINALLY came too with the sensation of tiny arms she didn’t hesitate even a second to start scratching and wiggling them at the walls, scratching loose slivers of membrane The thick walls had been thinning as she had progressed through the mini game and she was beginning to see the space around her. The other shapes she saw around her started to come into focus and at first left her confused. They looked like giant tadpole eggs. Wait, was she a tadpole? Wasn’t that more of a beast kin thing?

She wiggled, bit, scratched, and slept, and the walls hemming her in got thinner and thinner, even as she got bigger and bigger. She lost her ability to really wiggle, and was left scratching and biting what was directly in front of her. It was at this point she began to see large! Forms swimming by, moving the eggs around her, and on one occasion, moving her.

And it was when she was moved that she had her understanding of what was going on confirmed. The hands that moved her seemed large, a third of her body was covered by it, and they were warm. Deliciously warm. She was carefully picked up and turned over, and then set back down in a smaller group of eggs, eggs that showed the “tadpoles” she had been surrounded by. They were babies, (well, duh, tadpoles) little baby mermaids sleeping in the clear membranes of frog eggs.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

That would have been nice to know going in. She grumbled to herself, and then started scratching and biting, and really working hard to get out of her membrane. Noise started to filter in, a soft singing that didn’t resemble any song she knew that seeped into her ears and made her eyes heavy. Soon, despite her best efforts, she was back asleep.

The next time she woke up she didn’t hesitate. Her arms felt stronger, and longer, and the membrane felt thinner and tighter around her. She clawed and bit at a space right in front of her and, after too much time, finally split the membrane.

Fresh cool fluid spilled into her space and she tore at the membrane a little more so she could poke her head out. When she did, she found herself greeted by words:

CONGRATULATIONS! Your Endocrine System has been fully integrated. You are the 3rd user out of 1,258,435.89 to achieve this lofty goal. Per your user agreement and contract, your ES is being digitally mapped out and coded to boost the user experience for all. $10K has been deposited to your account. .18% royalties will be collected from all users who pay for the upgrade and deposited from your account on a monthly basis.

Brooke blinked, and smiled, all those awful injections are paying off! And suddenly she was laughing as her emotions suddenly bloomed in full, and she wriggled free of the damn egg sack while whooping and squiggling. She found that she now could move, and the squiggling she had been doing in her tight little egg sack now propelled her through the water. “FREEDOM!” she tried to yell in her burst of joy, but her tongue still felt sluggish so it came out as a shriek of “WEE-UM!”

Eh, close enough. She could now see herself, to some degree, and she had a fat little tadpole body with tiny fat arms. It was horrible and it made her laugh as she swam towards the light.

“Eyaawǂǂ!” Suddenly there was a rush of water and large hands were scooping her up. So large that they covered the whole of her “torso” and the base of her tail. It gave her quite the fright, and the sudden and intense rush of emotion overwhelmed her—she screamed and flailed, hitting the fingers in front of her to try and get away.

Fingers were unimpressed.

“||||” Fingers cooed. (Well, the owners of the fingers anyhow.) It sounded like a watery tsk tsk tsk tsk, and was a little distracting from the overwhelming fear as Fingers gently manipulated her to her chest, and swam to the surface of the water, to a lighter space. When they were there Fingers bobbed up and down with Brooke on her chest under the water. Fingers was humming—Brooke could feel the vibrations through the chest and they were deep and soothing.

She’s treating me like I’m a baby Brooke realized, I AM a baby, at least right now, in this simulation.

So she let herself be soothed and pondered the situation while her tears and wails worked their way out of her system.

It was bizarre, and a little insulting until she came to the conclusion that this was a way to help her learn to use her new body as the nerves were replicated and came online. It should only take a month so I shouldn’t be stuck as a baby for long, right?

When her tears—well, Brooke realized, they are figurative tears because could I even cry underwater? It felt like I was. Mostly.

When her tears had stopped and her wails had ceased, and even her trembling through the after effects of so much adrenaline coursing through her system had ceased, the mermaid Brooke had named Fingers gently wrapped Brooke to her chest in a semi-transparent white material and swam out of the enclosure. Brook was realizing that she still couldn’t see much, just about a foot or two in front of her face could come into focus and everything else was fuzzy. Fingers face was a suggestion, no details. Crap, my eyes are still transitioning.

So she guessed at the shapes and forms that flitted by as Fingers swam, clicking and mumming in a rhythm underwater. It almost sounded like whale song, but with much much shorter notes.

Then they were rising to the surface, just a brief moment, and then diving and a bell rang, then up again into a warmly lit space. Then squeels and clicks and a rush of water and hands. She saw faces, blurry and indistinct and it was all very overwhelming though she did successfully resist the urge to throw another fit. At first.

“fìf à , moù nout chìth shǎt mim ngoù!”

Wait, what? Did she say something about shitting?

“Où àish! hezh mief chhoum gǔtar mou thu hìkar. gǔtar n! hwiar bu chhoum thu zùǂar .”

Then the first voice, the one who sang to her, “thu da fie haush moù agan, nok mù mlam . thu da twǎv mù thà .”

And a new voice, and new hands, large and warm. “nǎz twǎvish. nok chhoum zàsar , à où”

This kept going on for some time. It was confusing and at some point, she didn’t remember when, she started crying.

“twǎvish haush làtarish. zàsar mou ! ǂef mlǎm fìf .”

“!, ! Twavdyahku.”

“Ah, ! ǂâs engish, tazhlet Dyahku…”

"Dyahku. ǂef zlǎ khuish”

“ǂef ǎf khuish, ǂef nok khuish”

“Dyahku.”

Brooke just sighed, feeling cried out and tired. She had no idea what was going on, but as long as they kept holding her and keeping her warm, she decided she could just not care. It was an option and she was going to take it.

…-!!!

At least until she was being snuggled on a massive pair of soft breasts, like a warm waterbed. It was awkward as fuck to Brooke and woke a worry in her. Was she going to have to breastfeed? Oh, god, please don’t do that, programmers. She thought, just no.

But she eventually realized that there was more of that semi transparent slick and soft cloth over the boobs and that made it a bit better. The warmth and the bobbing in the water was lulling, and as a song was sung to her through the breast bone of the mermaid she fell back asleep.