Chapter 8: A Grimm Inspection

--- Vanessa, Before The Event ---

She stepped into the facility’s main -but not it’s only- testing area with about five minutes to spare before the actual evaluation would begin, thus earning a nod from less nervous Jess. (Not that I actually care about that.)

It was just better for her if she kept her fellow lab rats happy. (Speaking of…)

She glanced at Nick and Cyn playing patty cake as they waited for the test to begin. For all the world looking like an elder sibling playing with their handicap younger sibling, rather than a mentally unstable golden retriever playing with ten different kinds of nightmare in a pint sized package.

A part of her was always amused by the fact that she was the only one on their squad to half way look like a monster, given how she couldn’t hide her long prehensile tail, her oddly shaped arms and hands, or her silver eyes and hair. (Eh, just means I’m the most honest one here.)

Cyn glanced at her and let out a giggle before waving at her, thus informing Nick of her arrival.

“See Jess I told you Vanessa wouldn’t be late!” Nick smiled.

Jess nodded, with a small grin of her own. “So you did. Still,” Jessica clapped, “we’re cutting it close so everyone line up. The director is already on her way.”

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t actually bother protesting as she took her spot a couple paces from Jessica, while Nicholas helped Cyn to their ‘leader’s other side before standing between Jessica and Vanessa.

They all stood there for another half hour as the people in charge gave a powerplay to remind them that they were just toys meant to follow orders. (Wonder if the others even realize that?)

While the others had all been ‘part of the company’ longer than her, that didn’t change the fact that she was a little more… street smart than the others. Lacking the naive trust the others put into the company they’d all lived with for so long, none of them even realizing what kind of place they were working for. (Besides Mathias but if he disappeared forever I’d celebrate it every year on the anniversary. We’ll even call it ‘Dead Asshole’ day.)

She shook her head, realizing that she was getting distracted again and began wondering how much longer this was going to take.

From down the line she noticed Cyn shift as her eyes locked onto one of the many impact resistant windows lining the testing area.

Knowing what that meant, she followed Cyn’s line of sight and quickly spotted the director, a pale woman in a suit with long black hair, leading a trio of men in suits. Flanking them on either side was a nervous looking woman with curly hair and glasses in a lab coat -(Ah, the ‘good’ Doctor Holiday.)- and a severe looking man in body armor -(And, of course the head of security has to keep his eyes on us.)- on the other.

She whispered, “There here.” to the others who still hadn’t put together that Cyn’s eyes never left the Director unless there were at least six inches of steel between them. (It says something that the scariest of us has her marked as the most dangerous person in the room.)

The Director of their little program gave the company men a speech she couldn’t hear through the glass even with her enhanced sensory system, but she’d watched enough security recordings -after drugging the on duty guards- to know that this whole thing was just a reminder that while they hadn’t ‘acquired’ any new agents that the squad they had was more than enough for any assignments the company’s interests required.

The fact that she was the one given most of those assignments told her exactly what the company wanted from this program, and the missions they gave the others were more for the Director’s personal projects. The ones she kept in the basement no one without a collapsible skeleton could get into undetected.

She stretched out her various joints waiting for this whole thing to get started, so that she could kill something and get back to her TV. The only thing keeping her from trying her luck at leaving this hellhole most days.

“We’ve got this.” Nicholas assured her, mistaking her need to move and kill for nerves in his innocence.

The main reason anyway.

Eventually a series of lights went off on the other side of the testing area as a metal door began to rise.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Slowly a mass of flesh and metal became visible as a trio of massive quadrupedal creatures came into view. Their muscles so large they were tearing their own skin open, and each limb ending in foot long claws that were almost as impressive as the massive tusks to either side of their fang filled maws.

Upon seeing them she couldn’t help but let out a whistle.

“That, uh, that is a lot bigger than when we caught it.” Nicholas chuckled nervously.

“Clearly the Company has made strides in domesticating Creeps for security purposes.” Jessica nodded, rationalizing away the monsters in front of them (like she always does.) “Regardless, between the four of us this will be an easy victory.”

“Yeah.” She yawned, as she hunched over her fingertips burning as her claws unsheathed themselves. “So how do you want to handle this Boss?”

“We’ll each need to demonstrate our… abilities.” Jess told them, sounding uncomfortable, before quickly saying. “Nicholas, you’re first.”

Nicholas saluted, with a cheery,“I won’t let you down boss.” before rushing forward. Not noticing the way that her and Jessica were both grimacing.

Nicholas ran forward to fight the massive Creep that charged forward to meet its aggressor.

As Nicholas met the beast fists raised to attack it, the beast promptly body slammed into him with a squelch as they hit the ground. The beast picked itself up and began savagely ripping into the fleshy crimson paste that had once been Nicholas Grimm.

“Welp… That was fast.” She’d honestly been expecting him to last longer than that. She glanced towards a facepalming Jessica. “So, you going to deal with this or you want me to?”

Jessica sighed, “I’ll handle it.” as she stepped forward, white bone growths already pushing through her cheeks.

As her leader neared the Creep, it looked up from its meal and growled at her, the sound causing the entire room to rumble from the sheer size of it.

When this didn’t stop her, the beast instead swung its claw at her hoping to rend her into pieces as easily as it had its first victim. Only, unlike Nick (Jessica ain’t a little bitch.)

Jessica caught the hand -which was the same size as her- with only one, before gripping it with her other and using what Vanessa was sure was impossible leverage to throw the massive beast into the side of the room.

Before Jessica could follow after her opponent however several panels dropped down from the ceiling before unleashing a number of dog sized floating drones into the air.

Knowing what was inevitably coming next, Jessica secured her footing before the drones opened fire on her their bullets ripping her uniform apart even as they did next to nothing to actually pierce the bone armor that had spread over all but the joints of her body.

After a steady minute of this, Jessica threw her arms out and launched several hyper-dense bone darts at the drones, piercing through their metal and causing them to explode. Something that Vanessa knew they were programmed to do for the sake of the show rather than from any such structural weakness.

With the first wave of drones defeated, a second wave of larger drones were unleashed.

Recognizing which drones these were due to the numbers on their sides, Vanessa rushed forward before kicking off the ground and leaping onto the back of the drone with the largest number, where she slammed the palm of her hand into the metal.

As her hand touched the metal she instinctively flexed the muscles inside of her arm, causing a short stinger similar to the one in her tail to shoot out of her forearm and through her lower palm driving a blade of bone and organic metal into the built in weak point that would have a very interesting chemical reaction with her stingers.

Now on a clock used the drone as a springboard to leap onto another drone and repeat her process with her other hand, leaving her first blade unsheathed for the camera despite instinct pushing her to retract it.

With two drones down she proceeded to repeat this process with the rest of the drones before landing in a crouch next to Jessica just as the drones began to visibly dissolve from where she’d stung them. Something her stingers couldn’t actually pull off without a lot more time.

As the drones began to explosively crash into the ground she stood up and flipped her hair in a way that she’d seen several action actresses do on her shows.

From the otherside of the testing area the Creep that had been subtly corralled via shocks through the metal clinging to its flesh began to near them as the shocks stopped, leaving it trembling with rage as it roared into the air.

Rather than dealing with it themselves, she and Jessica glanced towards Cyn who during their little show had managed to limp from her starting point to the center of the testing area where she raised a hand towards the Creep Behemoth.

Slowly the physically crooked girl’s eye began to glow with a dangerous shade of orange, almost like the dying light of a setting sun. All the while her head slowly tilted to the side as she quit fighting against the natural crick in her neck and the Creep began to spasm in place before-

*Pop*

Blood rained all around them, bits of flesh skidding on the ground.

Cyn began to collapse and Vanessa lashed out with her tail, using it to subtly hold the girl up before she could kill whatever presence she’d built in the company men’s mind.

If the cameras were allowed to focus on them they would easily see what she was doing, luckily there was the perfect distraction not even three seconds later as a skeleton suddenly sat up from the ground.

Black electricity sparked across the corpse as patches of crimson muscle began to grow across it, bits and pieces of the blood around them floating through the air before rejoining the corpse as it rewound time and undid all damage done to it. And as the last of the pale skin clothed the corpse and a mop of black hair grew out of the head a pair of silver eyes blinked open with freshly grown lids.

“How’d I do?” A fully healed Nick asked, completely unbothered by the horrifically gruesome process that had brought him back to life.

Given how she watched one of the men in suits vomit at a process that everyone in their little facility had seen a dozen times over, she guessed, “Eh, you passed.”

“Yay!” Nick cheered, raising his arms into the air and completely unaware of the bit of the blood still sticking to the teeth of his smile.