My Super-powered Diary Chapter 2 Captives By Amethyst When Maddock Ainsley gets involved in a rescue operation with his unit things go horribly wrong and his life is forever changed. Can the newly minted Merida cope with being a girl and a teenage super hero?

Tasha glared at me and stepped forward to put her arms on the mermaid’s shoulders shaking her gently. “Hey, calm down, everything’s okay. I’m Tasha and this is… well… this is some naked girl I just met and can barely understand who apparently doesn’t have a name.”

I was vaguely aware of being moved, someone was carrying me. I was so very tired though and just trying to open my eyes seemed to take more energy than I had. “What happened? Why am I being carried? Did I get injured in the raid? Damn, whoever’s carrying me must be huge.” My memory was fuzzy and I felt strangely light, though my head and chest felt heavy. I was placed on something soft, maybe a bed from the sensations I was feeling along my naked skin. “Waitaminute… I’m naked!?”

I could feel the heat rise to my cheeks, okay probably not just my cheeks since I was embarrassed enough just thinking about it to probably have a full body blush going. I was about to open my eyes and look for something to cover up with when I heard someone speaking. “Is that all of them?” It was a deep male voice and he didn’t sound too impressed.

“Yeah, only five of them lived,” a woman’s voice responded. “The others all Activated, but their powers went out of control and killed them, and some of their roommates too. Some of the cells were pretty… messy.”

That voice was achingly familiar, like I’d heard it before. It took me several seconds to identify the speaker as Phantom. Then everything came back to me at once; the raid, the girls, the bomb, and the changes I’d gone through. Seeing as I had been carried and naked I had to assume that this wasn’t just the disturbing dream that I had been hoping it was. I was so ready to freak out, open my eyes and make a run for it right then, but my training took over. I firmly clamped down on those thoughts and controlled my breathing to make it appear that I was still asleep, not wanting to waste the chance to gain any Intel that might help me.

The man snorted in disgust. “Five out of twenty one girls. We lost over a dozen men in those raids, experienced in their powers and loyal to our cause. Five inexperienced little girls doesn’t make up for those losses.”

“The Zeta Bomb was designed to kill mutants by overloading their powers, you knew going in that it ran the same risks with non-Activated mutants,” another male voice commented snidely. “The radiation it gives off may not effect regular humans, but it excites the H Chromosomes, and sure that ended up Activating them, but less than thirty percent of Hypers are resistant enough to avoid explosive power overload. That’s why those idiots in Humanity Now didn’t use the damn thing, their tests said this was a risk. They only wanted to kill mutants and having a bunch of us completely lose control of our powers in public places would have risked too many human casualties for their liking. Shall I begin construction of a second Zeta Bomb for the group of boys Sir?”

The first man still sounded disgusted as he replied, “No, definitely not, destroy the blueprints and wipe all the data. We’ve lost enough on this venture already, for the boys we’ll try using stress stimulation to trigger them. What about the soldier you allowed to live Phantom, was there any sign of him?”

“No Sir, I believe that he met the same fate as most of the girls. Depending on the nature of the powers he developed it could have been very messy, left other telltale signs in the cellar, or left no trace at all. I believe it was the latter.” As the creepy teleporter finished answering I could feel my pulse quicken and I had to keep tight control over my breathing to not breathe a sigh of relief that they thought me dead. Not that it would change my current situation in any way.

“A shame,” the apparent leader replied, “we could have used a soldier. We’ll leave the girls in here for now so they can adjust until we can begin their education and assess their powers. Post a guard outside this room. Phantom, you and Jade will be responsible for educating them once they’re settled in. Mastermind, I want you to start with the education and stress stimulation of the boys immediately.”

I could hear the footsteps of the trio walking away and then a door closed in the distance and I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t like the sounds of the way he used the word ‘education’ at all. It sounded like ‘we’ girls were in for a healthy dose of brainwashing. I shuddered at the thought, both for being included as a girl and for the thought of brainwashing. I was about to risk opening my eyes to assess my situation when a female voice to my left said, “It’s okay, they’re gone, you can open your eyes now.”

I did just that, to see myself laying on a single bed covered with white sheets and pillow and a soft but sickeningly pink comforter. I cautiously sat up and remembering that I was still naked and now a girl I tried to hastily cover myself with my hands as I looked around. The room we were in was windowless, decorated largely in pinks and purples, possibly twenty feet square, and hosted three beds other than the one I was sitting on. On the bed beside my own was a black girl in a dirty blouse, jeans, and sneakers who appeared to be around sixteen or seventeen years old. She had a nice figure for her age, looked tall and athletic, and she was pretty with café au lait skin, deep brown eyes, and shoulder length black hair that seemed to rival my own for curliness.

The girl gave me a somewhat nervous smile before speaking again. “Hi I’m Tasha, so you heard them talking too right? It looks like we’re all going to be spending a lot of time together so I figure we should maybe get to know one another.”

“Aye, I was tryin’ tae get Intel, an’ I’m sure we’ll be spendin’ loads o’ quality time t’gether, ya know wot wi’ the brainwashin’ an’ all.” I frowned as I spoke and wondered, “What the fuck? My accent hasn’t been this bad since I was a kid, it’s like I can’t properly control my tongue anymore. I usually have some accent, but not like this.” I began to mentally curse in Gaelic before remembering that she had introduced herself and that I should probably do the same. I wasn’t really sure what to say to that though, so I just shrugged as I looked down at my unfamiliar body in disgust. “Call me whatever ya want. I’m no’ exactly who I used tae be, ma ole name does’na seem tae fit anymore.”

That was when we heard the very frightened female scream from behind the door on the opposite side of the room that Phantom and Co. had left from. Tasha and I both leapt to our feet, running toward the sound. I nearly fell on my face as I hit the floor and got tangled in my ankle-length hair, but I managed to recover and reached the door just as Tasha was opening it with reckless abandon. The opened door revealed a bathroom with an honest-to-goodness mermaid laying in the bathtub totally freaking out. She looked close to Tasha’s age, wearing only a tight and very wet black t-shirt, and she had bright pink shoulder-length hair with lavender streaks, pale violet eyes, a slim but well-toned body, and at her waist her slightly tanned skin gave way to a pink, coral, and lavender scaled fish tail that was hanging half out of the tub and splashing the water with every shriek. We both stopped short in the doorway and I muttered, “Well, ya dinnae see tha’ every day.”

Tasha glared at me and stepped forward to put her arms on the mermaid’s shoulders shaking her gently. “Hey, calm down, everything’s okay. I’m Tasha and this is… well… this is some naked girl I just met and can barely understand who apparently doesn’t have a name.”

“Well excuuuse me if’n all ma clothes were burnt tae ash when ma body changed! At least ya got sumthin’ tae wear Tasha, an’ I’ll bet ya kin recognize yuirself in a bloody mirror too! Some o’ us weren’t so lucky. I’m guessin’ she was one o’ the unlucky ones too.” I gave the mermaid a sympathetic look and turned to look at Tasha again, towering at least six inches over me, before crossing my arms over my chest and grumbling to myself. That just made me more aware of my new breasts though, so I quickly dropped my arms to my sides. “Stoooopid new body.”

Tasha at least had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry, you’re right... look, I know that this can’t be easy for either of you, but since you seem to understand what she’s going through, maybe you can help her deal with it. I have a feeling that I should just let you two talk alone for a bit, I’ll go check on those other two girls and try to wake them up.” She left the room leaving me alone with the mermaid.

I approached the side of the bathtub, uncertain what to do at first. The girl had stopped screaming, but now she was clutching the sides of the tub with white-knuckled hands and was having troubles breathing. “Anxiety attack,” I noted to myself before placing a hand gently on her own. “I want ya tae close yuir eyes an’ take deep slow breaths ‘kay? Think o’ sumthin’ relaxin’ like a warm summer day at the beach. Yuir layin’ in the sunshine an’ listenin’ tae the waves lappin’ at the shoor. There’s nothin’ tae worry ‘bout, I’m right ‘ere wi’ ya, an’ I’m a friend. I think we could both use a friend right now, aye?”

After several minutes of slowly reassuring her that everything was going to be okay she calmed down enough to actually talk to, though she looked like she may panic again or burst into tears at any given moment if I didn’t handle this just right. I slowly and carefully explained what had happened to us and wheedled little details out of her in as friendly a manner as I could. Her name was Vanessa, she was fifteen, she liked surfing, and she had only recently lost her family in a boating accident, so she hadn’t had any time to make friends at the orphanage that she’d been taken from yet.

Now came the hard part, for me anyway. I had to get her focused on someone else’s problems for a bit, instead of her own, so she would realize that she wasn’t alone and so her brain could process things while she was focused on something else. Lucky me, I was the prime candidate. That complicated things since I didn’t want to reveal that I’d been a 30 year old man before. Finally I took a deep breath and said, “Ma body changed too ‘Nessa, I used tae be… taller, ma hair was waaaay shorter, an’ I never ‘ad these afore.” I hefted my new breasts, giving them a dirty look before turning my attention back to Vanessa. “I dinnae think I look the same either, I… I’m a wee bit scared tae look in the mirror,” I admitted reluctantly as I looked down at the white floor tiles.

I could feel her hand wrapping around my own and squeezing it in support and friendship. “What’s your name? You never told me.”

For a moment I wasn’t sure how to reply. How could such an easy question be so hard to answer? I knew that I could have just made up a name on the spot and ran with it when I first had the chance with Tasha, but it just didn’t feel right taking that big step and moving on with my life. It was like I was somebody who had lost a limb and I was trying to stay in denial in hopes it would grow back, and in a sense that really was what I was doing. “I dinnae ken, the person I was is dead. I’m diff’ren’ now, no’ just on the outside either. I feel diff’ren’ inside too, an’ the new me feels right y’know, an’ tha’ scares the hell outta me. An’ now there’s this fadin’ emptiness where the ole me use’tae be.” As I spoke I could feel a tightness in my chest, growing with each word. Once I had finished speaking there were tears streaming down my face and I was sobbing like a little girl, which I feared, given what I had discovered so far, probably wasn’t that far from the truth.

I don’t know how long we stayed there holding and comforting one another, but it was just what we both needed right then. Usually being this close and intimate with someone as pretty as Vanessa would have stirred something within me sparking the hormonal reactions, but there was nothing now but sympathy and a need to soothe and be soothed. After a while, by some sort of mutual consensus that I’m not sure either of us was aware of, we pulled apart.

“Sooo, I guess I’m a mermaid now,” Vanessa said taking a deep breath to steel herself. Then, nervously, she asked, “I don’t look too terrible do I?”

“Nae, yuir beautiful ‘Nessa,” I reassured her.

“It’s too bad I don’t have legs, or I’d go with you to face that mirror,” the mermaid said with a sigh. That’s when, just for a brief instant, her tail seemed to shift a bit. Scales began to fade to a flesh tone and the shape changed ever so slightly. “Whoa, that felt… weird. I wonder if I can…” It took a long while, but Vanessa was able to figure out what she had nearly done by accident and shift her tail into a pair of normal-looking female legs, though her lower half was as naked as I was.

“Ya mus’ be a Shifter o’ some sort, or a’ least tha’ seems tae be part o’ yuir powers,” I offered, pointing out the obvious.

“Yeah, but it’s not easy holding this form, it keeps feeling like I’m going to bounce right back to having a tail. It may be a while before I’m able to do it for long periods of time. Maybe I can hold it long enough for us to face the mirror together and go out to meet the others you talked about though.”

The mirror was difficult to face. I looked around thirteen years old, and a lot like my sister did at that age; long copper ringlets framing a pale heart-shaped face with a faint splash of freckles, a cute button nose, huge bright blue-green eyes, slightly pouty lips set in a cupid’s bow, high cheekbones, and a small chin. If things in the bathroom were standard sized, I guessed my height to be about five foot two and my body was that of a girl just beginning to blossom; slightly wide hips, a slender waist, long legs, and my breasts were what Vanessa guessed to be a B-cup. I didn’t care what letter they went by, they felt way too large for something that I didn’t even have yesterday. Given that my sister was at least a double D now though, and had always been on the large side compared to her friends while growing up, the size wasn’t all that surprising given my current overall appearance.

I just stared at my reflection for several minutes, trying to equate the image with who I used to be. Before I was six foot five, muscular and manly with a buzzcut, and I couldn’t see any of my old self in the tiny and fragile-looking waif I saw before me now, even my tattoos were gone. “So, what’s the damage?” my new mermaid friend asked in concern, breaking me out of my trance.

I bit my trembling lip, trying to force back the tears I felt coming. “I… look like some o’ ma fam’ly, but I dinnae see any o’ the ole me. You?”

Vanessa wrapped me up in a tight hug, holding me for a moment before turning back to the mirror. “I look mostly like I used to, but I used to be a blonde. I like this look, but it’s not exactly low-key… maybe I can…” her hair shifted, slowly fading from pink and lavender to an ash blonde. She squealed in delight, but then her gaze in the mirror fell on the depressed, puffy and teary eyed redhead beside her and she hugged me again. “We’ll get through this together, okay? Let’s go meet the others and maybe we can come up with a name for you, since you don’t seem comfortable using your old one.”

By the time we had entered the ‘dorm’ area, Tasha had already managed to wake the occupants of the other two beds, a set of nearly identical Chinese twins in skirts and tops that had seen better days, who looked even younger than my current body. She was talking quietly to them when one of them looked up, saw us approaching, and elbowed the other one to get her attention. They both stared at me for a long uncomfortable time, squinted their eyes and I tried not to blush at the slightly creepy attention I was getting as I spoke to the older girl. “Sorry ‘bout wot I said in there Tasha, ya were only tryin’ tae help, an’ I should’nae blew up a’ ya like tha’. ‘Nessa an’ I worked through some things, but I thought I should apologize.”

Tasha turned to us and was about to say something when the twins squealed in unison “Merida!”

Vanessa had managed to hold her human form long enough to sit on my bed, but then she lost it, reverting back to a mermaid, at least she didn’t seem to need to be in water to breathe. I sat down beside her staring at the twins in confusion when she giggled and elbowed me. “It looks like you have your new name.” By that time the twins had sped across the room and were right in front of us, running their hands through my overly long copper tresses and taking in every detail of my face with intent fascination. I found that more than a little disturbing since they hardly spared more than a few glances to the real-life mermaid who was sitting beside me and changing her tail back into legs.

It turned out that the twins were named Mei and Shu, they would be turning twelve soon, and that I looked just like their ‘very favoritest Disney Princess’, well technically it was supposedly a tie between this Merida person and someone named Mulan. I had never really watched cartoons much, so I didn’t really have any idea who either of them were, but I supposedly looked just like her and she had a Scottish accent too. When they found out that I was between names they decided that I would have to be named Merida and that was that.

“But tha’ name is no’ even Scottish, I… I think it’s Latin,” I argued weakly.

“Does it really matter?” Tasha asked. “It might be easier to just accept it, they’re not going to let go of this, and we need to call you something.”

“She’s right, besides I think it kind of suits you,” Vanessa put in from beside me. Since we had sat down she had been shifting back and forth between mermaid and a blonde human, so I figured that she was trying to get a handle on her new ability. I wholeheartedly agreed with that since she would need to gain some control and stamina with the ability if we were going to escape this place.

“Pleeeeeease!” the twins said as one, giving me the pouty lips and puppy-dog eyes. The cuteness was difficult to resist, even more so since it was in stereo.

I did the only sensible thing, I gave in. “Dammit, fine then, I guess I’ll be usin’ the name Merida then, but let’s get this straight now; I’m no’ gonna be yuir personal Disney dress-up doll or nuthin’ like tha’, aye?”

The twins gave one another a look that told me I would probably end up giving in on the living doll thing eventually as well, at least as long as they were around to have a say in the matter. One look at their devious little smiles and I knew that I was doomed. It was Vanessa who jumped on that comment though. “Speaking of dress-up, I hate to point out the blatantly obvious but you and I need clothes Merida. You don’t have a stitch and I only have a soaked t-shirt that’s feeling a bit too tight.”

“There’s no’ much we kin dae about tha’ right now, ‘cept maybe wrap ourselves in blankets, but we need tae discuss our situation,” I stated flatly. “These people kidnapped us, and did somethin’ tae give us powers, an’ ya kin bet tha’ t’was no’ fer our sake. I ‘eard them talkin’, an’ they’re gonna be tryin’ tae turn us intae good li’l followers fer their cause. We can no’ start drinkin’ the cult kool-aid. We ‘ave to assume tha’ any food will be drugged an’ tha’ they’re watchin’ us a’ all times.”

“There aren’t any cameras in here,” Tasha said with a certainty that had me staring at her.

“Ya checked?” I asked, my estimation of her intelligence going up a notch.

The black girl nodded seriously. “Yeah, I took a good look before waking Mei and Shu, but I just know it too. I have this really strong sense that there are no cameras in here, not even hidden ones. It’s like how I knew when those assholes were gone earlier, and that you were awake but listening to them as well. I can’t really explain it, it’s just… I know. It could be that they don’t think they need them, they’re probably underestimating us because we’re kids.”

“Maybe she’s psychic,” Vanessa suggested before shaking her head in disbelief. “You know I’d never have considered that a realistic possibility until today. Waking up as a mythical creature sure does change a girl’s perspective.”

“I hope yuir right, tha’ could give us an early warnin’ of their comin’s and goin’s an’ such. Tha’ also means we can try tae figure out wha’ abilities we may all ‘ave an’ plan our escape.” With that in mind we began planning.