[color=Magenta][b]Jemma[/b][/color] hadn’t really expected a lot out of the day. After all, getting kidnapped within hours of reuniting with people that were family really left her… Unsure of how to approach the world. She had wanted to hope that the furry-legged woman who approached her was [i]normal[/i]. That’s all. Just a little hope!

Having Jane Doe crackle and snap her shape into a distinctly monstrous recreation of her own already [i]unique[/i] physiology was not anywhere on the list of things expected today. It wasn’t surprising, per se, just unexpected. And deeply irritating.

The instincts in Jemma’s psyche hissed, writhing in her thoughts like worms on a salt pile. “[color=Red][i]It threatens! Subjugate— Oh— Is that a f—[/i][/color]”
Jemma screeched, letting the whirling bloom of [[color=Red]Indignation-[/color][color=yellow]Confusion[/color]] run wild in her chest. “[color=Magenta]Is that a FUCKING BEAR?![/color]”

Ink pulsed in her core as her voice ripped into the air, stretching fractal veins of pitch running along her flesh with each beat of her heart. Her form shifted, quieter perhaps than Jane’s, but no less rapid. Hair became bristled fur, layered throughout with barbs to hook into skin and fur, and coated with an anticoagulant venom. Another pair of limbs rose from her torso as it extended, ending in three-toed claws in the shape of daggers. Her first pair of arms slid behind this new pair and resolved into legs that were almost tiger-like in shape.

Jane paused for a second, her steps slowing to a halt, head tilted to the side as the other shapechanger became battle-ready. [color=FFDEAD]“You threw off that human suit quickly enough; perhaps there is hope for you yet.”[/color]

Jemma’s hind legs followed suit, taking on that tiger-like shape, before the whole of her form began to swell in size. Five feet and seven inches in height became seven feet, which then became nine at the shoulder. Scales erupted over her body, growing into thick scutes on her extremities and along her spine, neck, and back. Those same scutes, vaguely turtle-like, began growing fur in the spaces between, which would break off like a tarantula’s. The difference was the agonizingly potent neurotoxic venom they would secrete when lodged.

A tail whipped out behind her, stretching out from her spine and growing in length until it was longer than her body. Once it was her body length, and then half of that again, the growing stopped. The latter quarter of the tail ended in an odd, blade-like length of bone and enamel. It too was coated in scales, scutes, and quill-fur, and had an oddly eel-y quality. All together, she had become some fifteen feet in length.

Her skull changed last, lengthening and broadening until she bore a snout that resembled something like the offspring of a stork, a snapping turtle, and a shark. She had a beak, one that was lined with triangular protrusions and backed by additional triangular fangs. There was no tongue, only an adjustable tube that sat near the back of the mouth, like a snake. The ridges of her head were heavily armored, and so were the sides of her neck. With a pulse of pitch, a pair of horns rose from the sides of her head, seeming to curl down and protect her jaws like a helmet, before jutting forward.

Lastly, Jemma’s eyes shifted, ink whorling into the sockets as the changes finished. She had four small yet powerful optical organs, that were beady little things. Two settled where one would expect them to rest on a turtle's face, while the others took shape on her second pair of shoulders.

Muscles flexed and tendons groaned as the ink writhed away, leaving the changes for all to see. Her eyes locked on Jane, on the waves and ripples the other shapeshifter left in that otherworldly vision, just long enough to mark her position. The special agent sat eerily still as she met Jemma’s gaze, the sort of stillness that did not normally exist in nature, no heartbeat, no breath, just horizontally slitted eyes watching and assessing. 

Then, Jemma— As the world began to slide back, so that her instincts could drive— turned and met the massive ursine, giving it an apoplectic [b]roar[/b] of challenge as she leapt upwards. Her landing zone of choice? Its spine, if she timed her pounce right. 
[color=Purple]J-3[/color] would rip the flesh apart.

The bear growled, low and guttural, instinct begging it to rear up so that it could meet its opponent. Jane’s will held stronger than any instinct, and instead the bear faltered and froze, as if it would fall over with the slightest provocation. As J-3 soared down, perfectly on target, the bear’s body spasmed, shoulders and ribcage breaking themselves open as sinew and bone met with her impact.

There was a beat of surprise from the shapeshifter, before viscera flew. Toxins were delivered through J-3's defensive hairs, and her claws sheared through flesh, causing rivulets of blood to pour, but despite the carnage, the bear’s bones continued to move. Gnashing jaws made of broken ribs clamped down on Jemma wherever they could, the end of its spine wrapping around two of her forelimbs like a constrictor. Then the bear started to claw its way to Northbridge, dragging the two of them forward. 

[color=FFDEAD]“What in Shieldtown is so important anyways?”[/color] Jane goaded from a short distance away, hooves keeping pace with the bear as it started to slow. [color=FFDEAD]“People who claim to be your friends? People who aren’t like you and could never even begin to realize what it’s like to be you. People who don’t share your hunger.”[/color] Her throat made several changes, and she probed further, [color=00BFFF]”People who don’t trust you to control it.”[/color] 

J-3 remained silent, one eye indignantly noting Jane as she avoided joining the melee. The hooved lady smiled earnestly in response, pearl-white teeth clashing with caramel-colored skin as her doe eyes looked the shapechanger up and down. The bear's movements started to falter, blood pouring from its mouth, ears, and nostrils as its body rapidly underwent neurotoxic failure. The trapped shapeshifter continued their silence, staring balefully at Jane while the not-a-bear’s body ceased to move. 

[color=FFDEAD]“Can you blame them?”[/color] Doe reached into her inner suit pocket and produced a cigarette case. She flicked it open and grabbed a cigarillo. [color=FFDEAD]“People like us? We’re [i]monsters.[/i]”[/color] Doe flicked the case closed and returned it to her pocket, [color=FFDEAD]“Ishkwaase.”[/color] 

The bearskin beast began to stir, as if Jane’s words alone granted it strength. Two extra forelimbs clawed their way out of its flesh, and despite J-3 pulverizing its lower half, the beast began to crawl again, leaving a bloody smear in its wake. Neurotoxins flowed through its blood, bright red arterial sprays pumping blood into the dirt as it began to pick up speed, flesh scraping onto the ground as it moved. 

[color=purple][i]It assumes. Speaks too much. No creed. No geas. Seems… Impulsive... Is Leashed? Irrelevant. … Seeks emotional instability. Not good enough. ‘Mother’ better.[/i][/color] J-3 thought, the embers of hate in their gut beginning to churn. A thought sparked in their mind, and rather abruptly, the turtle-tiger-shark shape they wore [i]exploded[/i] with ink. Veins of pitch raced across the myriad bones holding them in place.

The special agent let out a low whistle of appreciation as she lit her cigarillo with a match and took a drag.

There was then a, perhaps unexpected, ‘ssssLSH!’ sound. The noise was akin to water pressing through a faucet: weak and soft at first before sunderingly loud. Calcium-phosphate and collagen, blood and plasma, even the provided enamel from the teeth that had latched onto her scutes; biological material rushed away from the not-a-bear and into her. The veins of ink pulsed twice, even as the bones of the puppet-monster seemed to fill in whatever J-3 stole.

That was fine; there was enough material for conversion. The ink receded as quickly as it came, before J-3 rammed their bladed tail and what available claws they had into the ground.

Jane wrinkled her nose, [color=FFDEAD]“You can’t eat bear meat raw like that, it’s too gamey! Not to mention thousands of years old. That is [i]so[/i] gross.”[/color] She continued to feed flesh from her reservoir to the bear, carefully assessing how fast it was being consumed.

In that other vision, where [emotions] and [MANA] were more real than instincts and ephemera, a ring of concentric circles bloomed into existence at J-3’s feet. There were five circles in all, with writhing script fluttering along the exterior edges of each circle. The edges of the largest circle were only barely [i]behind[/i] Jane’s hooves. With a snarling roar, J-3 physically [i]twisted[/i] their upper torso, uncaring of the physiological damage wrought by yanking her shoulders, neck, and arms out of the grip of the not-a-bear.

Salty black water erupted into existence below them and the not-a-bear, rising up like a spontaneous geyser. Earth ripped, pulling itself up in chunks and flinging J-3, the not-a-bear, and Jane up into the air, tossing them away from each other. 

As she was lifted off the ground, Jane hurriedly adjusted the proportions of her mouth and used her tongue to pull her cigarillo into it. As she soared through the air, she contemplated the morning sky, how the plates overhead couldn’t quite blot out the rising sun, and how she would rather have been anywhere but where she currently was. Landing on her hooves, suit soaked, hair coated in saltwater, mud on her boots, she spat the cigarillo back out and readjusted her mouth. The apakozigan mixture had remained lit, so she inhaled again, grabbing it out of her mouth with her left hand to admire the ember. [color=FFDEAD]“Small miracles, right?”[/color]

The last of the water fell to the ground, dousing the end of the special agent’s rolled tobacco medley. For a moment, she was too stunned to move, then she crushed the cigarillo with her hand. [color=FFDEAD]“Oh, ha-fucking-ha. That was my last smoke, and the guy who mixes my tobacco is out of town for the rest of the fucking week. I’m not going to be able to-”[/color] Crossing her arms, one of Jane’s hooves started to tap unrelentingly against the ground, something that should have been impossible with ungulate legs. [color=FFDEAD]“Mother is going to…”[/color] She glared at J-3, murder in her doe eyes, then turned to her bear companion; an explosion of emotions bubbling over into cold, ruthless logic. [color=FFDEAD]“Fine, we do this the [b]hard[/b] way.”[/color] 

The bearskin’s flesh finished being pulled over its bones, the fractured skeletal system snapping back into place, bones knitted together with fresh marrow. It stood up on its hind legs, just over twelve feet tall, and began to shrink, rapidly losing fur in the process. In just a few seconds, it resembled Jane exactly, except it was a man with impressive antlers, and completely naked. The deer and doe stood stock still for a few moments, left and right index fingers pointed toward the sky. 

Jane’s furrowed brow relaxed as she exhaled, then took a deep breath, [color=FFDEAD]“Ambe!”[/color] The male let out an angry bellowing noise, starting low and then transitioning into a high-pitched shriek. The moment it opened its mouth, Doe sprinted forward, wings reminiscent of a mantid opening on her back, increasing lift and speed as she once again threw herself into a flip over J-3’s head. 

At the apex of her jump, her left arm exploded into eight distinct tentacles, J-3 launched themselves upwards, maw open wide to snap shut around the woman’s torso. Then each one of Jane’s tentacles dove into the ground around her target, creating an octagonal prism. Every tentacle sprouted another eight tentacles, crisscrossing the others, before suddenly constricting towards J-3. 

One trunk-tentacle whipped around J-3’s throat, wrenching their head to the side as it sprouted its branches. Their snapping jaws closed around empty air. Hate [color=Red][i]bloomed[/i][/color] in their heart, especially when that [i][color=Purple]Fucking. Deer.[/color][/i] Made its own move.

The deer version of Jane sprinted forward, spit flying from its mouth as it continued to bellow at an ever-increasing pitch. It collided with the constricting tentacles, tearing them from Jane’s arm as it leaped into the air, membranous wings unfolding from its back as it soared into Northbridge proper. 

Jane landed, raising her now missing arm to the sky, envisioning herself still holding her finger pointed toward the sky. Several pigeons landed on her shoulders, the rest not far behind. 
[hr]
Glass shattered throughout Northbridge, an ultrasound shriek emanating from the biomass speeding through the air on dozens of pairs of jittering dragonfly wings. It crashed into Cortex, smashing unceremoniously through the roof, upper level, and landing on the base floor, turning a literal toad of a man into paste as it did. The bellowing lowered to levels audible to human ears, shattering every glass in the room, then died off altogether. Several patrons seemed unfazed by the biological monstrosity, but it drew confused stares from the rest. 

A brightly-feathered bartender wondered idly if it had something to do with Kiran being here, and if that made it one of his pets. There was something that itched at the back of his mind about Kiran’s best pets, but he couldn’t quite place it. Pigeons flew in after the beast, no doubt looking to make homes in the rafters. He sighed, at this rate, [i]he[/i] would be the one climbing up there to deal with the pests.

The writhing tentacles relaxed, extricating themselves from the mass, before losing suckers and growing scales, teeth, and fangs. The newly formed snakes dispersed into the bar, turning on its patrons, leaving only the male Doe standing next to J-3 as they rose, all while hissing and seething furiously; their form becoming more unnatural and yet taller. Their tail thrashed, slamming against Doe and throwing him into the nearest wall. Their head rippled with ink, only became more like an action movie “velociraptor” while a pair of sharpened bone-blade crests rose from the tip of the snout.

Ink whirled over the body of J-3, before their changes settled. Two arms, two legs, hardened plates of calcified enamel as body-armor— not terribly dissimilar to a modernized set of S.W.A.T. armor in a way— and six digits on each limb with wicked sickle claws. Only two eyes, though the pupils were five pointed stars in seas of purple-orange.

A furious shrieking roar sundered the quiet of the room, following on the heels of the male Doe’s screeching.