A/N: Been a while, huh? Do give the story your power stones and show it some love for once. Maybe it could motivate some extra chapters out of me.
…
"Gaia?" Susan asked with a slight frown on her face.
"We are still a budding organization, but our core purpose is to bring vulnerable Earths under our protection. The ones that don't have any defences against alien invasions and don't have a lot of superpowered individuals to fight for their continued survival. This planet, Earth-121698B, is our current acquisition target."
"So you are going to take over my planet?" She said, her frown deepening and turning slightly hostile.
"Nothing like that, Miss Storm. Everything stays the same. Your governing system stays the same, your laws all stay the same, you simply join under the protective umbrella of a federation that will keep this planet from being acquired by a more direct entity. The benefits of joining include the cessation of all wars and the surrender of all nuclear armaments. This has already happened, just hasn't been made public yet."
"So why are you here?" She asked.
"You are the reason I'm here," he said. "You are special, Miss Storm."
"I have invisibility powers, that's hardly anything that someone with authority over multiple planets would be concerned about."
Apex suddenly laughed out loud in her face. "It's a cute mentality that you have. But it also limits you significantly. What I want to do is teach you to harness your power to its fullest potential and help me protect my Gaia Federation. I will teach you about your true power, and I will also make sure that your little consequence of irradiating people can be dealt with."
"What are you talking about?"
"Do you mind lying back down? I need to attach these monitors back to your body," he said. "I'll explain everything in the meantime."
"Are you a doctor?" She asked.
"I'll tell you about myself in time," Apex said as Susan got back into the bed and slid toward the middle, where her one pillow was. Apex sat down beside her and grabbed the pulse-oximeter clip to put it over her finger. "Give me your hand."
"So? What's this about me irradiating people around me?"
"As you have already seen, you can make light perfectly bend around you without any distortion, which makes you invisible. This is done through a mutation that spontaneously occurs in your cells. From our scans, your body resonates with an as-of-yet unknown frequency in the environment and rapidly mutates your cells to make light bend around you. This transformation immediately releases between ten and twenty Gray of ionizing gamma radiation lasting between one and two seconds at a distance of 1 meter from you. For context, imagine yourself as a one-kilogram block of Cobalt-60. If you transform while someone's holding your hand, their skin will start melting after being exposed to tens of thousands of Sieverts of radiation."
"So when I tried to leave…" Susan said.
"Yeah… I know this seems like a prison, but that's only temporary. In my lesson plans to teach you how to use your powers, there is a section to teach you to contain this radiation. A month tops, and you will be a free woman. You have my word."
"Thanks."
"Do you mind sitting up? I need to attach these to your back," he said.
She nodded and sat up, pulling her hair forward. "So what about you?" She asked. "Why aren't you wearing a suit? Not worried about being affected by radiation?"
"Miss Storm—"
"Call me Susan. I don't like so many formalities."
"Susan," he corrected himself. "The stability of my cells is on a level that radiation cannot affect me. I could have walked into Chernobyl on the day of the disaster and stayed there for a year without ever being affected."
"That's not possible," she said with a frown.
"For a human, maybe. But I'm not a human. My species is the peak of all biological life. Concepts like ageing, disease…they don't apply to us."
"You're an alien?"
"Yeah."
"You're an alien…" She did a double-take. "An alien is in control of my planet."
"Yeah, well, there's a little caveat to being the peak biological race in the universe. We are symbiotic creatures. While we can survive without a host, we need to form a symbiotic relationship with a host if we want to show our full capabilities. I currently have five hosts. All of them are humans and on different planets, helping me slowly expand Gaia's reach and bring more planets under our umbrella."
"Wait, back up for a bit. What do you mean you have five hosts? How does that work?"
"While I appear as a human to you, my true form is that of an amorphous slime," he said. "See?" he raised his palm, and a black substance was released from his skin to form a slime. Seconds later, it disappeared back into his palm. "I can separate parts of my body while maintaining full control over both of them."
"So, like clones?"
"More like different limbs," he said. "I have just as much of an active control over one part of my body as I do over another, even if they are separated from each other. Just think of how you control your limbs independently. Similarly, I can control different parts of my body. It's all me. Always."
"Interesting," she said with morbid fascination. "Can you let me see?" She extended her arm in his direction.
"Sure," he agreed and flicked his finger toward her. Immediately, a black tendril extended out of his hand and touched her palm. It grew thicker and formed a deshaped mass that stayed on top of her hand before disconnecting from Alex.
She looked at it with a shine in her eyes and poked her finger at the slime. "Do you feel anything?"
"Quite a few things, actually, you're poking a particularly sensitive spot." Susan's eyes widened as she froze with her finger still jabbing the slime.
"I am…" She said before awkwardly pulling her finger backward from the slime.
"Kidding," Apex laughed. "Your awkwardly embarrassed face is cute. The cells that make up my body are uniform and capable of all the same functions."
"Heh…" She snorted before squeezing the slime in her palm. "So, how do you transform? Like take the form of a human."
"Mimicry. As long as I know enough about the substance or entity, I can turn myself into it," he said, and the ball that Susan was playing with morphed around her hand and formed into a glove.
"Fascinating… I don't feel the presence of a glove at all. It's as if this is my skin." She examined her gloved hand, using her other hand to get a touch and feel of it. "Mind if I turn invisible?"
"You want to see if I can mimic your mutated cells?" He said with a knowing look. "Go for it."
"You can?!" She widened her eyes, immediately turning invisible while focusing on her palm. The hospital gown was left floating in the air, the same with the monitors that were attached to her body, but the glove had disappeared along with her. "This is crazy." She said as she became visible. "How are you doing this?"
"I told you, right? Mimicry. I don't need to understand the complete properties behind something to mimic it, merely its atomic structure and composition. Your mutated cells are complicated, undoubtedly so, but that doesn't prevent me from copying them. Plus, I also have my version of an invisibility ability. But mine's camouflage-based."
"Spontaneously changing color based on the environmental factors?"
"Yes," he nodded. "Unlike mine, which still has a possibility of being seen through by the particularly observant, yours is foolproof."
"It's just invisibility."
"It's far more than that. If that were all, your eyes would have to be visible when you turned invisible. They didn't, yet you didn't go blind." his words made her ponder. "Believe me, there is more to your powers."
"Fine, I'll believe you," she said. "So, why are you here? This…" She raised her gloved hand. "…is cool and all. But you can't just be here to let me play around with a slime. Why am I not dealing with the guys who run this facility? Why is the alleged leader of a federation of multiple planets talking to me? Even if I do have some special power that I don't know about. What does that have to do with this?"
"I'm going to give you the same answer that I gave you before. You are a talent, and I want to invest in you. Ideally, I want you to be my host."
"What? Why?"
"You will have enough time to think over it, no need to worry about being pressured. We will be in close contact for the next month or so. You can gauge me, see if you are interested, and give me your answer then. Also, considering your unique situation, I will also be serving as your nurse."
"Wait, wait, wait. I would prefer a female nurse. I don't mind if she has to use a hazmat suit."
"You don't have to be embarrassed," he said. "A human can't be available to you twenty-four seven. I, on the other hand, can answer your call instantly, no matter the time. This is just one of my bodies, after all. Plus, your nurse would be sharing every single detail with me anyway. We'll have to document everything."
"I would really prefer a female nurse, Apex," she insisted.
"How about this, I'll add Alice to the line, but her availability is going to be a bit dicey. She can be on call for most ten hours a day. You can use this remote to contact her."
"Thank you," she nodded with an appreciative smile that soon turned into a sly one. "So… could you get me something to eat, Nurse Apex? I'm feeling famished. Oh, and where's the restroom?"
"You need to go now?" he asked her.
"Kinda."
"Forget it, you can just get rid of the electrodes and other stuff. I'll come up with a better solution once I come back with your food. As for the restroom…" He walked to the wall opposite the bed and pressed his palm on one of the tiles at waist level. "It requires a biometric scanner and is already keyed to you. Have fun, I'll be off getting you your food. Any preferences?"
"I'm craving Chinese… Preferably takeout fast food. Nothing fancy."
"You have a lot of demands, Susan," Apex said.
"Can you blame me? I'm going to be stuck in a white room for the next month, minimum. If I have the choice, I don't want to eat hospital food. Though, if it's too much of a bother…I'll understand." The sad, lost puppy look that she gave him clarified that she would definitely not understand.
"I'll get you Chinese. Don't try to put those electrodes back on. I have a better solution for them now that you are awake."
"Do we still need so many things? I'm already awake."
"Documenting all inconsistencies in your vitals is important," he said. "There is a chance that something in the air reacts with your powers, or maybe something you eat, or maybe your emotional state. I want us to maintain that information so that I can help you control your powers better."
"I got it."
***
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