DN-006-The Incident

I just got into work to find that the glimmer caps had an adverse reaction to the stellarflora in the next environment over… The gasses that were being emitted all night are shrinking things in the environment… Anything living that has reactive properties… Small.

Um… It shrank Boss. He’s tiny now. He might be the size of one tiny glimmer cap.. I’m screwed and probably going to get fired.

I need to figure out how to counteract this immediately, before he banishes me to a dead galaxy… As he looked me cold dead in the eyes, I got a chill down my spine. I gestured toward my lab and we both nodded back and forth to each other. Sharing a sense of awkward urgency.

I looked at the environment that we sent up, and the specimens had grown wildly in just one night with dramatically different size glimmer caps that lit up the whole room with the light emitted from their radiant glow. But since there were a ton and now different mutations, I should be able to find one that might have the right xenodex to get Boss back to full size.. Maybe… Hopefully.. Pray for me.

After going through all of the glimmer caps, I found 5-10 glimmer caps that I think *might* work. Hopefully. So I approached Boss about my situation, and he gave me this unique look that was a blend of i’m going to kill you and you better get this right…

Yeah, so I figured it would be best to just rip off this bandaid and start trying things out before the Boss changes his mind and just flat out fires me… Or worse. So here it goes…

Attempt 1

I gave the glimmer cap to Boss, it was the smallest one we had, so that he’d be able to consume it in a way proportional to his itty bitty size… Smol.

Immediately limb by limb, finger by finger by finger, and growing through to his tail, he blew up to the size of the ceiling in the conservatory. His head hit upon the glass sending cracks throughout. His teeth grew in a ferocious way ripping through like daggers into his new formed mouth that was the size of 10 of me. Spikes ran down his back like solidified flames… A dinosaur… I turned Boss into a dinosaur. Yeah.

Attempt 2

Before he ripped through the conservatory, like the vicious beast that I have turned him into, I quickly grabbed for the next glimmer cap. Hoping and praying that it would resolve the situation, I strapped it to a gord that was growing next to me. I threw it to his mouth and he shredded through it like tissue paper. As a low bellowing moan mixed with the high pitched screeches escaped from his vocal chords and echoed through the conservatory… I shrouded into the corner. Terrified. I covered my ears while keeping my eyes squinted but open to watch… Hoping… Holding my breath… I think he ate it.

Slowly, I could tell his shoulder blades started to wiggle, move, grow and before I knew it wings shot through that expanded all the way down his tail. His head morphed into a form that was bird-like, while his eyes began to glow almost as if he had the ability to burn through your soul by just looking at you.. Still in a state of extreme rage, feverish red streams of fire shot from his eyes incinerating anything in his glances. The conservatory filled with smoke as I gasped for air. As he let out another roar of rage, I grabbed for my bag. Shuffled for the next sample. My hands were shaking. My mind was as shuffled as the contents of my bag. The smoke made it hard to see, and hard to think. From through the clouds of smoke I saw that he was now a dragon. I hid behind the trees. I contemplated running but this was my fault. I was the reason this was happening. I had to figure this out. I bit my lip and held back tears as I jumped into the open to throw the next sample that was attached to a gord.

I missed. He looked my way, searing my arm with fire as I ran as fast as I could into the next safe space where I could collect my thoughts. I crouched to hide, but I knew he knew where I was. To hide was irrelevant at this point. I shuffled through my bag to find the next specimen as fast as I could. I felt the floor shake from the chaos. The heat from the fires surrounded me. The fire became my shield and for a moment I heard nothing. I found the next specimen. Attached it to a gord. Looked around. Saw him nowhere. I turned to my left and his face, his head, the size of my body, was inches away from me.

Without taking a breath, I held up the gord. My hands shaking uncontrollably while I tried to keep my composure the best way I knew how.

He took it and ran off.

Attempt 3

I looked through the flames of fire… I think it’s working this time…

His wings slowly retreated back into his spine. His spikes disappeared. His neck and torso thickened. He’s getting stronger, stouter and upright. His skin turned from a delicate iridescent scale to an almost rock-like thick texture. To be honest, I don’t know what this was that he just turned into.

The roar that came from the pit of his soul rumbled throughout the conservatory causing screws to fall out from the rafters. The rumbles louder than anything I’ve heard in my life. Everything was shaking and I was afraid the whole place was about to collapse.

Each stomp, closer… louder. He grabbed me and flung me up to the ceiling. My back cracked against the glass. I saw my feet dangling above the conservatory that looked so tiny now from where they were before. In my face he let out the strongest bellowing scream yet. Blowing my skin.. Hair.. whole self as if hit with a train of exhaustion. Everything went silent, even though I knew noise still existed. I could feel the vibrations, but my hearing was gone. My bag clenched between my side and the force of his hand. I was powerless but still I tried. I saw a shard of glass loosely dangling from the ceiling as oxygen was escaping.

I grabbed it and dug it into his hand. He let me go as I fell to the ground. Being caught branch by branch into the foliage and ash. It knocked the wind out of me. I closed my eyes and gasped and tried as hard as I could to wheeze in the smoky air.

Next to me, fell my bag. Everything was scattered. I grabbed what I could and started throwing the specimens one after another which enraged him more. He crouched down to let out an even louder scream. But I heard nothing. I only saw his jaw unhinge and felt the ground quake from the rumble. I threw the gord as hard as I could until it hit my target. The back of his throat.

Attempt 4

So, I really can’t explain through my scientific mind what happened next. The waves of rumbles softened to nothing. As debris began to rise from the ground into the air. Nothing was any longer confined to gravity.

His rock like exterior smoothed to a black glossy finish that then changed from black to an iridescent orange. His arms retracted to his sides as his fingers grew and fanned out in a web like fashion to become fins. As his legs lifted off the ground and transformed into the tail of beta, he was also no longer a prisoner to the ground but a child of the air, as if a fish swimming through the water. The silence was constant but the energy had shifted. I saw my specimens begin to float to the broken ceiling and ran to them. They floated higher than I could reach. I jumped to grab them, but I didn’t fall back to the ground. I began to climb up this invisible flight of stairs to collect them back as I saw Boss swimming effortlessly and with the poise of an angel. After retrieving the specimens, I moved through the air as if I was swimming through the glimmering floating ashes or burnt foliage that refracted the sun.

I tossed my last specimen into the air as it slowly lofted up to Boss’ wide open mouth. He bobbed it down as if there were added frames to time. Slowly, the gravity returned to the conservatory. Letting us down gracefully. Boss, as a fish, descended down to the ground. His fish-like body shrank and the orange of his scales morphed to a pale white granular textured skin. I think this is it. I slowly see his face form from what were the remnants of fish parts and I begin to see him again. Slowly through the constant morphations until his likeness was as if nothing had ever happened.

The look on his face said more than words. His eyes pierced into my soul and I knew It was time. Time for me to go and maybe just do my own thing for a little while. I think we were all ok with that.

“Oh.. ahem.” Boss said as I was pushing the door open through the rubble. “Tomorrow… We’ll be meeting about Zephyria. There are a number of things we will need to address. Be sure to be on time. And ah hem.. Yeah.. Be there on time.”

“You gotcha! ” I pointed both my fingers out like guns and awkwardly winked back to him. I think I even clicked my mouth. Where did that even come from? Oh my god. I looked down and quickly left and didn’t look back.