The Darkness of the Mind (Third Form Transformation Quest)

The shadows of the forest coalesced around a near human form, obscuring the face of the person approaching the young Changeling warrior. He tried to look more carefully, but all he could see was the outline of the being’s body. A part of him screamed at him to get out of the woods, to avoid running into that creature at all costs. The other half of him was curious, and wanted to see exactly what it was, regardless of the peril involved. As soon as his curiosity on what the creature was could be sated, he’d walk away no problem.

The creature walked out slightly into the light. The light of the forest reflected off of the strange being’s eyes. They were blue, the same ice blue as Sairai’s own. As the beast stepped into a small sliver of light from the moon, Sairai could make out slightly more of the creature, enough to know that he wanted nothing to do with it.

Spines erupted from the creature’s back, a frightening sight enough, only bolstered by the thing’s elongated head covered in similar spines. As suddenly as it came into the light, it was back in darkness, and Sairai could make out no more of the general appearance. He turned around and flew off, his eyes set on the distant horizon.

I must escape! his instincts screamed at him. He looked down at the clouds below as he accelerated into his powered flight. He then noticed something strange. There was a shadow on the cloud below him, right next to his own. He panicked and turned on his back to see what would possibly be above him. What he saw caused his heart to skip a beat.

The creature from before had followed him, but there was something else.

“You can’t escape me, Sairai,” the thing said, running a dark blue tongue over its teeth. It lowered itself until the two were face to face, eye to eye. As the young Changeling stared into the eyes of the being before him, he came to a startling realization.

“Correct… You can’t escape me because you are me,” the other Sairai said, chuckling almost maniacally. “One day soon, you will become me. You’ll not only look like a monster, but you’ll also be a monster on the inside as well.”

The clouds below turned dark as lightning began to dance across their faces. The monster Sairai pushed himself away from the smaller version of himself and launched a barrage of Death Beams at the young man, all of which pierced right through his chest. Sairai screamed in agony as his body was pierced repeatedly, and all the while an incessant laughing on the part of his other self filled his ears.

He turned as he fell, so he wouldn’t have to see the thing that promised him of days to come. As he looked down at the black clouds below, he wished he could turn back around at the possibility of what could be instead of what was about to happen. A pair of smoke-like hands erupted from the cloud below and engulfed him in darkness.

A strange voice entered his mind, You will become the Changeling your were always meant to be. The monster inside you begs to be released, and I have the key. Whether you want to or not…

The world suddenly faded to black.

WC: 566

Sairai awoke with a cold sweat. His tail hung limply off his bed, and his sheets were damp. “What… what the hell was that dream?” he asked to the shadow, knowing no one would hear him. His eyes locked onto the ceiling, afraid to look around the room for fear of what he might find waiting for him in the shadows. Perhaps that sociopath he had fought before, or something much more gruesome. He tried to recall the voice he had heard in his dream. It was so familiar. He knew that he had heard it before, more than once, probably during his childhood.

Sighing, he sat up in the bed and allowed the cleansing light of the nearly full moon to filter in through the windows. He shivered slightly from the thought that maybe there was something inside him much more dangerous than what he had believed up until now. A small frown appeared on his lips as he brought his knees up to his chest. “This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to fight something that I can’t see?”

As soon as the question exited his mouth, a small blue crystal on a bit of string fell out from under his pillow, as if answering his question. “The Astral Crystal? Strange, I bought it because it claimed to link people together over the ethereal plane of reality called the astral plane, but I haven’t had the chance to really test it out yet.” He pondered for a moment, fingers on his chin, then shrugged.

“Nothing to lose by giving it a try.”

He looked at the crystal, wondering for a moment how he was supposed to activate it when the stone began to shine with a gentle, pulsing light. “So it’s like those torches at the lookout.” He looked into the light and began to feel lightheaded. He wanted to pull away, but he forced himself to continue looking into the cerulean depths, and suddenly felt as though he had been dropped into a freezing ocean.

He could see swirling blue lights all around him as he continued to fall into the blue depths of the crystal, until he landed on his feet on an alien world. His knelt as he made the landing, absorbing the impact with his legs. He looked up toward the sky and saw the same black clouds that had surrounded him in his dreams.

“I was wonder what was taking you so long, my child,” a dark, feminine voice floated through the air. Sairai turned and could see nothing but darkness.

“You still don’t know who it is, do you? The one who’s been manipulating you, pushing you toward being the Changeling you were supposed to be at your birth…”

The being stepped forward from the shadows and bowed, while still hiding her face. “It was me,” she said as she brought her head up to look at the young man with her own piercing, violet eyes, “your dear old grandmother.” A short Changeling with straight horns, red lips, and a slight hunch to her back stood there in the astral realm, staring down her much younger counter part.

“I told you that you would be the Changeling you were always meant to, and that you would follow the right path. The path that you are currently taking is not the right one. I will steer you on the right path, forcibly if I must. You will become everything that your brother can’t be. We know you have a power hidden within you that surpasses that of anyone else in the family. You must return to Frieza Seventy-Nine and finish your training.”

Sairai merely shook his head at her. “You can’t make me, grandmother dearest.”

“Oh, but I can. Who do you think you inherited your psychic gifts from? I will force you to obey if I have to, but a weapon is only half as effective when acting against its will. I will make you into the perfect weapon, and we will offer you to Lord Frieza. Then, we will be in his favor.”

Sairai raised a brow momentarily. “And how exactly do you intend to do that?”

The old woman smiled and said, “I’m glad you asked.”

From around her body, a group of black hands seemed to sprout from the ground and rushed toward the younger Changeling. He prepared to fight them off, but they seeped into his body instead of slamming against him or trying to grab him. He collapsed to his knees as he was overtaken by an immense pain.

Laughing, the old woman began to explain, “This spell will awaken you to your next level of power, our race’s second transformation and third form. It will also take your mind and mold it into the tyrant that you were always meant to be, like your brother Hale, only much, much stronger.”

Sairai’s hands flew to his head and he screamed as he gripped it. A screeching sound filled his mind and he tried to hold it off. Unfortunately, he could already feel himself growing into his second form. However, his transformation didn’t stop there. His voice went hoarse from the screaming as a newfound pain filled his body as it was forced to transform beyond the level he had been at before.

“N-no. I don’t want to transform. Not like this…”

WC: 894
TWC: 1,460

Sairai was doubled over in pain, screaming his throat raw. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth in a vain attempt to block out the pain. His grandmother stood off to the side, smiling wickedly as his form continued to grow. His face pinched in, his nose disappearing and his mouth growing large, revealing large white teeth. His head began to elongate, and his horns disappeared from his head, instead being replaced by numerous small spines sticking off either side of his skull.

The laughter coming from his grandmother wasn’t helping the matter much either. It was a spine-tingling sound, like that of metal scraping against metal. “Ah! Stop it!” he screamed as he turned on the old woman with a look of murder in his eyes. “Stop laughing at my pain!” The shell around his body began to expand, and a set of spines grew off of his back, large ones that could easily impale somebody he backed into inadvertently. His shoulder carapace grew longer and flung upward, sticking out a good two feet apiece. His back began to hunch over as his tail grew out longer and swished back and forth violently.

He collapsed to his knees from the pain and his mind completely blanked. “Alright, boys, he should be docile enough to go through the final ritual. We’ll force to evolve even further, and then he’ll be our perfect weapon, and he will only take orders from us.”

The form of a large creature standing over her brought her to a pause. “Wha…?” she asked as a single hand smashed into her back and sent her flying through the air, only to be smashed up against a boulder.

“Heh… heh… heheheheheheheh… hahahahahahaha!” a voice rung out through the barren wasteland. The old Changeling woman turned and beheld the beast that had smashed through her considerably strong defenses so easily.

“S-Sairai?!” she asked, shocked. Bright, glowing blue eyes and a wicked smile greeted her. The Changeling monster she had hoped to create and control had been created, but its power was far beyond her ability to control.

“Heheheh…” the beast said as it charged forward, a index and middle finger of each hand extended toward her. He unleashed a torrent of Death Beams at the woman, chuckling under his breath as his eyes narrowed with lethal intent. His mind was blank. His only concern now was with surviving and keeping himself happy, and for some reason he couldn’t articulate, torturing this old woman made him immensely happy. The beams pierced the woman’s body, crippling her, but not killing her.

The creature that was once Sairai advanced on the old woman, a malevolent smile on his lips, pupils shrunken to mere pinpoints. “Sairai, you can’t kill me! I’m your grandmother!”

“Kill? Kill kill kill kill kill kill!” the creature repeated, catching on to that single word for some reason. His grandmother paled visibly as she backed away from the monster she had created. “Heheh… Kill…”

The woman crawled on her hands and knees to escape the monster before Sairai headed her off, with a single finger pointed at her head. As his ki was channeled through his arm and into his finger, it began to take on a blackish blue glow. As the creature watched his ki, he vaguely recalled having more of a blue-white aura. Then, suddenly, a super nova of memories overcame him, bringing him to his knees with tears in his eyes.

Sairai opened his eyes slowly, which had taken on their normal shape. He looked down at the woman before him and said, “Don’t think you’re going to get away with trying to turn me into a monster, grandmother dearest. I’m still going to blast you out of this realm before I return home.”

The Changeling charged his ki and flew up into the air. He stretched his hand outward toward the sky and opened his chakras to full throttle. Energy began pouring into his arms from all sides and he held that single hand into the air.

“If you’re planning to use Death Ball, even at your strength it won’t kill me!”

“I’m not…”

“What?!”

Sairai smiled as the energy over his hand coalesced into a single point before growing to immense size, taking on the appearance of a white-blue sun, with all the cackling energy and fire flying off of it.

“This is the first time I’ve ever used this attack before. I think King Cold calls it Super Nova.”

“This isn’t possible! No one but the Royal Family has ever been known to possess that much latent power!”

Sairai chuckled and balanced himself. “Well, apparently I do.”

“You are the perfect weapon. You’d make a perfect tyrant. Come back to us, please!”

“Monster, tyrant… I am neither of these things. I am Sairai the Soft-Hearted, and I stand with Earth!” he yelled out toward the woman as he threw the large sphere of energy toward her. It moved with surprising speed through the air and finally crashed into her. She threw up her arms and pushed against it, hoping against hope that she’d somehow be able to hold it back.

When Sairai saw that there was a chance of her holding the attack off, he smirked and released a single slash with his Dairchiretsuzan, cracking the giant orb of energy like an egg. The explosion wiped out the entire area underneath him and even sent him flying backward a bit before he disappeared from the astral plane.

He awoke in his normal body and looked at himself. “I’m normal again…” He collapsed to his bed with a sigh as tears began to roll down his cheeks. Trusting family as a Changeling was for the foolish, he decided.

WC: 956
TWC: 2,416