You are a strange creature, capable of taking over other lifeforms to serve as your vessel. Your current host, Jack Winters, was unbeknownst to you a drug addict, and overdosed on speedball. To survive, you bonded with him, but this damaged you, leaving you separated from the bodysnatcher command structure. An individual by accident, you are hunted by the cyborg aliens, the forces guided by the illuminati called the Wise, and your own kin.

You slayed the Dragon, and though it almost killed both of you, you managed to kill the Hunter with Catherine's help. The cyborgs however are said to prepare their own attack.

Mutations:
-Perfect Predator
Noise-level sense, body better optimised for stealth, invisible to digital sensors and leaves no scent
-Monstrous Strength
Increased strength, speed, and leaping distance
-Armoured Juggernaut
Massive armour, capable of deflecting most attacks and weathering the rest.
-Master of Arms
Improved bodysnatcher weapons

Your known abilities are:
- reinforcing your muscle and bone tissue, making you several times stronger,faster and tougher
- growing weapons from your arms, limited to one on each arm in any combination:a hooked, double edged blade on your forearm, claws, a spike that springs out from your wrist underneath your palm or launchable bone spikes
- hardening your skin into thick,segmented bone plate armor resistant to heat and energy weapons, and growing a membrane under your skin, that contains fluid that hardens on impact
- absorbing ingested organic material, that you can use to increase muscle and bone density(animal tissue is the most effective)
- the ability to call forth your host's memories, skills and knowledge
- altering your appearance, includin skin\hair\eye colour, facial features, height, build, and gender, though the more elaborate the change is, the more time and effort it takes.
- producing almost any kind of drug,poison or acid in liquid form, including sedatives, that you can deliver via gasses, at high pressure from an opening that can be created anywhere on your body, or through the wristspike.
- producing special material that can be a flaming liquid sprayed out, a flammable gas or a sticky jelly on fire
- emitting pheromones that influence humans
- sensing the mind-link of bodysnatchers
- enhanced senses, capable of switching to different spectrums (infravision, ultrasound, noise filtering, etc.)
(cont.)

>>16064003
- fiber-optic nervous system, allowing you to ignore pain to some extent, and speeding up your reflexes by orders of magnitude
- a pair of leathery wings growing from your shoulder blades, with a bio-fuel fed jet system underneath it, allowing you extremely fast aerial movement
- superhuman sense of balance
- four combat tentacles
- sonic vibrator drums that can cause disorientation, loss of balance and nausea on a wider area or severe pain and internal damage when focused. The effect magnifies the more drums you use.
- combat tendrils that can be shot out to a few dozen meters, they are a centimeter in diameter, as strong as steel cable, and have hooked ends that lodge themselves into objects or enemies

You wake up beside Cath on the bed you slep on last night, an alarm clock on the nightstand showing 13:25. As you get up, the covers are pulled a bit to the side, and it becomes evident that though Catherine's wounds have healed somewhat, the process is far from done. Her arm and hand is a crude replica of a human's, distorted and stretched in some places while bloated and molten-looking in others.

Trodding out to the bathroom, you wash your face and survey your own damage. The shoulder that was ravaged by the Hunter is a mess of pale green and deep purple bruises, an angry red line showing where you stitched it together. It still aches, your body taking it's sweet time to recover from the havoc the poison caused.

Listening intently, you determine that Kellery and Daisy are still asleep, and sneak out to the kitchen, making some cofee and warming some meat for breakfeast. You read a newspaper someone placed on the table, but give up on it quickly, nothing in it that holds your interest for long.

Anything you want do?

Can we alter our own DNA or whatever? I want to start teching it up in this bitch.

>>16064032
>He wants to tech up

>>16064019
eat mediate

>>16064019
We must begin experimenting with our own ability to gain abilities.

Firstly, we must try giving ourselves an ability. If that fails, we must give ourselves the ability to give ourselves abilities. Etc.

As a test, let's see if we can absorb memories through skin contact.

Eat the breakfast. With Protean Nature we don't need that much food, but the latest fight was tough and our body is still healing. Some extra energy won't hurt.

>>16064019
Eat ALL the breakfast!

>>16064019
Yes. I want to go and absorb the biological material from several people, and through doing so gain any and all skills their nervous system contains.

Then I want to go be the shadow that flaps in the night. I'll wait until night if I have to.

Let's get a new host. Someone... powerful. Like a CEO, or a Senator. A drug addict just doesn't cut it.

Find Lady GaGa, take her over, and lead a musical themed fight against the rest of the body snatchers.

>>16064330
Weird Al is still alive, you know.

He'd be my first choice.

You finish eating, and figure you'd like that a little more couldn't hurt. Looking through the materials at hand, you fry some bacon, ham, and eggs, and cut up solme vegetables. Having proper breakfeast for once, you feel better already, and decide to meditate and tinker around with your abilities.

You find a nice, secluded spot, and sit down on the ground, concentrating inwards. You keep getting kicked back to the image of the four strange trees, and feel with no small amount of surprise that there are noticable presences beside you there. The trees are the most apparent, and you sense some others in the distance or under the ground, but there is one that is almost tangible, something circling you, prowling around, a musky animal scent lingering after it. You catch sight of movement in the corner of your eyes, but when you turn, there is nothing there.

Shaking yourself, you come back to reality, and decide to postpone whatever that was. You try a more cerebral approach this time, and manage to find a link to the mutated cells inside you. Though they don't respond per se, you feel the as of yet unlock potential, and toy around with the idea of touching the mind of humans. The best you come up with is very thin tendrils, almost unnoticable, that you can slip inside people. Perhaps you can pry some things out of their heads without causing damage with some practice.

>>16064282
I think you don't realize how difficult it would be to switch hosts. First, we must spend some time (last time I checked it was a few days, but Protean Nature might changed that) to untangle ourselves from Jack's nervous system. Then, we abandon our old body, creating a shitstorm of epic proportions as our friends and the Wise find dead Jack and realize that we're not what we claim to be. Then, we must find and infect new host.
TL;DR - Not worth it.

>>16064359
Go get on a busy subway car and test it on people.

Or a bus, that too. Just somewhere crowded, so we can blend in and also have plenty of people to test it one.

GO GO GO.

>>16064359
>>16064373
Well that sucks. I guess we'll just have to go and make Jack rich and powerful ourselves. First off, try learning things from people using our new 'mind tendril'. See if we can't find some way of blackmailing them. Then we'll need to become a crime boss using our blackmail money. Set up a drug cartel and kill anyone that gets in our way.

We must become Al Pacino.

>>16064359
>Perhaps you can pry some things out of their heads without causing damage with some practice.
I doubt that anyone we know would willingly allow us to mess with his/her brain, and doing that to someone without anyone knowing is a perfect way to mess up and start a shitstorm, alienating our friends and angering the Wise.

>>16064426
Jack was a drug addict. Find some of his old druggie friends, get them high, and experiment on them.

>>16064426
>and doing that to someone without anyone knowing is a perfect way to mess up and start a shitstorm, alienating our friends and angering the Wise.
Well, unless we just try this on some random people on the street.

>let's become a senator/crime lord/drug dealer!
Guys, I think you're forgetting about that whole "Cyborgs are coming tomorrow" thing. We should be preparing for battle, not screwing around doing random shit.

So far, we've been keeping the 'not Jack Winters' card close at heart and playing the 'good-intentioned mutated hero' bluff to the utmost.

But we're pretty darn selfish, I think, with the survival as primary goal.

What does the Wisemen want us doing after this?
The cyborgs seem to be the obvious enemy right now, since the invaders just got beaten back.
How about the Fools? Have we had any news about them?

Also, guiltily go out shopping to buy better quality foodstuffs, for Daisy and Kellery's breakfast, and order some precious metals and ceramics from the Wisemen for Cath.
I prefer practicing on mind-ripper tendrils on badguys, actually.

>>16064469
>cyborgs soon
>when?
>tomorrow

Fuck it. Let's run to another country and hide. We can be a criminal mastermind there.

I'm not dying because we're too stupid to run when we need to.

>>16064432
That's a bit heartless. I know we're not human, but last time I checked we tried to avoid killing people. We could do that, but can't we just find a rat or some other animal? I think they will do too.

>>16064515
We are superior to humans. The only reason we don't kill them is to avoid suspicious.

Let's go get some drugfriends and mess with their brains.

Lets see some votes then people. Experiment on animals, drugies, civilians, don't experiment at all, run for the hills, etc.

>>16064509
A bit too late for that. We could run, but we decided to stay, and the Wise were our best bet.

Also, what's with that whole "let's become a criminal mastemind" thing? We want to know more about the Bodysnatchers and the Cyborgs and the Wise and the Fools and ourselves. I don't think any crime syndicate can help us with that.

>>16064507
>What does the Wisemen want us doing after this?
That's a good question! Perhaps we should ask them.

>How about the Fools? Have we had any news about them?
Last seen in Madrid, may have connections with the Wise command. They may or may not be much more dangerous than we thought.

>>16064570
Experiment on civilians. Specifically, homeless guys. Absorb their skills and knowledge.

>>16064570
Let's experiment on animals. If that doesn't work, we can move on to humans, but there's no reason to start with them and endanger ourselves by screwing up.

>>16064547
Eh. I know that our morals may be very flexible, but I would prefer to avoid the whole "hurr durr we're so evil" thing. That's boring. We can do better than that.

Running away does not help, both bodysnatcher and cyborg imvaders are engaged in a not-so-secret war all over this world, and as an abomination they'd target us whenever they meet us.

Regarding funding, so long as we champion humanity, the Wise would give us some help on that direction. As for power, well, when we finish this, who do you think would Daisy and Cath be willing to help?

Just have to keep some of our special cards close.
Also following not-Winters' actions in the past, I don't think we'd really have qualms to test it on innocent bystanders -personal anon opinions notwithstanding- just that we wouldn't want to be found out.

>>16064613
Maybe I should elaborate.
I think our morals and general attitiude should be purposefully left ambigous. We're damaged alien merged with damaged human. We're also a mutant, an abomination. We're unique, impossible to predict and categorize. A hint of something sinister is fine, good even, but suddenly deciding "now we're all evil and shit" is not.
Experimenting on animals first is the logical choice, with our self-preservation in mind. Why take unnecessary risk? After all, that abillity may not work at all.

>>16064670
>Also following not-Winters' actions in the past, I don't think we'd really have qualms to test it on innocent bystanders -personal anon opinions notwithstanding- just that we wouldn't want to be found out.
Exactly. There's no reason to mess with some random bystander's brain other than to show how cruel we can be, even though there are other options, just as good and not as risky.

>>16064700
>no reason

Except to see if we can do it in the first place. Come on man, your point doesn't even make sense. We're experimenting on someone to gain power, not 'just because lol'.

rolled 19 = 19

Let's snatch a body! For real!

>>16064740
But I'm not voting against experimenting. I'm voting against experimenting on humans right now. Messing with some rat or cat (not dr.Scruffy, of course) is better option, simply because if we screw up nobody will find out. That is important, because both our friends and the Wise would be "interested" why we're trying to control human minds.

>Goddamn laptop, lost my post.
You get on your feet, and hear a soft murmur coming from the elevator. Walking over there, you see Richard stepping out of it, surprised to see you- "Hey man, just checking if you guys need anything." You give him the rundown on what you think the others might need, and add labrats or something similar to the list. "Uh, rats? Sure, we got some downstairs for the labs." "Excelent. I'll take a look right now if you don't mind." you say, clearly eager to start.

Richard steps into the elevator with you. "No problem."The doors close with a chime as he punches in the proper codes. "We're really thankful for your help yesterday. The three of you made all the difference. We destroyed about half of the north american bodysnatchers in the battle. Not one of them managed to escape." He pauses, considering something, glancing at you from the corner of his eye. "I'm not at liberty to divulge much, but we'd like your help again. We're putting together a team that leaves in three hours. Investigation, mostly. We'd like you to go along with them, see what you can figure out."

>>16064858
Sounds like the perfect mission for our new mind probe!

Do eet. But until then, experiment on some rats. Let's see if we can't electrify different parts of their brains to make them do things.

>>16064858
Ask for details. But yeah, don't see why not.

Also, do the memories of the Hunter we absorbed include location of the Queen?

Boy, this anal sex sure feels good. Hurry up, you fuckers.

>>16064949
>doesn't even put it in the right field

My god the trolls are shit today.

>>16064858
+1 vote for going on the mission

>>16064963
Looks like someone finally forced me to use a tripcode. Yay. Also, sorry for the speed, my head is killing me, needed to get some pills.

My ass is so wet.

"Fantastic. I'll send someone over to notify you when we're ready to go." You arrive at your destination, and step out. "Have fun with the rats! Uh, that really sounded weird. See you in a few hours." The door closes behind you, and you walk around trying to find the room you're looking for. After a minute of confusion, you find the storage room, filled with cages. A single man in a labcoat nods at you, your presence cleared with him, and turns back to his work.

You pick a cage at random, open the top, and grab the white rat inside, it's beady red eyes darting around as you place a finger against it. Then you go to another one. And another. The first few die horribly, your tendrils wired to absorb brain matter, not to simply probe it. One looks rather promising, but a few seconds after you finish, it drops dead, slightly twitching. A couple tries later, you find the proper method to it, and feel the thoughts running through the creature's little brain. A fraction of a second is enough to get a sense of what it is feeling at the moment, but you need a bit longer to dig a little deeper.

Satisfied, you turn to the assistant trying to conceal his growing fear and worry. "Could you send me a message if anything strange happens to those two rats?" He assures you very eagerly that you'll know the very second something happens, and you leave, whistling a little tune.

What now?

>>16065252
>The first few die horribly
Oh dear. Seems that experimenting on animals instead of humans was a wise move.

Anyway. I repeat my previous question - did we absorbed any informations that might pinpoit location of the Queen? Are they even on Earth?
Also, what happened to our gun and rest of the gear we had on ourselved during the battle? Was it destroyed?

>>16065332
The Queens are planetbound, yes. Information regarding the continent's Queen was not present in any of the minds you absorbed.

Your cannon and it's harness was dicarded during battle, probably recovered by the Wise forces. You do seem to remember someone taking off the rest of your gear.

Why, for the love of the betrayal, did we do it right in front of that assistant?

...
Man, I so hate cleaning up evidences, and witnesses. I hope it doesn't end there. Just tell him we're trying the humane way to feed Mr. Scr- Scrupples? Scruffies?

>>16065369
Scruffles. Doctor Scruffles. Also, the only thing he saw you do was touch the rats. For all he knows, you just wanted to hone your technique of killing things and didn't want to bother with finding enemies for it.

There's not much we can do. Unless we want to chat a bit with those two tech guys (I forgot what are their names) let's just wait till our friends wake up.

You head back to the suite, noticing as you get back that a pile of different metals and ceramics are stitting in a corner. The ohters still seem to be sleeping, so you sit down to wait. For the first time since, well, you existed, you have nothing to do, no threat to combat or time-sensitive action to undertake, and you're well rested and fed. For the first five minutes, this new feeling is exhilarating, and you revel in the freedom of it. Ten minutes later, you almost scream to break the dull silence, anything to distract you from your boredom. Minutes crawl by, and you alternate between planning and assessing what you know, and humming showtunes from the fifties. When Catherine finally steps out from the bedroom, hair dishevelled and eyes groggy, you practically tackle her and whirl her around in the air.

She laughs and swats at you gently. "Stop it. Come on, just stop it. What's with this reception?" You put her down and grin. "Just glad to see you." She spots the pile of suplies. "That for me?" "Yep." She stalks over to it, and places her damaged hand on top. "I think I figured out how to heal myself. This is going to be weird, don't freak out." Her arm shakes and quivers as she closes her eyes, and soon turns into an amorphous mass spilling over the stacked metals, covering them completely. Large bulges travel up the appendage, and when she lifts it up again, the pile is gone.

When it reforms, the arm is in perfect condition again, and the leg is subtly shifting back as well. "Raw stuff like this is best, but with a bit of time I could use anything. Rocks, plants, meat, scrap metal, anything." She looks up at you with a pained grimace. "It's weird, right? Of course it's weird, sorry." She stands up, brushing her hands on the things of her jeans. "So, anything interesting happen to you?"

>>16065580
That's an interesting power, Cathy.

I want it.

> Puts down securetrip

"Lady, we eat frozen food like a hungry trucker tuck into pancakes. Wait, a drove of hungry truckers. Uh. Maybe the wrong analogy. Anyway- (Metal slime-girl waifu get! Just kidding)
Don't worry about that, and- yeah, Richers got something for us. A little sneaking, he said."

>>16065615
I concur. We must become both metal and flesh. By blood and steel combined, we will be God.

>>16065665
"Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. And it's nice that we won't have to fight again so soon." She fidgets, and looks around before turning back to you. "I picked up something today. The fools arrived in Los Angeles yesterday night, and I have a feeling that they are close by. And there's some pretty excited chatter on the higher Wise channels. I can't really hack into it, but something big happened."

She can't really finish, since Daisy and Kellery appear, the next hour completely occupied by the girls excited retelling of yesterday's events interspersed by Doctor Scruffles sarcastic comments on the quality of the personell around them. You have the vague feeling that you've heard all this before, but you play along, hmmm-ing a haa-ing as appropriate. Before you notice, a phone rings, and you excuse yourself to pick it up. "Mister Winters, sir, Agent van Rohe told me to contact you. We're ready to go if you are, the group is waiting on the roof by the helipad. And, uhhh, there's some rat that's supposed to be fine? I didn't really understand that part of the message."

>Needed to lie down in the dark for a few minutes to regain conscious thought. Fucking weather.
>>16065848
"Cath, time to go." You quickly explain the situation to Kellery and Daisy, say your goodbyes, then ride up to the roof with Catherine. The VTOL is already waiting for you with it's side door open, and you pile in to find Richard among a mixed group of Cannes Belli and technicians. He motions to them to close the door, barks a few commands into a headset, then turns to the two of you as the craft takes off. "Okay, here's the short version. We spotted the cyborg forces a few hours ago. At least what remained of them. Someone or something found them before us and trashed 'em good. We're going in to look around, catalog things, haul off what we can use and get rid off the rest. You're here as insurance and to see if you catch something we might have missed." He gives you a boyish, excited grin. "Fingers crossed that we don't run into any real trouble." You exchange an uneasy glance with Cath, but settle down in your seats.

The trip takes a little over two hours, and you are engrossed in a game on the portable system Richard lent you(he has a spare), when he taps your shoulder."We're here, time to earn our keep. Well, mine, anyway." The KP-21 lurches as it lands, and you clamber out of the door. The scene that greets you is hard to comprehend at first. The ground is scorched in long strips, trees torn out or incinerated all around. It seems like a rural area, no buildings or cultivated land in sight.

What really draws your attention is the wreckage of dozens of cyborg dropships, sccores of their footsoldiers littering the ground like broken toys that some giant grew bored of. No less then nine HKs are on the ground in varying states of damage, some of them clearly shot down by energy weapons, others bearing marks of some enourmous physical force crumpling them. "So. What do you make of this mess?"

>anyone still around?

>>16066190
"Energy weapon damage, crushing damage, etc. I'll be damned if whatever did this wasn't fucking massive."

See if we can find any cyborg nervous systems intact. Use our new power.

>>16066190
Pause as if deep in thought, then say: "Something big. Really big." Then go and sort through the debris, looking for any pieces of tech or flesh that don't belong to the cyborgs. Also, see if we can't recover some cyborg tech for the lab geeks to work on.

>>16066502
>>16066566
"Yeah. I'm actually hoping that a small army managed to wage a full scale war here without us noticing, because the alternative would meant that something was nasty enough to do this on it's own. If that's the case we are well and thoroughly screwed." You nod seriously at him, then head to the wreckage with a nervous Cath in tow. Passing by an HK melted into slag, you notice that half of the downed ones have punctures in their hulls the size of your fist.

With a little unease, you find that the HKs that weren't completely destroyed were cracked open like giant crustaceans, their interiors scooped out, parts scattered around them. They don't seem to contain any biological parts unlike the footsoldier and drones. With growing frustration, you storm to another one, lying on it's side on the ground like an eviscerated metal carcass. You swipe through the remains, finally finding what you presume to be the AI core. It looks whole, and you squat down beside it and lift it gently, only to find that it's underside concealed a hole, leaving it a burnt out shell, nothing inside remaining.

You drop it back on the ground and stand, and catch yourself staring at a mark on the hull. Claw mark around a palm, printed into the strange steel by the strength behind it. Raising a hand beside it, you figure it to be from a smaller, more slender hand, but the claws are unmistakebly bodysnatcher ones. A piece of reflective hull shows you something else. A bone spike lodged between two plates on the inside. As you stare at it, you realise that the other marks had benn distorted, likely the result of someone pulling the spikes out after the battle.

Point out the obvious to Richers, that there are traces of bodysnatchers mark left behind. Worry about whether the Fools were excited about managing to get their hands on a controllable bodysnatcher unit.

The Wisemen know about the Fools, right? But do they know of Cath's ability, that gave us this morning's news?
Does Cath have the same absorption ability as us, 'cept against cyborgs?

>>16067140
Yes, the Wise know of the Fools.
No, they don't know about Cath's hacking abilities.
No, Cath can't absorb cyborgs. Theoretically, she already has every piece of cyborg tech available. She just doesn't know how to call them forth consciously without the "monster" helping. If you noticed, she gained a trick or two every time it took the steering wheel, so to speak.

>>16067140
You call Richard over, and point out the marks and spike. He shouts for some technicians, then asks you to stand aside for a little. The hazmat-clad men swarm over the wreck like a tide of grey scavengers, cataloging and photographing everything. You sit down by a fallen tree, Catherine strangely silent beside you, hugging her knees and leaning her face against them. You watch her for a while, rocking back and forth, but before you figure out something to say, the agent walks up to you. He takes a deep breath, then says "I have some bad news, some good news, and some more bad news. First, we think there were at least three more HKs here that were taken away, mostly intact.But, we managed to figure out who the spike belonged to. Here comes the really bad news."

He brushes a hand through his hair, gazing past you. "It's Grey. It's. Fucking. Anne. Grey. The spike isn't a one hundred percent match, but the techies say that it's to be expected, the last sample we have of her was before she absorbed a Hunter."

He laughs, a strained, dry sound. "Are we in some deep shit or what?"

I hereby pronounce this thread dead. Archive under way, next one will be on saturday.

Just dragged myself back from work. Have we made any progress?

Quest archived, thanks to all those who participated despite the difficulties, and fingers crossed that the next one will have 100% less bad trolls and migraines.

Archive here:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Bodysnatcher%20Quest
Have a swell night/day/morning, BiaJ out.

>>16067728
FUCK.