Recapitulation, Part 1

Story by DragonMasterX on SoFurry

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#23 of Codename: Stinger

Yo! It's that time of the week... of the month... maybe semester...? Err.

Ah whatever! Rejoice Codename: Stinger fans, for I have just completed the latest installment of the series. This one could be considered the first season's finale or the opening to the next. And what can you expect from it, you ask? Why, character development of course!

We've seen action packed scenes, the good and the bad, but have we seen all there is to see about your favorite Stinger and her metamorph heroine friends? Not nearly! So I have brought you this multi-part episode to please fans and new readers alike, to fill everyone's plot-thirsty eyes with tasty goodness and also a tad of fan-service for those who are in the mood for it. ;)

Let me know what you think!


Recapitulation, by DragonMasterX.

Part 1.

"It's been a while."

There was no response to the young woman's greeting. Only low growls from the skies and the cold whispers of a late afternoon breeze were the female's sole company. The heavens were gloomy and dark, no doubt leading up to an eventual downpour, a rare occurrence for the city of Phoenix during May.

"Sorry for not dropping by more often. I've been busy. You wouldn't believe with what, but that's why I'm here." The lone figure sat down on the low-cut grassy ground, wearing a pair of loose jogging pants and a hoodie, both of neutral color. She had a hand in the kangaroo pocket while the other shut her cellphone off, ensuring no distractions would be present.

A frustrated sigh disappeared into the rustling grass as the wind blew the girl's hood off to reveal a long mane of glossy-black hair. The woman's pale skin bordering on yellowish, she kept her eyes hidden behind a pair of tinted glasses. "Pretty empty around here today."

The woman paused and looked around to double check her surroundings. She could not sense anyone in the vicinity. "People usually don't come here on Tuesdays, heh. The sunnies are pointless. I don't need to hide myself from you." The tinted glasses were discarded, but instead of normal human eyes, two black spheres stared forwards expectantly; sclera and all, the girl's eyes looked like tinted lenses themselves. "Funny how you always used to call me a shrimp. I turned out to be of an entirely different species," she laughed softly and hugged her legs while hiding her face. "And of the kind people aren't especially fond of, to beat. A shrimp wouldn't have been so bad now that I think about it." The sarcasm in her voice was palpable, but no ironic comeback was had; it was like the person was speaking to a wall.

"Drat. I never knew how to start with you. But you had a saying for that, didn't you? ...Just start at the beginning. Well... What did we talk about last time huh? That you could be proud of me for once. I busted my ass and got into the PPD. I came to tell you that all those years ago. I had to deal with the very same kind of bull you told me I would for being the new girl in the station. But I didn't care; I did what I had to. Ever since that day," she put emphasis on the word "that", "All I've wanted is to protect the weak, keep them out of harm's way. That's the only thing that pushed me forwards in a job I didn't even want; you know me, I hate having to file paperwork or deal with politics; and unlike most normal people know, a police station can feel like the goddamn congress if you stick around long enough to see it. Sorry, I'm ranting..."

The girl fumbled with her words before lifting her head from her knees to face forwards. "I was young and inexperienced, but with good qualifications and excellent performance out in the street. I got commended many times despite all the stare-downs I had from my fellow patrolmen and the other superiors; I was never known for taking protocol seriously, but praised for the results. Eventually one thing led to another and I was offered a promotion. I could've been assigned my own office, be a detective. Pfft. I hate being stuck in one place for too long. I turned it down twice. But the second time, I met someone new at my boss' office. He was really nice, but I knew he wasn't there as a friend of the chief's. Guy wasn't even from Phoenix, heck, he wasn't even American. Said he was there to scout for Interpol after showing me a dossier with my name on it. Who'da thunk I had attracted that kind of attention to myself? But just as well: I wasn't offered any bureaucratic position, instead a job as a field agent. I was stoked, and dad nearly popped a gasket when I said I would take it. I told you that one before, didn't I?" she giggled.

"Anyway, after I made my decision, I was told I was first going in for an official exam before I could be admitted. Even though I thought I was elite at that point back then, I got cut down to size easily. They'd scouted me for my scores on physical exams, which were easy to prove, but when I was asked questions about several different situations I'd been in... being questioned for the way you do things, being told that different kinds of actions can lead to the same result without taking unnecessary risks. I felt like walking out. I'm not good at arguing, and I don't care about defending my point. When it comes down to it, I won't think about jumping in if it'll save a life. The examiners said I wasn't wrong. Heck, one of them laughed. Still can't tell if he was being matter-of-fact about my way of seeing things or if he was making fun out me. When I think back on it, I tend to say a lot of corny and stupid things because I don't think before talking." The girl hugged her legs tighter, the fire in her voice dying down. "That's what I miss 'bout having you around. You had those people skills and could think ahead; I just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. ...and I think that's why I'm at this junction right now. I've been screwing up left and right lately."

"But I'm getting ahead of myself. I got the job and was enrolled into an intensive training program for new agents. I learned to talk in so many different languages, even if only with their basics. They worked me to the bone. My instructor was a real bitch, didn't even let me have donuts during breaks. That's really the only thing I missed about the department. Then eventually I got my first assignment. It didn't take me out of the continent, let alone the country to begin with, but at least I got to see New York. I already told you how fubar that was last time I was here. That was before I got assigned to an overseas job. That's when I got like this..." the woman rolled her sleeve back to her elbow and focused on her forearm covered in what seemed to be blue form fitting fabric. A black liquid suddenly started to ooze out through the blue, covering the girl's forearm. The ooze thickened out and began to solidify, adapting the shape of a pair of big pincers which she snapped together casually. The pincers then melted away just as fast as they had appeared, leaving the girl's balled-up fist in front of her glaring eyes, "That's when Charlotte Richards became Stinger."


It took me a while to get comfortable with the idea of being an arachnid metamorph, you know. During my first assignment I was supposed to take back a stolen laboratory sample from a hidden mid-Asian black market. I wonder if you would've been assigned to the same mission in my place. Even though I was successful, I got distracted by the fact the people who'd been sent after me were shaking up citizens, innocents, to get me. According to protocol, I needn't concern myself; my mission came first. Anything else I did could be judged rash and stupid. I decided to be rash and stupid. Do you think you would've done any different? I saved a family, and to this day I don't regret having drawn every steel sight around that desert border to me if that saved those lives.

It was a miracle in and of itself to have gotten away to begin with; I should've died when I crashed my sand buggy and collapsed into an underground desert cave. Weak and hurt, I was easy prey for mom's true nightmare. Heh, with all the racket I made, it was no wonder I'd ticked off every Asian family of scorpions for miles around, since soon I was swimming in those little critters. I got stung again and again, heck, I should've died. But I didn't. I was saved by Dr. Pierre, who had been exploring the same tunnels at the time. He took me to his lab while I was unconscious and treated me, but the men tracking me eventually found us out. One the goons was really stupid, and instead of injecting me with the doc's solution to get rid of the trace venom in my system, he injected me with the stolen sample I'd been carrying. I only came to learn about the so-called revolutionary recombinant agent's name much, much later. But the Xteria... it changed me down to the genetic level. I was reborn as something new, something different. No longer human, but definitely nothing less than one. I was stronger, faster, I could cling to walls; it was the reason I was able to fend off against my pursuers even if they were elite fighters.

I made it out of that ordeal. I was now a scorpion: tail with barbed tip, exoskeleton; the works. When I got back to HQ, I was deemed unfit for duty and my status was kept a secret from most. People didn't know me as Charlie Richards anymore. To them, I was a disgusting thing, a monster, and the way they glared at me every time I was wheeled in from med lab to med lab told me they could not wait until the order to burn me up came. At first, I was fully cooperating, wanting to find a cure, to return to normal, but nobody, even the brightest scientists, could help. The inflamed opinions and commentaries were making me feel like crap, like I was a danger to everyone just by being allowed to walk around the premises. But what else could my superiors do? They already were denying me exit to the world; I couldn't even phone anybody. Despite how my superiors sugar-coated it, I knew they thought I was a monster. Eventually, I started feeling like one.

That's when Lexine Masters showed up. Part of a secret organization, she offered to study my condition on the term I was allowed to go to her facilities. That's when I stopped feeling like a monster, and started empathizing with guinea pigs. Lexy kept me under her magnifying glass for months, taking samples, exhaustively testing out every single facet of my being, both physically and mentally. Every time I saw her I felt like I was naked, being taken apart piece by piece like I was some sort of toy. Eventually I snapped and began to demand results; I wanted to be made normal again, I didn't want to be this creature anymore! And just when I thought Lexy couldn't get any weirder, she began to confess that she found me attractive. She would use that silver tongue of hers to melt me with compliments and eventually I started believing her. It was odd; I had started out hating her, but then the more we hung out the more I realized she was the only one who wasn't treating me like a monster. At one point, I became unable to resist her wiles and became infatuated... until one day, I found out the true purpose of her extensive research.

Lexy had never been interested in finding a cure for my advanced metamorphosis. All the opposite: She had been experimenting with my blood samples and animal DNA; specifically, bat genes. Lexy was using human subjects to further her research on the Xteria until she was able to perfect it. The result was the Beta metamorphs, man and woman bats that had no choice but to obey her every command. I was conflicted at first: Lexy was talking a good deal with her plans for the world; she saw humanity and society as a whole as a flawed, tainted concept that had to be eradicated so that a new, perfect world order could come about; in a way, I knew she was right: I'd been shunned ever since I came back to HQ with a tail. But I couldn't tear my eyes away from the fact she had turned people into metamorphs against their will; that she was planning on doing the same to every man, woman and child in the world! I couldn't let her. I tried to stop Lexy, but she smacked me across the room with more strength than even I could have exerted. Baffled, I looked at her only to realize she had developed a new serum and injected herself with it when she heard I was going to stop her. I watched in horror as the only friend I had left transformed into a metamorph herself, becoming taller, thicker, and more powerful than even myself. Worse still, she had made herself immune to my neurotoxin, and my attacks weren't dealing damage to her. I'd never felt so powerless! I managed to get a good blow on her by distracting her, but in her anger, her ultrasonic voice sent every Beta after me. I narrowly escaped them and managed to separate them from Lexy, so we could face off against each other alone. She was too strong; she was also going crazy with that strength, spouting nonsense that grew madder and madder with every word coming out of her lips. Somehow, I managed to defeat her, but Lexy, now calling herself Omega, made her escape with every Beta and disappeared into the sky before I could give chase. I vowed to stop her.

While recovering from the beating I got, I was approached by one of the secret organization's division captains. James Rogers. I call him Jim. He made himself responsible for the incident, since he was in charge of the division Omega was part of. Since the organization is in charge of safety and peacekeeping from behind the scenes, and Omega was his responsibility, Jim persuaded his superiors to found the Metamorph Division in charge of catching and bringing Omega back, and instantly made me the first member. We started tracing metamorph activity in the surrounding areas, eventually surprising ourselves when we found rumors of a wave of thoughts perpetrated by what eyewitnesses had described as a "monster". That's when I met Kimberly Sanders, a chameleon metamorph thief. She and her friend Bethany Myers were orchestrating high-risk thefts in the area of LA, which Kim would execute by using her mimethization powers. We laid a trap for them, and I eventually caught up with Kim, trying to take her in for questioning. But then the most incredible thing happened: During our squabble, one of Omega's Betas came in and snagged Beth. Kim and I truced and gave chase, but the Beta escaped with Beth in his claws. I took Kim back to the organization, and with Jim's team's help we managed to track the Beta down, since rumors of mysterious disappearances similar to Beth's had been reported in LA. Angered, I charged in first, only to foolishly get captured by Omega, who had convinced Beth to partake in her experiments via some clever brainwashing. Omega was seemingly cooperating with another organization to develop some sort of mind control application with the Xteria research, and she was being funded by them. This resulted in Beth's transformation into a queen bumblebee able to direct and command four male drones, and had it not been for Kim's interference, Beth would likely have become Omega's ally. With their help, I managed to defeat Omega again, and this time we rounded most of her Betas up and incarcerated them in a maximum security prison. I thought the nightmare was over...

But I was wrong.

To Be Continued...Recapitulation, by DragonMasterX.

Part 1.

"It's been a while."

There was no response to the young woman's greeting. Only low growls from the skies and the cold whispers of a late afternoon breeze were the female's sole company. The heavens were gloomy and dark, no doubt leading up to an eventual downpour, a rare occurrence for the city of Phoenix during May.

"Sorry for not dropping by more often. I've been busy. You wouldn't believe with what, but that's why I'm here." The lone figure sat down on the low-cut grassy ground, wearing a pair of loose jogging pants and a hoodie, both of neutral color. She had a hand in the kangaroo pocket while the other shut her cellphone off, ensuring no distractions would be present.

A frustrated sigh disappeared into the rustling grass as the wind blew the girl's hood off to reveal a long mane of glossy-black hair. The woman's pale skin bordering on yellowish, she kept her eyes hidden behind a pair of tinted glasses. "Pretty empty around here today."

The woman paused and looked around to double check her surroundings. She could not sense anyone in the vicinity. "People usually don't come here on Tuesdays, heh. The sunnies are pointless. I don't need to hide myself from you." The tinted glasses were discarded, but instead of normal human eyes, two black spheres stared forwards expectantly; sclera and all, the girl's eyes looked like tinted lenses themselves. "Funny how you always used to call me a shrimp. I turned out to be of an entirely different species," she laughed softly and hugged her legs while hiding her face. "And of the kind people aren't especially fond of, to beat. A shrimp wouldn't have been so bad now that I think about it." The sarcasm in her voice was palpable, but no ironic comeback was had; it was like the person was speaking to a wall.

"Drat. I never knew how to start with you. But you had a saying for that, didn't you? ...Just start at the beginning. Well... What did we talk about last time huh? That you could be proud of me for once. I busted my ass and got into the PPD. I came to tell you that all those years ago. I had to deal with the very same kind of bull you told me I would for being the new girl in the station. But I didn't care; I did what I had to. Ever since that day," she put emphasis on the word "that", "All I've wanted is to protect the weak, keep them out of harm's way. That's the only thing that pushed me forwards in a job I didn't even want; you know me, I hate having to file paperwork or deal with politics; and unlike most normal people know, a police station can feel like the goddamn congress if you stick around long enough to see it. Sorry, I'm ranting..."

The girl fumbled with her words before lifting her head from her knees to face forwards. "I was young and inexperienced, but with good qualifications and excellent performance out in the street. I got commended many times despite all the stare-downs I had from my fellow patrolmen and the other superiors; I was never known for taking protocol seriously, but praised for the results. Eventually one thing led to another and I was offered a promotion. I could've been assigned my own office, be a detective. Pfft. I hate being stuck in one place for too long. I turned it down twice. But the second time, I met someone new at my boss' office. He was really nice, but I knew he wasn't there as a friend of the chief's. Guy wasn't even from Phoenix, heck, he wasn't even American. Said he was there to scout for Interpol after showing me a dossier with my name on it. Who'da thunk I had attracted that kind of attention to myself? But just as well: I wasn't offered any bureaucratic position, instead a job as a field agent. I was stoked, and dad nearly popped a gasket when I said I would take it. I told you that one before, didn't I?" she giggled.

"Anyway, after I made my decision, I was told I was first going in for an official exam before I could be admitted. Even though I thought I was elite at that point back then, I got cut down to size easily. They'd scouted me for my scores on physical exams, which were easy to prove, but when I was asked questions about several different situations I'd been in... being questioned for the way you do things, being told that different kinds of actions can lead to the same result without taking unnecessary risks. I felt like walking out. I'm not good at arguing, and I don't care about defending my point. When it comes down to it, I won't think about jumping in if it'll save a life. The examiners said I wasn't wrong. Heck, one of them laughed. Still can't tell if he was being matter-of-fact about my way of seeing things or if he was making fun out me. When I think back on it, I tend to say a lot of corny and stupid things because I don't think before talking." The girl hugged her legs tighter, the fire in her voice dying down. "That's what I miss 'bout having you around. You had those people skills and could think ahead; I just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. ...and I think that's why I'm at this junction right now. I've been screwing up left and right lately."

"But I'm getting ahead of myself. I got the job and was enrolled into an intensive training program for new agents. I learned to talk in so many different languages, even if only with their basics. They worked me to the bone. My instructor was a real bitch, didn't even let me have donuts during breaks. That's really the only thing I missed about the department. Then eventually I got my first assignment. It didn't take me out of the continent, let alone the country to begin with, but at least I got to see New York. I already told you how fubar that was last time I was here. That was before I got assigned to an overseas job. That's when I got like this..." the woman rolled her sleeve back to her elbow and focused on her forearm covered in what seemed to be blue form fitting fabric. A black liquid suddenly started to ooze out through the blue, covering the girl's forearm. The ooze thickened out and began to solidify, adapting the shape of a pair of big pincers which she snapped together casually. The pincers then melted away just as fast as they had appeared, leaving the girl's balled-up fist in front of her glaring eyes, "That's when Charlotte Richards became Stinger."


It took me a while to get comfortable with the idea of being an arachnid metamorph, you know. During my first assignment I was supposed to take back a stolen laboratory sample from a hidden mid-Asian black market. I wonder if you would've been assigned to the same mission in my place. Even though I was successful, I got distracted by the fact the people who'd been sent after me were shaking up citizens, innocents, to get me. According to protocol, I needn't concern myself; my mission came first. Anything else I did could be judged rash and stupid. I decided to be rash and stupid. Do you think you would've done any different? I saved a family, and to this day I don't regret having drawn every steel sight around that desert border to me if that saved those lives.

It was a miracle in and of itself to have gotten away to begin with; I should've died when I crashed my sand buggy and collapsed into an underground desert cave. Weak and hurt, I was easy prey for mom's true nightmare. Heh, with all the racket I made, it was no wonder I'd ticked off every Asian family of scorpions for miles around, since soon I was swimming in those little critters. I got stung again and again, heck, I should've died. But I didn't. I was saved by Dr. Pierre, who had been exploring the same tunnels at the time. He took me to his lab while I was unconscious and treated me, but the men tracking me eventually found us out. One the goons was really stupid, and instead of injecting me with the doc's solution to get rid of the trace venom in my system, he injected me with the stolen sample I'd been carrying. I only came to learn about the so-called revolutionary recombinant agent's name much, much later. But the Xteria... it changed me down to the genetic level. I was reborn as something new, something different. No longer human, but definitely nothing less than one. I was stronger, faster, I could cling to walls; it was the reason I was able to fend off against my pursuers even if they were elite fighters.

I made it out of that ordeal. I was now a scorpion: tail with barbed tip, exoskeleton; the works. When I got back to HQ, I was deemed unfit for duty and my status was kept a secret from most. People didn't know me as Charlie Richards anymore. To them, I was a disgusting thing, a monster, and the way they glared at me every time I was wheeled in from med lab to med lab told me they could not wait until the order to burn me up came. At first, I was fully cooperating, wanting to find a cure, to return to normal, but nobody, even the brightest scientists, could help. The inflamed opinions and commentaries were making me feel like crap, like I was a danger to everyone just by being allowed to walk around the premises. But what else could my superiors do? They already were denying me exit to the world; I couldn't even phone anybody. Despite how my superiors sugar-coated it, I knew they thought I was a monster. Eventually, I started feeling like one.

That's when Lexine Masters showed up. Part of a secret organization, she offered to study my condition on the term I was allowed to go to her facilities. That's when I stopped feeling like a monster, and started empathizing with guinea pigs. Lexy kept me under her magnifying glass for months, taking samples, exhaustively testing out every single facet of my being, both physically and mentally. Every time I saw her I felt like I was naked, being taken apart piece by piece like I was some sort of toy. Eventually I snapped and began to demand results; I wanted to be made normal again, I didn't want to be this creature anymore! And just when I thought Lexy couldn't get any weirder, she began to confess that she found me attractive. She would use that silver tongue of hers to melt me with compliments and eventually I started believing her. It was odd; I had started out hating her, but then the more we hung out the more I realized she was the only one who wasn't treating me like a monster. At one point, I became unable to resist her wiles and became infatuated... until one day, I found out the true purpose of her extensive research.

Lexy had never been interested in finding a cure for my advanced metamorphosis. All the opposite: She had been experimenting with my blood samples and animal DNA; specifically, bat genes. Lexy was using human subjects to further her research on the Xteria until she was able to perfect it. The result was the Beta metamorphs, man and woman bats that had no choice but to obey her every command. I was conflicted at first: Lexy was talking a good deal with her plans for the world; she saw humanity and society as a whole as a flawed, tainted concept that had to be eradicated so that a new, perfect world order could come about; in a way, I knew she was right: I'd been shunned ever since I came back to HQ with a tail. But I couldn't tear my eyes away from the fact she had turned people into metamorphs against their will; that she was planning on doing the same to every man, woman and child in the world! I couldn't let her. I tried to stop Lexy, but she smacked me across the room with more strength than even I could have exerted. Baffled, I looked at her only to realize she had developed a new serum and injected herself with it when she heard I was going to stop her. I watched in horror as the only friend I had left transformed into a metamorph herself, becoming taller, thicker, and more powerful than even myself. Worse still, she had made herself immune to my neurotoxin, and my attacks weren't dealing damage to her. I'd never felt so powerless! I managed to get a good blow on her by distracting her, but in her anger, her ultrasonic voice sent every Beta after me. I narrowly escaped them and managed to separate them from Lexy, so we could face off against each other alone. She was too strong; she was also going crazy with that strength, spouting nonsense that grew madder and madder with every word coming out of her lips. Somehow, I managed to defeat her, but Lexy, now calling herself Omega, made her escape with every Beta and disappeared into the sky before I could give chase. I vowed to stop her.

While recovering from the beating I got, I was approached by one of the secret organization's division captains. James Rogers. I call him Jim. He made himself responsible for the incident, since he was in charge of the division Omega was part of. Since the organization is in charge of safety and peacekeeping from behind the scenes, and Omega was his responsibility, Jim persuaded his superiors to found the Metamorph Division in charge of catching and bringing Omega back, and instantly made me the first member. We started tracing metamorph activity in the surrounding areas, eventually surprising ourselves when we found rumors of a wave of thoughts perpetrated by what eyewitnesses had described as a "monster". That's when I met Kimberly Sanders, a chameleon metamorph thief. She and her friend Bethany Myers were orchestrating high-risk thefts in the area of LA, which Kim would execute by using her mimethization powers. We laid a trap for them, and I eventually caught up with Kim, trying to take her in for questioning. But then the most incredible thing happened: During our squabble, one of Omega's Betas came in and snagged Beth. Kim and I truced and gave chase, but the Beta escaped with Beth in his claws. I took Kim back to the organization, and with Jim's team's help we managed to track the Beta down, since rumors of mysterious disappearances similar to Beth's had been reported in LA. Angered, I charged in first, only to foolishly get captured by Omega, who had convinced Beth to partake in her experiments via some clever brainwashing. Omega was seemingly cooperating with another organization to develop some sort of mind control application with the Xteria research, and she was being funded by them. This resulted in Beth's transformation into a queen bumblebee able to direct and command four male drones, and had it not been for Kim's interference, Beth would likely have become Omega's ally. With their help, I managed to defeat Omega again, and this time we rounded most of her Betas up and incarcerated them in a maximum security prison. I thought the nightmare was over...

But I was wrong.

To Be Continued...