The day came where work was scheduled to begin. Everything was in order when he arrived. Peck came to check in and met with them briefly before taking off, leaving the fishman to his business. The few subjects that he had selected had shown up, their bodies ready and willing for his work. The assistants stood on standby after checking and cleaning equipment. They had assembled all manner of chemicals and raw materials that Gil had asked for. He walked in the room and all eyes were on him. Even if this was all due to the funding from the 4th District, it felt good to head his own place. Now he had to make the most of it while he could.

"You. Over here please." He pointed to one of the subjects and lead them over to the operating table. He tapped the surface with one green hand, gesturing for the old pirate to climb aboard. "What we are testing today is a growth serum of sorts." He wagged his other hand to get the assistant to bring him a vial of milky blue liquid. The contents seemed to bubble and froth, bits of sediment flowing and eddying at the bottom of the vial like a barely moving stream. "You should feel some sort of accelerated growth in specific areas. Of course, any measurable amount of growth in a small time frame will pressure your body. It will stretch your skin, bones, muscles and organs. It will hurt. I am going to need you to remain calm and describe your sensations to my assistant here throughout the coming hours." A white labcoated young woman was on standby with a clipboard. Another fellow assistant stood next to her with a ruler and tape measure, ready to record the physical measurements.

He remembered how he had come across this stuff. He had come across a strange scaley creature on an Momoiro Island years ago. Its eyes swiveled to and fro and its tongue darted in and out. Its skin changed colour to match its environment. An adaptation that proved useful in eluding prey. Not only that, this thing seemed to even change shape. Upon approaching for a closer look, the thing seemed to transform before his very eyes. Bright spots of red and purple erupted on it's skin. Bumps and horns grew and a menacing bipedal walk developed from nothing. It snarled and hissed, seeming to grow twice the size. After noticing its reaction, Gil had backed off to observe from afar. It became clear that something was not right with it when the creature had calmed down. It deflated slowly, but struggled to move its back legs. The bumps and horns receded, the spots faded. Growing even more curious as to what was taking place, Gil decided to drown it. He forced a bubble of water over its head, suffocating it to death. He would have gone for a quicker method, but he didn't want to damage the specimen. Upon examination, the lizard was shown to have broken its own back legs for the transformation. Its skin remained ruptured from the protrusion of the horns. Why would a living creature do this to itself? The answer soon became clear when he came across a pack of things that looked exactly the same as its angry form. The lizard had transformed its biology to mimic another species quite convincingly. Mimicing a more dangerous animal could have been its ticket to surviving even if it meant self harm. Dissection of the lizard brought about the discovery of a unique gland with a milky blue substance in it. Upon consulting the locals, they had named the lizard the 'kama chameleon'.

Gil had since learned to synthesize it and create his own blends. Whether he could bring about a similar outcome to what the lizard had performed was anther story though. What he did recognise was that this rapid growth could potentially be a very useful medical tool. And if one was able to harness this to be able to transform their body without severe damage... Well, he could imagine how much that would be worth.

The old pirate blubbered about not having had enough to drink. Gil took that as him being about as sober as he could possibly achieve and decided to go ahead with the experiment. "Strap him down." The assistants applied leather binds to his hands, feet and neck to pin him to the bed. "Don't worry, this is just to make sure that there is minimal movement so that we may take measurements. Now, open." The grey bearded geezer whimpered once more before parting his lips, letting the fishman empty the vial down his throat. Almost immediately, the pirate groaned and gurgled. Saliva bubbling past has lips and down his chin. The first thing that the pirate felt was the strange concoction coming into contact with his digestive tract. It would recognise it as not food and send warning signals to the injester's brain through a strange collection of belly rumbles and diaphragm convulsions. It was a weird queasy feeling, one that Gil himself has felt when his self trials had started before. But those were a lot weaker to the dosage he had cooked up today. Not wanting to push the boat out too far in self experimentation had limited him. He wanted to see how far he could go and now he finally had the means to do so.

"Ugggh. I don't feel so- AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The pirate's moan was suddenly interrupted by an intense wave of pain. The chemical had been absorbed into his blood and was now shooting through his system, triggering a fight or flight response that fueled a massive tsunami of growth hormone to overtake his body. The convulsing got worse and worse. Soon Gil realised that this movement wasn't just a reaction, but the dimensions of his body were shifting. His ribs were growing outward and expanding, pulling on the skin around his torso until it was raw and bleeding. his shin bones shot outward like bamboo shoots and his toes curled up and around like the tail of a monkey. He puked immediately, emptying his lunch all over his own face due to his laying position. His spine could be heard clicking and crunching as it was pulled this way and that. His shoulders were pushed together, collapsing the length from shoulder to shoulder. The fishman hopped from angle to angle around the subject, not wanting to miss a minute. The assistants looked as surprised as the pirate was, recovering from the awe to get to work. One of them measuring each change and the other writing down every observation.

"Bluhgh ugh ahhahaha." The pirate chortled on his own juices. Barely making it past the puke every now and then for a retching breath and a panicked scream. It was lucky that he was fighting so hard for his life because none of the doctors in the room were intent on saving lives at that moment. "Keratin metamorphosis is beginning. He's moving into stage two." Gil pointed out that the pirate's hair and fingernails were starting to grow which signaled that the next part of the transition was beginning. The assistants hopped to it, scribbling down the details. The subject's salt and pepper beard hair and shaggy mane hair fell out and was being replaced by a thick, short crop of hai. The man's fingernails grew out and then came of, scattering to the ground. They too were replaced by small, shiny, youthful fingernails.

As this was happening, the changes to bone structure were finally starting to end. He looked twisted and deformed. It was like the pirate's soft tissue had been thrown over a skeleton much too small for it. He lay there like a melted wax sculpture of himself. He wasn't making any more sounds and Gil soon realised that he had passed out from the pain. "Clear his airways. He can't die yet." The fishman summised that if he let the subject die, the stream of growth hormones would end and so would the trial. The assistant got the lovely job of scooping the pulpey yellow vomit from his orifices. The assistant then rolled open an eyelid to check if he was still responding to stimuli. When he did so, Gil noticed a change in those old eyes. No longer were they dark brown, faded from cataracts, but instead they were light green. Gil had to force down his excitement. Finally. Eye colour had been a hard one to crack.

"Stage three will begin soon." And he was right. The organs, then the muscles, then the skin was being sucked tight against the skeleton. The fleshy, amorphous blob was beginning to take shape. The intestines were assembling back in the gut area. The quadtricepts were deflating like a baloon and pulling tight against the thigh bone. Skin around the face was collapsing, pulling tight against the features. The old, leathery skin the pirate had earned from weathering his buccaneering life had been replaced by a fresher and more youthful complexion.

The transformation was slowing, nearing the completion of the changes the drug would bring. What remained on the table was what looked like a different person. In fact, he bore the similar characteristics as one of the assistants that stood over him. This was the goal of the drug. To bring about a change of body that could replicate that of someone else. By adding someone's dna to a blend of the lizard's hormone, Gil thought this might just be possible. As for the results, well, they were promising. But there wasn't anywhere near a perfect change. The pirate would have looked like the research assistant, that is if he was run over by the sea train. He was disfigured and broken. Gil wondered just how much of these changes would leave him permenently disabled. Which ones would be irreversable? Regardless, he was happy with the result.

Now, onto the next trial. Gil stepped away from the table and toward the other subjects waiting for him. They stood in place quivering in their boots after hearing the horrible screams for hours. Now the perpetrator of that nightmare was coming for them. The fishman stood in front of him a wide smile revealing his jagged back teeth. Today was a good day.

exit

items: spear pistol, water dial, baby den-den