Trade: Slime Sisters (Part 1)

Summary: Following the events of A Giga-Sized Glow-Up, Celes wakes up with powers she has difficulties controlling,  coinciding with terrible, otherworldly visions. She meets more strange slime girls like Feza, but are they friends or foes? 

A trade with MRGIllusion45, who provided the illustrations and the character of Feza; story is written by me.

[Story Listing]

---

Part 1

Celes Pettigrew was an average young girl, born out in the countryside. Her family didn't have much, but they never wanted for more. It was a simple life, but within Celes' small world, she greatly enjoyed her company.

Her father was a rancher by trade, and her mother made clothes for everyone, and patched them up when they were starting to fall apart. Celes had spent many hours with her mother, learning how to sew and knit, and do basic repairs. Over time, she got pretty good at it, but her sunny imagination seemed to go beyond the basic, drab garments on hand. Little Celes often asked for fashion catalogues to flip through; not to buy anything, lord knew their modest abode could ill afford such opulent purchases, but her father, when returning from trips to the city, indulged her curiosity with some magazines from off the rack. Window shopping was free, after all, and with each new volume Celes felt like she was peering through the window, through to a whole other world.

Those out in the country didn't make the sort of money the city folk did, but they made their own fun. Today was the Sunday potluck at the church, and little Celes was helping her mother with a carrot cake. The young girl was goofing around in the kitchen, dabbing a dollop of cream cheese topping on her nose before kneeling down low enough to let the family pet, a big ol' sheepdog, lick it from her face. Her laughter was infectious, resonating with an echoey quality about it; a gentle admonishment from her mother set her back to the task at hand; her father was taking some much needed rest in the salon, and they'd need to be quiet and courteous. Celes understood, and took to some of the other tasks with vim and vigour; she proudly took charge of grating the carrots into a bowl.

As they put the cake into the oven, Celes would feverishly rattle out ideas for decorations she had in mind. Instead of a boring old white cream, why don't they add more colours? The mother humoured her; dyes were expensive, but they could certainly make their own, once beets were on sale.

DING! The over timer went off, and Celes hurriedly excused herself to take the cake out of the oven. She slipped on the oven mitts as she was told, and was careful to open the oven door without swinging it open, but as she reached inside to pull out the hot pan...

"!"

Celes' eyes gawked as, in the blink of an eye, an inky shade of purple had consumed her forearms, even enveloping the over mites! The tips of her hands seemed to continue to grow on their own, like oozing tendrils, or tentacles.

Celes yelped, her grip on the pan slipping through her slippery tentacle-arms. As it crashed to the floor, she hugged herself, her arms (now double in length) wrapping around her torso. She squeezed her eyes tightly, hoping things would go back to normal. She pinched herself, hoping to wake up from this nightmare...

...She pinched herself? Celes opened her eyes, and looked down again, only to find her hands were back to normal. Trembling, she raised them in front of her, turning to look at them from both sides. She was puzzled, confused, concerned...

Crack...

She glanced down, seeing the floor underneath her splitting into a terrible fissure, starting at where the pan she had dropped had collapsed, splitting in two. Her eyes followed the cracks as they travelled up the wall, splintering into new trails of destructure. Her entire home trembled, as if afraid of what was about to happen.

She clutched to a countertop, legs feeling weak. Was this an earthquake!? She cried out for her mother and father, but her words fell on deaf ears. She winced as rubble and dust began to trickle from the ceiling...

The last thing she saw was the roof coming down on top of her, Celes' beloved home falling to pieces all around her. Planks of wood, piping, chunks of plaster collapsed around her, as everything seemed to collapse all at once. For a moment, everything went black...

But the next waking moment for Celes would come too soon.Celes didn't know how she had ever found the strength, as the next thing she knew she had dug herself out of the collapsed heap that used to be her home. She was surrounded by the broken pieces of her own home.

She called for mama and papa, hollering all around her, but no one answered. A crushing loneliness was weighing upon her, gripped by an unfamiliar terror. As she frantically glanced around for answers, she gawked her head upwards, towards the skies. Where once they were bright blue and calming, now they were a stark, ghastly blood red.

Celes found herself in darkness as a large shadow stretched from far behind her. There was an eerie silence, a cold stillness. Celes trembled, looking over her shoulder as she turned to face what it was.

Celes' face contorted into an expression mixed with horror, disgust and terror as she gazed upwards. A monstrous, towering entity,

It was something she had never seen in her small little world. It was a hulking colossus, a vast ocean of shifting ooze, flesh that folded over itself, tore open and regenerated with the rhythm of the ocean tide. Skulls, rib cages, and other bones rose and sunk within the mass. Its molten body consisted of a myriad of saturated hues.

The horror she witnessed was not one of any world Celes had known. Celes' tiny, happy little world would never create a monster such as this, not even in her wildest fantasy. But watching the creature, the size of a mountain at least, loom over her, made her feel as small as ever.

But the strangest sight of all was that the creature had a face. And not just any face... her face, contorted into an emotionless grimace. Celes gawked at the sight. Why did this thing have her face? Why did it wear her face!?

Suddenly, the creature shifted, reaching a limb towards Celes, a tendril that oozed as if it was bleeding, the skin popping and boiling. Celes collapsed on her behind as a large hand hovered closer and closer to her. The world was turning black...

No... NO!

---

FOOOOOOOSH!

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"

Celes wailed as she shot up, covering her eyes and face. There was a crash of water that she didn't see through her splayed palms, her fists clenching as if to wake up from a terrible nightmare.

Bong, bong... Celes paused, sensations coming back to her. There was a salty ocean breeze, gentle on her skin, the distant ringing of bells... a pungent, fishy smell about her.

She carefully lowered her hands. Her tired eyes traced the inky purple patterns of purple, slimy skin... a far cry from the humanity she had enjoyed in her dream ever so briefly... a warm memory, now warped by... what was that?

"...What's that smell?" Celes muttered. She lowered her arms to get a better look at herself, and her surroundings. First she glanced down...

"...O-oh my god-"

The first strange sight was that she had, in fact, not woken up in her own warm bed... but in the ocean. She studied how her lower body flowed deep underwater... she couldn't tell how deep she was going.

The second strange sight was the outfit she was wearing... an elegant, form-fitting get-up, fashioned from seaweed, coral... and the secret ingredient, slime. Celes studied the lime-green patterns that weaved throughout, pinching the slick fabric between her fingers.

The events of the previous day were slowly coming back to her. She... thought it was the previous day. She wasn't sure, as her foggy mental faculties were still recovering...

"Ugh," Celes mumbled, peeling strands of stray ocean junk she had picked up, casting it to the ocean. "Was I sleeping in the ocean? What is... o-oh my god."

Celes turned to face the shore line, the last haunting realization coming to her. She was enormous. The lighthouse on the pier looked hardly as tall as her index finger was long. The food carts resembled little tin toy cars.

"!" She covered her mouth as she took a closer look at the sorry state of the area! It seemed that a tidal wave had recently smashed the shore-facing stores... a wave she must've created when she jerked awake from her nightmare! She lowered a trembling hand to steady herself...

Crunch! The top three floors of a nearby apartment complex collapsed under her tight grip, and Celes recoiled. There was a faint din of screaming and panic, sirens playing out. She waved her arms in front of her.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean, I..."

She covered her face, and made to slink away. She was only making things worse, as her loud voice caused the buildings to shake!

She wanted to curl up into a ball and die... slowly, she retreated back into the sea to reflect on her situation.

---

About a week had passed since Celes' inadvertent attack on the mainland. Celes hoped that her sudden titanic growth would go away on its own... but sure as her seaweed dress hugged her curves, she showed no signs of shrinking down to a normal size.

Celes would rise again from the ocean, slowly, only to find the pier more quiet, still, lifeless. Sure enough, the authorities had the place evacuated, and made the whole area a No Entry zone due to the repeated giant monster incidents. Celes had been getting her news from newscasts played on billboards.

Tired of soaking in the pier, Celes stretched her legs, in a metaphorical sense—her entire lower body melded together into one big pillar of slime, wrapped in her seaweed dress. She oozed onto the pier. Sure, the area was off-limits, but it wasn't like any of the patrolmen nearby were going to tell the giant, fifty foot slime woman where she could and couldn't go.

...Celes thought this to herself. She grumbled miserably, admitting she'd probably follow orders anyway.

She lurched through the open streets, resting her hands on any buildings nearby to steady her movement. She glanced down, seeing several cars get lifted and tumble over, flooded by a wave of purple slime that collected at her feet, slipping into open store fronts. Celes grimaced; there was nothing to be done about it, and she wanted to go for a walk. She at least wanted to see the state of her shop.

...A romantic-sounding idea, until she had finally made her way to it. Tucked between so many other businesses, it was puny at her scale. She at least wished it was the size of a dollhouse to her scale, but it didn't even measure up that far. There was a small notice on her door, but as she hunched over and squinted, she couldn't make out the tiny writing.

Frustrated, her grip tore out a chunk of concrete from a laundromat, and Celes' annoyance dissipated into resignation. She collapsed onto her knees,  casting the rubble from her slick fingers and settling them into her lap.

She hugged herself, hanging her head. She could hear the thwipthwipthwip of a news copter, giving live updates on her movements through the city, like some B-movie horror monster. She had heard the names they came up for her. The "Purple Ooze" chief among them.

Celes sighed miserably. She had a name. She used to be somebody, just like the people of this town that took her in. And in a matter of days, she was nothing more than a monster to them.

"Why me...?" Celes muttered. "Why'd I turn out like this? I never asked for this, I..."

Celes paused, catching her image in the reflection of the windows of a nearby skyscraper. Celes' eyes widened at the sight of herself. It must've been her mind playing tricks on her, but the Celes she saw in her reflection was human again. There was the pretty outfit she wore around town she had made herself, and her skin didn't ooze like slime; it was peach-hued, soft... her hands just a little chafed from all the work on the form. Celes missed her pretty red hair...

She found herself raising a hand to press to the mirror, to feel for her old hands, her old humanity... but the sight of her outstretched purple palm caused Celes to grimace. Celes struggled to maintain eye contact; even the wistful, nostalgic reflection of herself wore a similar, tired frown. Her purple palm clung to the side of the building, before lowering; her blue eyes wandered, looking for a distraction from her own profound sense of shame...

OoooooooOoooo~

"...Ah?"

All of a sudden, there was a strange, otherworldly melody that filled the air. Celes paused, her body slumping; those self-loathing thoughts seemed to ebb away in an instant, replaced with... nothing at all. Celes slowly blinked her eyes, swaying as if in a trance.

Out of the corner of her eye, there was a curious flash of yellow. It was upwards... on the top of the skyscraper?

Celes rose up, getting her metaphorical feet underneath her as she straightened up, effortlessly reaching the full height of the skyscraper. Her eyes narrowed on the sight of a strange person in a glossy yellow get up... a raincoat perhaps? Was it a man in a trenchcoat? It was awfully shiny and glossy, reflecting strangely in the sunlight.

Why was he standing on the ledge like that? Celes was putting together a dreadful conclusion—this place was off-limits, after all. Celes snapped out of her trance for a spell as worry swelled up within her bosom.

"S-sir??" Celes gulped, extending a massive hand, hoping to catch him if he jumped. "Please don't do this. I-I wanna help you, so if we can talk about-"

OoooooOOOooo... that same melody again, coming from the man. It sounded as though it belonged to a woman, the siren song resonating within Celes' soul. Her eyes went blank as she stood there, at attention. The man's slick yellow trenchcoat seemed to writhe and bubble excitedly.

"Easy there. Just sit still." The man croaked, not moving a muscle.

"Uurgh...?" Celes slurred, that sense of dread welling up within her as her body didn't seem to react to her mind. She did, in fact, not move a muscle...

FWEEEEEEEE... From the man's yellow brimmed hat, around the sleeves of his yellow coat and even from his yellow boots, thin yellow strands, hardly perceivable to the naked human eye, nevermind Celes' colossal eye, unfurled and waved through the air, launching towards Celes.

Celes yelped as she felt dozens upon dozens of stings make their way through her body as her amorphous, semi-liquid body was penetrated by the strings. It was like being bitten by a hundred tiny mosquitos. The threads wove in and out of her form, snaking through her outstretched arms, wrapping around her torso and lower body.

Celes gawked as the yellow getup the man was wearing seemed to fly off, splattering into Celes' slimy bangs. It wriggled and writhed, producing more tiny strings that all grew, outstretched, and rooted deep into Celes.

Celes wanted to object to this, but her mouth wasn't working right. Neither were her arms. Her eyes glazed over as a strange, foreign sensation washed over her, static filling her mind. She froze up, wincing as the strings wove in and out of her like weeds.

"Nn... n-no..." Celes croaked as her vision went fuzzy, and then black...