Untitled

The BodsquadTM

The Pandora Syndrome

Prologue:

     Cassie Cates sat her sketchbook down on the coffee table, brushed a strand of her long, thin, blonde hair
out of her face, and got up to answer the doorbell. she was a few inches shy of six feet in height, very skinny
and leggy, with glasses whose lenses looked like the bottoms of glass soft drink bottles. Her T-shirt and jeans
hung loose on her, looking like they were five sizes too large.
     "Hi, gang," Cassie greeted her friends as she opened the door. "Uncle Frank'll be here soon. Come on in,
and I'll show yunz what I've been working on."
    "You've finished the character sketches?" inquired Rachel Lieberman, a black haired, brown eyed girl about
five inches shorter than Cassie. At approximately three hundred pounds, her figure gained her as much derision
from her schoolmates as did Cassie's, and her slacks and blouse fit rather snugly.
    "Penciled and inked," Cassie announced proudly. She was drawing, and co-writing, with her friend Myron,
a comic that featured herself and her four girlfriends as costumed heroines, with Myron as one of the many
villains. "I colored some photocopies of them."
    "How do we look?" inquired Tina Marino, who unlike her companions, didn't look the least bit nerdy. With
blonde hair darker than Cassie's, and a cute, nicely shaped figure, Tina fell somewhere between above average
and pretty on the scale used by high school students to judge their peers. Tina was dressed, as she habitually
was, in a tiny miniskirt and a low-cut blouse.
    "Knowing Cassie's talent, probably fantastic," said Sindi Russo, a somewhat chubby girl of mixed Italian
and Japanese ancestry. Her buck teeth, and interest in horror, had made her the butt of more than one vampire
joke. She was clad in a black halter and black jeans, with a blooded ring piercing her navel.
    "I wish she could just draw us nicer looking for real," Jody Stewart said wistfully. A little taller than Tina,
she was a Black girl with a slim but pleasant figure, and a rather bad acne problem. She was wearing a T-shirt
and stretch shorts, the latter fitting her bottom like a second skin.
    "C'mon, yunz jags, quit jawin' and let's see the pics!" Myron Baines insisted. Small and wiry, he was the
stereotypical nerd, with thick horn rimmed glasses held together with tape, corduroy pants, and a long-sleeved
shirt with an overstuffed pocket protector.
    "All right, here you go," Cassie sighed, handing each one a letter sized piece of paper.
    "This is perfect!" Myron exclaimed, intensely studying his comic book altered. "Pylon is such a stud!"
    "Thanks, " Cassie smiled. The figure in the illustration, while bearing a strong resemblance to Myron's
face, had a build that would have been at home on Muscle Beach. Pylon was clad only in a gladiator style
kilt, with leather sandals and gloves; long blonde hair cascaded down his back in a thick ponytail, and his skin
was tanned a golden bronze. "It's what you wanted. How about the rest of them?"
    "I wish I really looked like this," Rachel said wistfully, showing the others the picture. In it, she was svelte,
her hair nicely styled, wearing a yellow one piece bathing suit style outfit of the kind popularized in comics,
with matching long gloves, short boots, and a short cape. All were trimmed in light blue. "I bet I could turn
some heads. Too bad Riftwitch will never be anything but a comic book character."
    "I know how you feel," Jody agreed. Her fictional altered, Mosaic, had a clear complexion, fuller figure,
and curly, dark purple hair. She was almost clad in a pair of thin white straps that reached from a white collar,
across her breasts, meeting at her crotch. Green high gloves with circular cutouts, a matching leg band and
necklace, and white high heels completed the outfit.
    "What do you think of me?" Tina asked, holding her picture up. In it, as Eden, the nature goddess, she had
skin colored a pretty mint green, her hair and eyes a lighter shade. She was wearing a clamshell appliqué' over
her crotch, a peace sign medallion and anklet, and a yellow flower lei. Other than that, she was naked.
    "It's nice. I could picture you walking around like that," Sindi laughed. In her picture, as Nosferata, she was
statuesque, with long, wild, red hair, fangs instead of buck teeth, and was outfitted in a tiny chain mail bikini,
like those often bedecking women in fantasy artwork. a long, dark purple cape billowed out behind her; black
stockings covered her legs, above red high heeled platform shoes, and long, purple gloves covered most of
the length of her arms. Nosferata's outfit was topped off by a collar made of bones, and a horde of blooded
jewelry; earrings, anklets, many bracelets, and a waist chain, with another chain hanging down from it and
disappearing underneath the bikini bottom. "I wouldn't mind being able to wear this. How did you turn out,
Cassie?"
    "Look for yourself," Cassie offered, holding out the image of her own altered, Persona. On paper,
Cassie was sans glasses, with a slim but curvy figure, and thick, bright neon pink hair falling to her waist.
She was dressed in a pale blue one piece with pink trim, blue stockings and fingerless gloves, pink high heels,
and a gold rhomboid pendant on a long chain hanging from her neck.
    "I can sure see the anime influence in the hair colors," Sindi pointed out. "Wendi'll love it."
    "Thanks. I'll have something drawn for her soon, too," Cassie promised her, referring to Sindi's younger
sister.
    "It really looks good," Jody complimented her. "How's everything else coming?"
    "I've been laying out the first story, and I've got notes for a truckload of villains, and alien races."
Cassie assured her. "I thinks Myron's got a lot of ideas, too."
    "Yeah, I do, but I don't have most of them fully developed yet." Myron gazed a moment at the artwork.
"I do have some ideas for improving some of the character designs, though."
    "I know what you have in mind, Myron," Rachel told him. "Keep it to yourself, you're a pervert."
    Myron's attempted retort was broken off by the sound of a car horn outside the house. Cassie gathered up
the artwork and headed for the door. "Uncle Frank's here. Let's go."
    Cassie led her friends outside, where a battered old Chevy van waited. Cassie got into the passenger seat,
while the others piled into the back. At the wheel was a pleasant-looking blonde man in his early forties,
wearing jeans, a gray golf shirt, and glasses nearly as thick as Cassie's own. Cassie gave him a light kiss on
the cheek, then fastened her seat belt as they pulled away from the curb.
    "How's things going at the lab?" Cassie inquired of her uncle.
    "Great. We're going to have our first products on the market in a few months. I think you kids'll
find our work interesting."
    "Just what kinda work are yunz guys doin' there?" Myron asked. "Just why didja invite us over to the
lab?"
    "We have a radical new manufacturing process that we're using to make some interesting computer
equipment. Our first product will be a helmet that allows an operator to directly interface with a computer.
After Cassie showed me the comic she's drawing, I thought the six of you might like to see the lab," Frank
explained.
    "What does your lab have to do with comic books?" Jody questioned.
    "Nothing, really. I think you'll understand why after you see the lab," he assured her, as he pulled up in
front of a small, recently remodeled building. "And here we are. Just follow me."
    Frank Cates led his niece and her friends through the front doors, down several hallways separated by steel
doors he unlocked with a magnetic ID card. He finally stopped before a pair of doors marked 'Authorized
Personnel Only' and turned to the teens. "Well, this is where we make the magic," he announced proudly.
"Follow me." Frank ran his card through a reader, and a click pronounced the doors unlocked. He pulled
one of the doors open, and ushered Cassie and her friends inside.
    The room, perhaps the size of a small movie theater, was dominated by a transparent cylindrical chamber
reaching from floor to ceiling. Inside it, many pairs of disembodied hands appeared to be examining a block
of an unknown substance, about the size of a small office refrigerator. Around the sides of the chamber, several
technicians sat with their eyes closed, helmets tethered with long cables covering most of their heads.
    "What are they doing? Cassie inquired.
    "That block contains millions of tiny nanomachines. If we're successful, they should be able to enter a body
at the cellular level and remove any unwanted substance, like a poison, or the virus that causes AIDS. I like
the hands that are inspecting it, was just created inside the chamber," Frank explained.
    "What're the hands attached to?" asked Sindi.
    "Nothing. Inside that chamber, we can actually control and change reality. Physical laws are determined
by the operators, and we can even create solid matter, like the nanites, out of nothing." he beamed. "You
see, imagine that all of reality, as we know it, is supported by an extra dimensional structure, like a skeleton
supporting a body. This supporting structure affects the way the outer body looks and behaves, and our
machine is capable of 'rewriting' the structure's code, so that the reality supported by it changes. The hands
don't have to be supported, and the operators can sense anything the hands do. These hands, for example,
can actually sense more than all of a normal person's senses put together. We've even created bodies in the
chamber that the operators use occasionally."
    "Get outta town!" Myron exclaimed. He seemed to display a look of hunger as he contemplated the
implications of the device. "You mean those helmets can actually let yunz guys use thoughts to control what's
in there?"
    "Yes, and objects that we're happy with can have their forms and properties 'set', so they can be brought
out here into the real world when the chamber is idled. When we're using bodies in there that we've made, we can feel and sense everything they do."
    "If we were hooked up," Cassie questioned, "could we, for example, see what it would be like to be the
characters in our comic?"
    "Of course. And since we control the physical laws within the chamber, your super powers would actually
work."
    "Wow, I could be thin," Rachel said wistfully.
    "My skin could be clear," mused Jody.
    "We all could have a lot of fun," Tina agreed. While her appearance never earned her the teasing that her
friends had to put up with, her intense love of nature, and her willingness to defend her 'uncool' friends got
her lumped in with the rest of the nerds. "Could we try it?"
    "I was just about to offer. That's why I brought you all here," Frank smiled, turning to his employees. "Take
and early lunch, folks. Let's give the kids a chance to try being super heroes for a while.
    After the workers saved the data for their project and left, Frank assisted each teen-ager in getting hooked
up, then worked a few controls on a console opposite them. "Just concentrate, and you'll get the hang of it."
    A moment later, Cassie found herself inside the chamber, staring out at her 'real' body, her friends, and
Uncle Frank. She glanced down at herself, and , as far as she could tell without a mirror, indeed now looked
like Persona. She concentrated and levitated above the floor of the chamber, as Rachel and Myron materialized
as Riftwitch and Pylon, respectively, beneath her.
    "Hey, this is great!" Myron exclaimed. He commanded the chamber to materialize a steel girder, which he
easily hefted and twisted into a pretzel shape. He tossed it up to Cassie, as Tina, Jody, and Sindi faded in.
    "I wish we could always look like this," Rachel sighed wishfully. She concentrated, and a shimmering,
circular portal appeared in front of her, with a second behind her. She stuck her head through the first, and
was now looking through its mate at her backside. "It's nice to not a need a sigh on my but that says 'wide
load'!"
    "How about this?" Jody flew up next to Cassie, and touched the twisted girder. As she focused her
attention, her skin took on the color and hardness of the steel. "Now I'm really a hard body."
    "I'm hungry," Sindi purred, eyeing her friends. "Any takers?"
    The other five just stared at her.
    "Okay, just thought I'd ask. I won't bite anybody who doesn't want me to."
    "I wish we could stay in this chamber forever," Tina said, as a tangled, twisting mass of flowering vines
sprouted beneath her, carrying her aloft. She almost looked like she was reclining on a throne as she surveyed her companions.
    "Yeah , it would be nice," Cassie admitted. "But we'll only look like this in our comic."
    "Speaking of which, I have a few costume changes and character enhancements I'd like to run by yunz,"
Myron put in. "As long as we can all see each other, let me know what yunz ladies think of this."
    As Myron spoke, Cassie, Sindi, and Rachel found their forms changing. Cassie's chest expanded to much
bigger than even she had ever fantasized about having, her hips widened. and her uniform, while retaining its
colors, shrank to a tiny thong bikini that nearly failed to cover her nipples and crotch.
    Rachel's chest also grew, although not as much as Cassie's, and her uniform was reduced to two tiny yellow
straps trimmed in blue; one vertical from throat to crotch, one horizontal across her chest.
    While Sindi's appearance didn't change, the bikini disappeared, showing a red heart on a chain hanging from
her right nipple, with a similar pair piercing her labia. The vertical chain descending from her waist chain
disappeared into a totally hairless crotch; none of them, not even a surprised Myron, bothered to ask what the
other end was fastened to.
    "Is this necessary?" Sindi demanded, drawing her cloak around her.
    "It does seem a bit extreme," Cassie added, turning to look out at her uncle, who was lifting the lid from
a box of chocolates someone had left on the console.
    "Yeah, you are such a schmuck, Myron Baines," Rachel scowled. "How the hell would you expect a
woman to keep this top up? I already spent too many years with a big chest, and it's not much fun!"
    "If you weren't invulnerable, I'd tear your throat out," Sindi hissed, displaying long, red painted nails that
looked as if they could tear through solid steel. "I think the old look was..."
    "Just what they wanted!" Tina yelled, flying down to hover in front of Myron. "How would you like to
look like this?"
    Tina pointed at Myron, and he reverted back to his normal form. He concentrated, and switched back to
Pylon. Tina changed him back to Myron. He changed himself back to Pylon. She turned him into Myron
again.
    While Tina and Myron played tug-o-war with his form, Cassie rolled her eyes and sighed. She was tempt-
ed to step in between them, but maybe she should just let them fight it out? None of the others had ever
been fond of Myron, but Tina especially couldn't stand him. She looked pleadingly at her uncle through
the chamber wall. He just shrugged and smiled, reaching for another piece of candy...
    The candy box exploded, hurtling Frank across the lab and shattering the chamber and fusing the controls.
The six teens were abruptly back in their bodies, acutely aware of the smell of smoke. They pulled the helmets off of their heads; that's when they discovered that, except for Myron, their bodies were now identical to the
characters they had been acting out inside the now ruined chamber.
    Cassie seemed too distraught to notice her expanded figure and shrunken attire: she flew, quite literally,
across the lab to kneel next to Frank and cradle his broken body in her arms. She looked up at her friends
with tears streaming down her face.
    "He's dead!"

Part One

Chapter One

Dear Diary,
09/06/98

    Sorry I haven't written in you lately, but it's been a hectic two weeks. I've got to get up for school
in the morning, but I want to get this caught up to date before I go to bed.
    I still can't quite believe Uncle Frank's gone! He was the only person who seemed to really understand
me. He wasn't nerdy or anything, like me, but he wasn't a snob, either, and he always took the time to
explain stuff I didn't understand.
    The funeral wasn't easy. It didn't help that Aurelie showed up: she probably just did it to irritate the
family. I mean, she didn't respect Uncle Frank when they were married, so there wasn't any reason to
show up now. There's something about here that really bothers me, more than usual, but right now I'm not
sure what's wrong. Maybe my psychic powers are trying to tell me something.
    The reading of the will was a shocker; Uncle Frank left everything to me! Like, what am I going to do
with an up-and-coming high tech company? I'm an artist, dammit, not a scientist. I don't have the heart
to just sell it off, though. And I'm not sure when I can get the nerve to actually go over Uncle Frank's
house. I suppose I should, though. Somebody should look after the place.
    Well, for better or worse, I'm a real super heroine now. I suppose I'd be more excited if I didn't have
Uncle Frank's death hovering over me, but it is kinda neat. Except for pulling the handle off of the car
door at the funeral... All this strength is going to take some getting used to. And I keep picking up stray
thoughts from people...
    Like when we were giving our report to the police after the accident. I know we look kind of different
now, but this one cop couldn't take his eyes off of my chest, and his thoughts were, um...well, I guess I
should be flattered, but it still made me feel funny.
    And no one has any idea how the bomb got into the lab, or why. Maybe I can find out, if I learn to use
these powers better. I owe Uncle Frank that much.
    At first mom and dad thought I had some kinda boob job. I pointed out that i couldn't have done it that
quick, and that still wouldn't account for my wider hips and extra muscle mass. I'm fifty pounds heavier
than I used to be! They understand, I think, but it's just as much a shock to them as it is to me.
    I've got a blonde wig and baggy clothes, and so far it's worked, but tomorrow will be the acid test; can
we pull off this secret identity thing? At least I'm not wearing all that make-up, like Tina. Jody and I just
need 'normal looking' wigs, and Rachel and Sindi just look like they lost weight over the summer. They'll
probably think Sin just got her teeth fixed and dyed her hair that bloody red color.
    Myron is really pissed at Tina! He still looks like he used to. At least he has Pylon's strength and
invulnerability. I guess the tug-o-war between him and Tina made him like that.
    I've noticed that Uncle Frank's machine somehow affected things outside the lab. In the comic, Dad
wasn't crippled, and sure enough, the day after the explosion he started walking again. He hasn't been in
the wheelchair since.
    This scares me. What else in the world has changed, or is going to? All of us, not just me and Myron,
had a hand in creating villains and aliens and stuff for our comic. How much of that stuff is going to
happen? Take Aurelie, for example.
    She belongs to this militant environmental (emphasis on the mental!) group called G.A.I.A. Tina and
Wendi based a whole bunch of villains on Aurelie and her chums. If they really do become the characters
from the comic, we're all in a lot of trouble.
    Maybe even worse, we don't have any idea what some of Myron's plans were for the comic. If every idea
we all had for the comic becomes reality, a lot of villains we know nothing about will be crawling out of
the woodwork. I kinda feel like it's all my fault, since the comic was initially my idea.
    Well, I'm going to bed now. I'll try to write more tomorrow; school should prove interesting. Good
night.