Hornet's Nest
Story © Steve Zink
This was written for a 1000 word story contest
held by Raven (Jan 2004).
Images provided by Raven and Steve Zink
During his twenty-two years of service in the US Navy, the last seventeen of
which as a special operations SEAL, Ken Reynolds had done just what many think
of when envisioning a career in the Navy. He did duty in so many countries that
he gave up putting pins into the wall map at home when the delineations of the
map could no longer be seen under all the pin heads.
Many SEALs dreaded having to do their work in locales such as the jungles of
Viet Nam, but for Ken the dense green foliage and abundance of life forms to be
found in such environments made him one of the odd men out. He did his best to
make sure he was assigned to whichever SEAL teams would be assigned tasks in
tropical jungles, much to the relief of his comrades who preferred the more open
and mechanized areas of the civilized world. So, when the time came for his
retirement and he could no longer make visits to the dense forests of the
tropics and be paid to do so, Ken put his experience to good use and became a
jungle research specialist for the Botany Department of USC.
In his own mind, Ken was just a dedicated fan of Mother Nature in her hottest
and moistness. To the younger scientists and students who accompanied him on his
trips to the tropics, he became a sort of Indiana
Jones character. Ken never ceased to amaze his partners in exploration with the
ways he seemed to interact with all the flora and fauna they encountered, as
opposed to the way the majority of them did their best to avoid interacting with
the harsh environment. As if that wasn't enough, the skills he'd attained as a
SEAL gave Ken the edge he needed to get the less careful people out of the jams
in which they found themselves. It seemed like nothing could stop their Indiana
Jones of the jungle from having fun while everyone else seemed to struggle.
Then, the unthinkable happened.
During one of the short trips into the Amazon rain forests of Brazil to continue
the documentation of remaining life forms while the forests were being
decimated, those in the working party found their indestructible mate to be
missing. Searching for a lone person in those jungles was nearly impossible, and
all they could do was hope to see Ken reappearing in their midst to ask where
they'd all been. But alas, after a four week wait, no sign of Ken was seen. Two
of the more experienced explorers stayed at the camp while the rest left to go
home, just in case the man both knew could live in the jungle easily came
walking out of the greenery. However, as long as they kept watching at ground
level, they would never spot Ken.
Of course, even if they had looked up, they wouldn't have spotted Ken, either.
For Ken was no longer the forty-six-year-old man who had started the trip with
them. On the day in which he had disappeared, Ken had stumbled onto something
the likes of which he had never before seen in all his trips into tropical
forests. In a clearing devoid of other plant life at the base of a thick boled
tree was what looked like some
kind of amalgam of insect and man, or maybe woman since there were orbs on what
could be its chest. It appeared to be carved and covered with, or molded from,
some kind of copper-like metal. It was so odd looking, though, that Ken wondered
if he had stumbled upon some kind of evidence of alien contact. He found out as
soon as he approached the figure and touched it.
Ken nearly blacked out from the massive amount of changes that started to take
place in his body. Nothing he had ever heard of, seen or even read about in fact
or fiction could have prepared him for the fact that every molecule of his body
was being altered in what seemed like only seconds. One moment he had been a
forty-six-year-old male in thick, tan jungle garb, and only two or three blinks
of the eye, all had been changed.
Radically.
The person who had been Ken Reynolds was now a female appearing to be half as
old or maybe even younger, completely nude and feeling no discomfort in the
intense heat and humidity. Whereas Ken had boasted of still tight and short
black hair, the female now had reddish brown hair going a bit down past her
shoulders. But her hair was by no means her most striking point. From the
midpoint of her back, just below the point where her hair stopped, sprang a set
of nearly clear insect-like wings, two to each side. Each wing appeared to span
four feet or so, and without thinking, she folded her wings back so they hung
straight down her back.
As totally different as the female body was, the mind inside her head still
seemed to belong to Ken. All the years of training and experience had prepared
Ken to handle nearly anything, and while this metamorphosis came close to being
totally beyond his ken, sorting it out quickly gave her a stability totally
unexpected. Something gave her the inclination to sit astride the figure's back
and place her hands upon its head. Suddenly, even quicker than the near
instantaneous body change, a flood of information came from the figure and
nearly overwhelmed her.
Now she knew that this was indeed an alien artifact. It had been left behind an
unknown number of eons ago by ancient intergalactic explorers when they'd noted
the beginnings of human intelligence on the globe they'd been exploring. The
explorers knew that someday another explorer would find their emissary, and in
so doing, become altered into the person who could bring order to a disorderly
world. They had energized the figure to give the discovering explorer all the
powers of their own more insect-like forms in her own human body. The only
thing they hadn't counted upon was that while every member of their race was
what could be considered female, human beings were nearly evenly divided and
more males than females would be explorers.
Had the remaining members of the exploration team looked up while they'd been
watch the ground for Ken, they may have spotted Kira as she practiced flying
amongst and over the tree tops of the rain forest. Yes, she had used all her
newly acquired knowledge to become very much at ease with the very much super
powered person she'd become, and decided that since Ken hardly fit as a name
anymore she would take on the name Kira, Kira Reynolds. Or, when she would be on
patrol to watch for wrong doing to halt, she would be The Hornet. She had toyed
with
the ideas of using names like Wasp or Yellow Jacket, but they were well known
already, and since one of the Navy's best known aircraft carriers during World
War Two was the USS Hornet, that's who she would be. With
the much younger age she found herself at, along with the stinging and flying
powers with which the aliens had empowered her, Kira knew she was in for another
life full of adventure and daring. She picked up the figurine using her ant-like
super strength once she was ready to move on get back to civilization, and moved
it to a cave in the Andes which she then sealed so no one else could find it.
It wouldn't do for a nude Kira to show up in civilization, however, so while
flitting about she collected all the fibres she would need to make The Hornet's
costume. The material would be the right colors of black and yellow to show her
derivation, but to show off she made it so thin and stretchy that nothing at all
of her body shape could be left
to the imagination. The top looked like a very short sleeved leotard of black
with yellow bands, and her thigh high boots were jet black with a thin yellow
band a bit below the top of each. Besides her Hornet costume, she also fashioned
a dress so she could appear in public without drawing too much attention. Kira
knew there was no way
to let everyone know that she used to be Ken, so she let his demise go ahead.
Ken's parents had both passed away many years before, and since he had been
single, nobody would be affected by his loss. She did have to work fast, though,
to get her hands on some of Ken's funds so she'd having something with which to
make a new start as the world's new heroine.
The house she moved into had a small shed in the back yard for the lawn mower
and such, so she put her powers to work in digging a chamber below it. Once it
had been fitted out with her costume parts and other things needed for
operations, she figured if there could be a Bat Cave or a Fortress of Solitude
in the comics, she could have her Hornet's Nest.
Soon, the world would meet its newest heroine, The Hornet!
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