Hornet's Nest

Steve's Story Index

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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