She Hulk of Earth 2, Chapter 1
By Eegore, eegore959@yahoo.com
An accident in a military lab gives a pudgy, forlorn janitor a powerful gift


2:03 a.m. McNail Air Force Base, New Mexico

Echoes bounced off the walls of the cavernous room as Sheila Huckaby rolled
the mop bucket across the linoleum. She stopped in mid-stride, pressed a hand
to her hip and groaned.

"It's worse than ever tonight," she mumbled, twisting slowly at the waist,
trying to find a position of relief from her arthritic joints. "Took nearly
double the pills I was supposed to, and I still feel it."

A security badge clipped to a belt loop flopped against her stomach as Sheila
pulled the mop out of the bucket and began to scrub the last section of floor.
Off in her own world of rhythmic monotony, she pushed aside the stabs of pain
that came with every mop stroke. Another day, another day...

Sheila thought little of her fantastic surroundings, of the lights and
switches and machinery. It was just a job, just a job. Her dad's stature as a
retired colonel had helped her get the position, which paid well and, frankly,
gave her the solitude she usually preferred. Her job was simply to clean
floors, dust surfaces and empty the trash in Sector G, a row of gray,
antiseptic rooms that at this hour provided nothing more than a low hum in her
ears. Maybe it was the flourescent lights, maybe something else. Again, she
didn't care.

Sheila's rheumatoid arthritis had plagued her since age 17; she was now 26.
The ailment had done more than clog her joints. It slowly, inexorably, had
sapped her will, leaving a young woman who shirked any physical, mental or
social challenge. She had few friends. She had gone out on a date once, four
years ago, but was miserable the entire time, and it was clear her blank
emotions had their effect on the boy, because he never called again. She
became almost -- almost -- numb to the dull aches she lived with all the time.
However, the arthritis made the simplest gestures risky business. When getting
a drinking glass from a cupboard, for instance, she didn't know when a stab
from her damaged muscles would make her drop the glass just as she lifted it
away.

Her emptiness inside was reflected outside. She was overweight -- plump around
the middle, an extra chin wrapped around her neck. A chart accompanying an
article she read in People suggested she was carrying 45 pounds too many for a
woman her age standing 5-foot-7. And she was carrying most of that extra
weight around the middle and in her rump, since her arms and legs were thin,
almost gangly. Brown, stringy hair fell straight off her scalp, barely
brushing her shoulders.

None of this mattered to Sheila Huckaby now as she finished the floor,
plunging the mop back in the bucket and picking up a rag. Her breath was
ragged, a sheen of sweat had formed on her forehead, but she didn't slow down.
"I should have realized this job would wear me out," she muttered as she began
to carefully wipe down some desks. "But I can't quit. I couldn't face daddy if
I did."

She pushed the rag back and forth, moving from a desk to a control panel. As
always, she was careful around the lights and switches and digital readouts,
making sure not to slide a lever out of position or press a switch. But she
had been doing this routine for three weeks, and her eyes and hands had become
attuned to the sensitive areas. She took one step up to a second bank of
controls and ran her hand from side to side, under and over. She reached her
arm out to the lower corner of the panel, wiping the rag across its face.

Every other night, the panel covering the button had been closed. It was part
of the shutdown procedure the technicians followed every afternoon: "Shut and
lock access panel to emergency power toggle." The key to the panel was 32
miles away, in a pair of pants draped across a chair in a technician's
bedroom. They had forgotten to do it. An honest mistake. Operator error.

Sheila pushed the rag across the panel. The pressure of her hand hopped off
the panel's smooth surface and dropped into a recess that housed a bright-red
button. Two fingers pushed across and against the button. There was a faint
click.

"Oh. What was tha..."

A yellow light began to spin above the main control panel. What had she done?
she thought. She knew immediately she had accidentally pressed something she
shouldn't have. But the flashing yellow light was the only reaction she could
see or hear. Except...

That always-present hum was being overwhelmed by something else. It was
another hum, but louder, throatier, almost like a roar heard from a distance.
And it seemed to be rising in pitch. Sheila, growing more than a little
anxious, looked for the source of the sound. But in this cavernous, metallic
room, with most of the lights extinguished, the sound seemed to come from
everywhere.

Then a flood light snapped on, illuminating one corner of the room. And Sheila
saw the source of the hum/roar. It was a long, silvery machine covered in
switches and tubes and glass-like spheres that pulsed with a green light. The
pulses matched the rhythm of the machine's building sound, which was now a
combination of a low-frequency rumble and a high-pitched scream.

Oh, god, it's a weapon, she thought. And it's pointed at me.

Indeed, the emergency toggle, designed to shut down the device, had in this
case brought it to life. And the sensors inside the MT37 Gamma Cannon had done
their job, locking on the heat signature and phermonal traces of the room's
only possible organic target. It needed only 30 seconds to go online, warm up,
lock on and fire. Twenty-seven seconds had passed since the button was
pressed. Sheila stared at the cannon's glowing tip. She was petrified to the
spot.

"D-daddy, I'm sorr..."

Angry cords of lethal, emerald radiation exploded out of the cannon, striking
Sheila and enveloping her in a shimmering, pulsing green ball. She buckled
under the force of the bolts, falling backward. She wanted to scream, tried
to, but her voice was strangled. Or maybe she was screaming, but couldn't hear
it over the cannon's whine. She couldn't tell, couldn't use any of her senses.
The gamma ripped around her, into her, through her.

The base's scientists had told the brass that the MT37 would be an unbeatable
weapon. There was no way to stop its vicious attack on organic matter, they
said. The radiation bores down to the cellular level, where it makes the cells
explode. They had tried the beam on numerous animals. In every case, there
were one or two violent shudders, then death. A chimpanzee named Heidi had
lasted the longest: six seconds.

The digital clock on the cannon read four seconds since it had fired on
Sheila. Her body was shaking, bucking faster than her muscles could ever
achieve on their own. Spasms rolled through her, making her arms and legs jerk
side to side. The radiation felt like hot daggers ripping through her, tearing
her apart. A drop of blood slipped out of her nose.

Six seconds, seven seconds, eight...

The gamma tunneled into every cell, screamed its power at Sheila Huckaby's
body, demanding that it give in. And at that cellular level, the gamma found
... something else. A rare configuration of DNA greeted the radiation,
embracing it instead of succumbing to it. The gamma also found a deeply
submerged will inside a young woman's brain, along with a rich treasure of
fantasies about herself that she had never shared with others, about being
healthy and beautiful and strong.

And it found residual chemicals from years of steroid use for arthritis, along
with the double dose Sheila had taken that evening.

One in a million.

Sheila's body began to absorb the gamma energy, ingesting it like a beast
maddened by hunger. The radiation awoke the impossible possibilities locked
inside her DNA, kickstarted by the steroids and guided by her adolescent
fantasies. The pulse inside her continued to build in intensity, while the hot
stabs of pain started to subside. Sheila began to regain control of her
consciousness, but she had lost any sense of time or place. She was in a green
cocoon that was keeping her safe. She felt a rush of serenity and confidence
that everything would be all right. She would be OK...

The MT37, reacting to the non-irradication of the target, doubled the energy
coursing from the cannon.

Sheila threw her head back as a searing flash ricocheted through her body. Her
mouth parted in a low moan as warm waves rolled through her, washing over the
young woman's chubby frame and stoking a heat building between her legs. Her
shoulders convulsed and her hips began to rock as gamma-spawned spikes of
pleasure hit her again and again. "OOOoooo-aaaaaAAAHHH!" she cried as they
rose in frequency and intensity. Sheila rolled her head from side to side,
drowning in a powerful, sexual ecstasy, embracing sensations she had avoided
all her life. After a few seconds that, for her, seemed to last 10 times as
long, the waves began to subside, leaving behind a glowing, undulating warmth
that danced inside her. And somewhere in her subconscious, rising slowly to
her conscious mind, was the knowledge that something big was coming, that she
was going somewhere no one had ever gone, and that nothing would ever be the
same.

Every inch of her flesh tingled. And under her flesh, she felt something that
demanded release. She was engorged with gamma radiation, like a nuclear bomb
at critical mass. A faint, green glow seemed to be seeping out of her body and
toward the energy web surrounding her. The glow deepened and spread over her
flesh, which was convulsing and undulating. The same hue had taken over her
blue eyes, which now looked liked two polished emeralds. The gamma radiation
had put Sheila Huckaby at the precipice of the fantastic, and at that moment,
her mind cleared just enough for her to embrace what she had received. A wry
smile played across her lips. She rose to one knee and threw her arms out to
her sides, fingertips sliding through the emerald energy web. Then she spoke
one word in a growling rasp, a word that she somehow knew would be the
trigger, the detonator.

"PUH-POOWWW-EEERRRRR!!!!"

In an instant, the pain returned, intertwined with the now-pounding pulses of
energy. But this pain was different than the stinging stabs the Gamma Cannon
had delivered earlier. This sensation actually felt like something to which
she was all too familiar: an aching in her bones. Somewhere under the scream
of the MT37, Sheila heard the indescribable sound of marrow building and
rebuilding itself, becoming longer and thicker. That sound was joined by the
groaning, churning tones of skin stretching, sinew lengthening and muscle
expanding in every direction. She moaned as her thighs pressed against each
other, then began to push apart and squeeze against her gray jeans as her
emaciated quadriceps swelled and shivered and formed thick, sensuous curves
and valleys.

Green, glowing tendrils rose from Sheila's flesh and wrapped around her
shoulders, which responded by pushing outward and forming two rounded anchors
for her arms. The glow glided down each arm, slowing around her biceps and
triceps, which grew in opposite directions, filling up with swelling cords of
muscle. She bent her left forearm, which also was beginning to grow, and her
bicep surged outward, tightening into a rock-hard ball that shot jade sparks
into the charged air.

Still perched on one knee, Sheila began to rock back and forth, side to side,
her hips on a sensuous swivel. The bottom of her blue denim shirt pulled up
and away from her jeans, revealing the flesh of a stomach and hips in which 35
pounds of fat had melted away, leaving a taut surface shimmering with sweat
and the gamma fire burning within her. Stomach muscles rose into mounded
definition, coiling and uncoiling as her hips swayed, every shift stoking the
heat pressing against her jeans.

5-foot-7, 5-foot-9, 10, 11, 6-foot-1...it was as if the gamma radiation
building within Sheila had demanded a better vessel and set about discarding
her diseased, fragile frame. But without this one woman's unique cellular
makeup, without the images and desires lodged in her brain, without the
imbalance of anabolics in her system, this mind-bending rebirth wouldn't be
happening.

A million to one.

The symphony of incredible sounds rolled on. Sheila's undulating hips widened
while her butt tightened and rounded into two firm cheeks, pushing the button
and zipper of her jeans past the breaking point and revealing distressed
cotton panties that formed a tightening, thinning line around her waist. A few
inches below, the long, hard swell of Sheila's thighs burst through the jeans,
revealing a gash of green flesh that stretched from crotch to knee. The cuff
of her jeans had crept up to her calves, which ripped open the cuffs with a
spasm of growth as they reshaped themselves into soft-edged diamonds. Pieces
of her work shoes lay on each side of her feet, which had doubled in size
while becoming more sleek and shapely.

Sheila's eyes opened and closed as the waves rolled through her. Her eyebrows
darkened and her lips became full and moist and dark green. Cheekbones took on
sharper definition as her extra fat was burned away. And around her face, her
hair swung and waved as if it were alive, stretching and thickening and
darkening as it cascaded down a widening back. Her shirt ripped apart between
her shoulder blades and pulled apart across her chest, shooting two buttons
into the energy web.

Sixty seconds since a cleaning woman had brushed against a red button. The
MT37 registered that the target was not only viable, but had moved closer (a
misinterpretation of Sheila's growing body). Its whine increased and there was
a series of clicks as internal safety locks were liberated. The Gamma Cannon
tripled its dosage.

The thick muscles in Sheila's neck tensed as she rocked back her head and
screamed. Her arms shot straight up, pressing the growing mass of her
shoulders and biceps against her ears. She balled her fists. She screamed
again. A bolt of emerald fire erupted out of her, burning through her panties
and careening upward, splitting and boring into a pair of dark, long nipples.
Every inch of the woman's 6-foot-7 frame spasmed and twisted, her undulating
map of muscles shifting, bulging, then relaxing. Sheila opened her mouth
again, but this time it was a throaty moan that grew into a yell that rose in
pitch until...

Sheila's already-thickened chest exploded outward, atomizing the remains of
her shirt. Tendrils of power weaved in and around each nipple, which rested
atop breasts that covered her pectorals with two glowing spheres that grew
larger still, defying reason and gravity, making her tight, powerful waist
look even smaller. The eruption of gamma energy caused an eruption of growth
on an already long, powerful frame. Sheila rocketed to 7-foot-2, muscles and
sinew growing in proportion with more than a half-foot of additional height.

Sheila Huckaby kneeled before the Gamma Cannon as a woman whose fate had been
rewritten in a million-to-one convergence of circumstances. As a result, a
listless, pain-racked cleaning lady had been reshaped into the most powerful
human on Earth, a glowing, green Amazon whose every movement sang with
feminine power.

Two minutes since the button was pressed. The MT37's overload fail-safes
kicked in, and it shut down. The silence was deafening. For 10 long seconds,
the woman in the center of the room kneeled silently, the large curve of her
breasts rising and falling. Here and there, tendrils of green energy rolled
out of her flesh, then back in.

She stood. A large yet slender hand reached down to her left thigh, tracing
the swell of the quadricep. It fell across the gentle roll of her hips,
touched the undulations of her tight stomach. The hand then came up and pulled
its fingers up and around the long curve of a breast, then pressed two fingers
against an erect, still-glowing nipple.

"So," rumbled the She Hulk that once was Sheila Huckaby, "this is what power
looks like. Nice."

She looked at the control panel where the red button resided. Next to the
panel, on a chair, was Sheila's security badge. It had landed there, still
attached to a chunk of gray jeans, during the transformation. The jade
giantess picked it up and gazed at the photo behind the laminate. A round,
doughy face framed blue eyes that looked empty, resigned to some unremarkable
destiny.

The She Hulk smiled, and green sparkles danced in her dark eyes. She raised an
arm, muscles swimming with powerful possibilities held barely in check. An
emerald glow grew around her fist, pulsing wider and wider. She blinked, and a
thick, tight beam exploded upward from her hand. It struck the ceiling,
blasting away concrete and steel. The energy bolt continued through three
floors until it liberated itself into the star-filled sky. She willed the beam
away and brought her arm back to her side. Then, with a last glance at another
woman's mop bucket, the She Hulk coiled her long, jade body then shot upward,
into the night.