She Hulk of Earth 2, Chapter 2 By Eegore, eegore959@yahoo.com A reborn janitor takes inventory of new, jade-giantess body 2:09 a.m. Three miles southeast of McNail Air Force Base, New Mexico The nudge of a shifting breeze shook the sagebrush that crisscrossed the desert landscape. Under the light of a half moon, a jackrabbit sprinted from plant to plant, sniffing for what few seeds or greenery could be scavenged. Here and there, the wind lifted some of desert's sandy skin and regrafted it a few feet away. A cricket's song weaved through the silence and pushed into a sky shot full of stars that can't be this bright unless you're miles and miles from any city. A small shadow, with no immediately discernable source, formed against the earth, its outline diffused by the moon's feeble glow. The shadow grew larger, sharper. It was joined seconds later by a keen sound of whistling air. The crickets stopped singing. The jackrabbit's head jerked over and up, and it bolted into the weeds a few feet from where Sheila Huckaby dropped out of the sky. Her bare feet slammed the ground with a force that rattled the earth but seemed not to rattle her at all. If not for a slight bend of her knees, her body looked as though it was ready to keep right on going, to the center of the Earth if necessary. For a second, two seconds, three, the woman was motionless, her legs slightly apart, her hands balled into fists. The night's silence engulfed her, washed over her, trying to calm her pounding heart, which was pumping luminescent blood through her body and driving a freight train through her head. She wiggled her toes into the dirt, twitched her fingers. Her eyes, bathed in a neon lime green and shooting sharp sparks into the air, scanned the horizon. She was looking for something, something ... there! She squinted, just a little. Outlined against the distant hills was a set of lights. Perhaps a store, a service station. Whatever. It would do. A wry smile, nearly a smirk, played across Sheila's face as her body began to move. Wide hips rolled. Arms swung up and back. Then she squatted, and silhouetted in the moonlight her thighs changed shape, bowing outward. Then, with inhuman speed, her muscles uncoiled and she catapulted into the sky. The mind of this She Hulk was roaring. Images and possibilies richocheted in a supercharged, speed-up movie in her head. It was hard to think about any one thing, but she had managed to focus on something she felt she desperately needed. A mirror. ### There were only two MPs on duty at 2 a.m. at McNail AFB's weapons research lab, known by a chosen few around the base as The Funhouse. One of the MPs was in a Jeep, checking the perimeter. The other was at the guard station near the high-security entrance to the lab, which had two subbasements and two above-ground floors. At 2:04 a.m., a yellow light had begun flashing on the station's monitor panel, indicating unauthorized activity in Level 2, Sector G, Room 7. Officer Sampson noted the location and began striding to the elevator. His gait was purposeful but not urgent; these indicators had popped on numerous times before, and in each case the cause was benign: faulty wiring, an electrical arc, a lab animal on the loose. The elevator dropped him one floor to the top basement level. As he exited and turned right, his ears immediately picked up a dull rumble that did not sound nominal at all. He picked up his stride and began to jog. Room 7 was around the bend, about 75 yards away. The rumbling stopped. Sampson slowed down, now concerned that he might be rushing into something, or someone, for which he needed to prepare. He turned off his radio so the sound wouldn't alert anyone. He pulled out his service revolver and continued to walk, almost on his toes, toward Room 7, now 45 yards away. Then came a series of unnerving noises: an undulating whine, the CRACK of impact of two large objects, the sound of cascading, hard material striking the floor. Sampson began to run again, figuring that whoever was inside Room 7 was busy with their destructive actions and couldn't detect his approach or, possibly, his entrance. The sounds inside the room had stopped again by the time he reached the door, which was ajar. Readying his weapon, he shoved the door open and swung into a firing stance. His own steps echoed in the cavernous room. Sampson took long, catlike steps, his head swiveling, checking every corner, every possible hiding place. The air had a strange smell to it, like combination of locker room and ozone. He looked up...and saw a hole in the ceiling, easily 5 or 6 feet wide. His feet kicked chunks of concrete that had fallen to the floor. Pieces of ceiling was strewn across the floor ... along with something else. "Holy god." Shreds of clothing. Pieces of blue denim. Heavier, gray material. Bits of white cotton. One half of a bra. My lord, Sampson thought. The janitor. What happened here? He turned his radio back on. His partner, the MP outside, was caught in mid-squawk. "....enny? Hey, Lennie?! You OK in there?" "Uh, yeah. Yeah, sure, I'm fine. Why?" "Jeezus, Lennie, a green beam shot out of the building a minute ago! I think it blew through the roof ! Then I saw...well, I don't know what the hell I saw, but it took the same direction as the beam. Looked like a damn missile! What's going on in there?" Officer Leonard Sampson picked up the brassiere cup and rubbed the material between his fingers. "I don't know." ### Long, emerald fingers traced the curve of a cheek. She bit her lower lip. Her eyes opened wider, pulsing with their inner light. "Holy ... god." Sheila was standing in front of the glass-door entrance to the closed gas station/convenience store. She hadn't found a mirror. But the light from the station's sign caught the glass just right, creating a tall, reflective surface. The image bouncing back at her was standing on the concrete of the self-serve bay, legs slightly apart, arms to her sides. And despite the mind-blowing experiences of the past 15 minutes, despite the pain and heat and ecstacy that her encounter with the Gamma Cannon had brought, despite the voices, all her own, babbling in her head, this moment, this solitary moment in a service station fueling bay, almost made her knees buckle. "I'm .... I'm," she stammered. She couldn't find the words. And truth to tell, had anyone chanced upon this bizarre scene, they too would have had a difficult time describing the body in which Sheila Huckaby now resided. In the manmade light, she could see that, head to toe, her skin was a deep, forest green, shimmering here and there under a thin layer of perspiration. Dulled flashes of a lighter green jumped across her body like sheet lightning. And every few seconds, an arc of jade energy leaped off her skin. Larger arcs danced between her fingers. An even larger one stretched from breast to breast. And she was tall. Very tall. Gauging by the numbers down the side the gas station door, the ones they use to estimate the height of a would-be robber, she figured she must be over 7 feet. My god, Sheila thought. Seven. Feet. Tall. And yet, she thought, I don't look tall -- don't look lanky -- because everything else is so ... so ... Again, no words were available to her that could describe what she saw, what she felt coursing through her. All she could do was look -- and touch. She reached her right hand down to her side, jolts of gamma energy popping from fingertips to the flesh of her leg. She rested her hand on her thigh, rocked the leg side to side. Her foot was still dusty from the desert floor. A slender shin opened up into a powerful swell of calf. She raised her foot, rolling to her toes, and the calf jumped, tightening into a rounded diamond. She could feel tightly coiled potential building inside the muscle, along with a warm glow building in her stomach. She pressed down on the ball of her foot, and the concrete buckled beneath it. A ripple of shock and excitement ran through her. "Ohhhhh, man!" She continued her inventory. The calf narrowed to her knee, then -- ohmigod, she thought -- her thigh. Thick cords of sinew weaved across it, forming a long, bending sweep from hip to knee and back up the other side. As she moved the leg, muscles swam and leaped and bulged. She pressed her fingers against it. The surface was warm and firm. She ran her hand up and down the thigh, feeling the muscles shift and contact. A sharp shiver ripped through her, forcing her hips back and tensing ropes of muscle in her backside. Her lips moved. "...l-like grabbing a live wire. Whoa..." Her eyes and hand moved up to her hips. They were firm and wide. She explored her stomach, which twitched with sensitivity and undulated with soft peaks and valleys. Her waist was firm and narrow, especially when compared to the curves immediately below it. Her hand, and her eyes, then her other hand slid upward and began to wash over her breasts, which covered her muscular chest with round, high flesh swelled nearly to the width of her shoulder. She slid her palms across the bottom of each warm sphere and began to trace a trail outward, turning slowly up and over. Fingertips brushed dark-green nipples that glowed with arcing energy. She then considered her arms, starting with her lightning-wrapped fingers and stretching up into powerful yet feminine forearms that gave way to sudden, full swells at her biceps and triceps. Her arms hung away from her sides, pushed out by back muscles that opened like graceful wings from her waist. The round swell of her shoulders guided her gaze along the long muscles of her neck until ... Sheila was looking at the reflection of her face. Eyes to glowing eyes. She saw dark eyebrows and long eyelashes, the smooth curve of her jaw framing full, dark-green lips. And all around her face were thick tresses of black hair that billowed nearly to her waist. A couple strands fell across her left eye. She stared as her features tightened with a sense of shock, then relaxed. And then the dark lips in the reflection began to quiver. A tear emerged from the corner of a glowing eye, then was vaporized by a leaping spark of gamma radiation. "I'm ... beautiful," Sheila Huckaby muttered, her voice cracking. "I'm beautiful." The traffic jam in her head cleared a bit as she focused on this revelation. She was beautiful. Once -- less than 30 minutes ago -- she was dumpy and short and overweight and hobbled by arthritis and she convinced herself she didn't give a damn about any of that but she did she did she did and it all hurt so much. So much. She hated what she was, that emptied shell of a person, resigned to a life marked by pain and indifference. But now, this. "I'm beautiful." Sheila smiled, and in the door glass she saw dazzling teeth set against her dark-jade skin. She was happy. My god. Happy. Such a simple emotion, yet how incredibly illusive it had been. Happy. That gift alone was worth the pain and terror she had experienced during the transformation, the memories of which were already beginning to dim. But beyond the view of this mind-bending body, Sheila was aware there was much more going on here. The sensations crashing inside her were trying to communicate something she was just beginning to understand. She knew this body was strong. She knew, but couldn't fully accept, that she had covered five miles in two leaps. What she didn't understand were these constant waves of warmth, of shivering pleasure, rippling through her. It was as if something was caressing her from the inside, giving her pleasure yet searching for release. Release... Slowly, Sheila felt the feelings of excitement and joy about her body slip away. The waves were rising in her, growing stronger. Her skin became warmer and the light-green sheet lightning dancing over her flesh intensified. Her lips parted and she let out a low, almost animalistic moan that echoed against the nearby hills. She closed her eyes, tilted back her head. Her arms rose out from her body, straight out to each side, palms turned up, fingers pointed. Each arm then started to bend at the elbow, and as the forearms rose, her biceps pulsed and bulged, rising against the growing tension. Thick tendrils of neon green roiled in and out of her arms' flesh, growing brighter and angrier as her forearms rolled to vertical and beyond. Her biceps groaned with power and shot upward, spitting green flame that wound around her wrists and fingers, growing wider, wider. She opened her mouth again, and the moan was more like a growl, rumbling from deep within her frame. Release. Give it release... Two columns of energy erupted from her hands, blasting beams straight up. In a millisecond, they met the steel canopy of the fuel-pump bays and tore through it, splaying metal shards into the night air. Sheila's body jerked as a spasm of pleasure rocked her to the core, jerking her arms a few inches to the left. A piledriving force of impossible origin ripped through a crossbeam and the canopy crumbled, collapsing on nine gas pumps and one emerald Amazon. Chunks of steel sliced though pump housings and rubber hoses. A few metallic sparks finished the job, igniting the fuel in the pumps. In a split-second, the heat shot down to the underground storage tanks. In another split-second, Rick's Stop 'N' Go was a four-story fireball. Angry, orange flames lapped up the surrounding air and singed sagebrush for 100 yards around. The wall of fire devoured the gas station, surrounding it in flames and belching black smoke that blotted out the stars. And through through this wall walked a She Hulk, her pace unhurried, her expression one of confident serenity. The fire left no burns, no blemish on her body, other than some curls of smoke rising out of her hair and off her broad shoulders. Twenty yards from the gas station, she turned and faced the flames. Then she raised both arms in front of her, clenched her fists, and smiled. "Now, *that*," she said, "felt pretty good." ### Officer Sampson returned to the guard station, where his partner was waiting, wide-eyed and a bit short of breath. "What did you find down there, Lennie? What the hell happened?" "Well, it looks like she ..." Sampson began, then, seeing his partner's confused look, continued: "I don't know." "I mean, geez, Lennie, I wish you could have seen that green beam and whatever the hell came after ... hey, is that thing in your hand a bra?" Sampson chose not to answer, turning instead to the red phone on the guard station console. "All I know is that this is too big for us, buddy," Sampson said. "We've got to notify the honchos about this." He picked up the phone, pressed a button, and put the receiver to his ear. "I'm calling Dr. Blonsky."