Red Kryptonite (#28)

The crystal was deep red, faceted and somewhat cloudy, like quartz. The light from the sunlamps filtered through it and gave everything in the room a kind of rosy glow. Lois shuddered as she knew what it must be. Kryptonite.

The reporter stared up at the crystal, and almost immediately she began to feel an...itching sensation in her scalp. Idly, she reached up to scratch at it.

"Be calm," the naked Supergirl said from the screen. "Many of the changes are unpredictable, but none of them are fatal. Some of them are wondrous."

The itching intensified, and Lois brought her other hand up to scratch at her scalp. It didn't hurt, really, it was just insufferably itchy, a tingle that seemed to go right down to the bone. She looked up at the screen. The camera angle had shifted again.

Supergirl floated there, little more than a pare of perfect breasts floating in a sea of pink swirls, her head and body cut-off by the top and bottom of the screen. The pink spirals were beginning to slide across the skin, like moving tattoos. The volume was much lower now, and Lois had to strain to hear what Supergirl was saying.

"Be calm. Relax. Do not fight it. Listen to the sound of my voice. Focus on only my voice. Let it happen to you. Be calm..."

Idly, Lois noticed strands of black hair and skin falling in front of her vision. But she continued to watch the screen and scratch, trying to catch the words...

The itching on her scalp was almost gone, and Lois' fingers were scraping against something hard and smooth. Yet the tingling wasn't done...it had only moved to her eyes, her forehead. Lois clawed at the goggles as her eyes burned, and the screen grew blurry and indistinct. She tore the goggles from her head, and suddenly the world came into sharp relief—brighter and clearer than before. Supergirl's voice came to her.

"You must shed this old skin, to give birth to the new you. Birth can be painful. Your human anatomy barely has the energy, even with the sun lamps. You must be so hungry. Are you hungry?"

"Yes," Lois said. She was hungry. Her stomach rumbled and her mouth watered. Her hands started to shake, as though she was experiencing a sugar crash...

Sugar. That's what she wanted. Something sweet.

Then she smelt it.

A little door opened, in the wall to her right. A tray came out, on which was a kind of sink—a raised bowl or trough, with a faucet at one hand.

"Go to it," Supergirl's voice said. "Trust your instincts. Your body knows what it needs."

Lois walked over there. A pale, viscous amber began to flow from the faucet, into the bowl. The smell of it almost bowled Lois over. She reached out a hand, caught it in her palm and brought it up to her lips.

Honey.

The reporter dropped to her knees before the trough, scooping the sweet, sticky liquid into her mouth. It was what her body craved. Long minutes passed as she licked mouthfuls of it up, even held her mouth under the faucet to let the golden ambrosia flow straight into her...and it was when she did that, she finally noticed the mirror behind the faucet.

The face that stared back at her, smeared with honey, was her own up to the cheeks. Above that, her familiar violet eyes had given way to great black multifaceted ovoids. The skin had peeled away from the top of her face, revealing brown chitin underneath, and a pair of long antennae sprang from her forehead. Her long black hair was gone, just a smooth brown carapace.

"Now," Supergirl's voice said from the speakers. "For the next step..."