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The Viper & the Man

Part two of three

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Thebodyswapeur

James woke slowly, as if he had been hit over the head with a hammer, his skull throbbing, a gross taste in his mouth. Bitter, though with a sickly quality to it. He groaned, but it didn't sound normal. Fuck, had his throat been hit? It felt weird, everything felt weird, though he was, at least, lying on something that was somewhat soft, even if it didn't feel like his bed. No, the sheets laid too smoothly against him for that. He tried to sit up, though was at least relieved to see that he could move his hands, that he could move his fingers and wiggle them.

One, two, three, four…

_ _

He counted them all, all the way up to ten, including his thumbs. When he was taking stock of what parts of his body were or were not injured, the thumbs suddenly seemed like a very important part of him.

Did he dare open his eyes? He grunted, though that felt different, as if his throat had been stretched, not understanding, not knowing. With his eyes still closed, he moved his arms up and down, held straight out, feeling the brush of air against them. Even that felt different, yet his heart pounded, adrenaline ramping up as if he was back out on the battlefield all over again.

Do it…

_ _

He had to do it, had to be brave, had to open his eyes, cracking open first one and then the other, taking a breath, his chest rising before him. Yet it was wrong, all wrong, for it was not his room that he was in but a narrow, bare one with none of his stuff in it, not even the letter he had taped to his mirror, the one that his mother had sent with him.

Blood roared between his ears, the bed plain, dull, the sheets grey – everything was grey. There was a small window, high up, but there was a dresser-like thing, a closet for storing clothes, though there was not much in there – not to his eye, for it did not have a door, just a rail inside to hang clothing on.

He could not ignore it forever, however, looking down at himself, naked and reeling from it, hands suddenly on the bed and thrusting back, scrambling, though he didn't have any legs to kick away from the horror of his own body from anymore. James gave a strangled curse, though his larger mouth no longer obeyed his whim. Funnily enough, there was little about his body that was going to obey him easily at all anymore.

“No… No, thisss…"

But it wasn't even his voice as he hissed and clutched at his face – his muzzle! It was a snake! There was a snake-like body and no legs stretching out before him on the bed, and it was all just like the viper that he had tussled with on the battlefield!

He didn't make the connection, not instantly, that he was her, that they had swapped bodies, but James knew he was a viper, that he was no longer in a human body, chest rising and falling sharply as he grunted and tried to come back to himself, tried to desperately slow his heart rate, his snatching grabs at breath. His breasts rose and fell more and more sharply as panic screamed within him, clutching at his snout, even trying to push it back in against his face, though it was not as if something like that was ever going to change anything.

It didn't stop him trying, hissing with too much tongue in his mouth, wet and lashing the side of his snout, hands roaming all over, all while he tried to stay sat up for as much as possible. It was harder than he thought, however, not knowing quite how to prop up his new body – no! No, he couldn't think like that! He was still James, still human, not a dirty viper alien!

He groaned, leaning back on the bed, though he could see the small signs in the room that it belonged to someone of higher ranking. Of course, a viper would not want lots of clutter in their room – he didn't know how he was even going to get his body out of there! There was a mirror though, edged with fine metal and what looked like ore from a mine, probably one that Advent had collapsed after them. Everything that was in there was high-quality, even the soft sheets that he was lying on.

James shook his head, taking a breath, looking down his body, even though he didn't want to look at it. It was all just so disgusting, all those scales, the scales of snakeskin… Did vipers shed? He hadn't been around them enough to really find that out, one way or the other, and didn't want to find out at all either.

Even rolling his new head from one side to the other felt ungainly, as if he couldn't appreciate the new weight of it, how that balance and weight was off from before. His vision was surprisingly good and he could, in fact, still see in colour, his hands shaking as he felt out the edges of his snout, the rounded tuck of his nostrils.

Wrong, wrong… It was all wrong.

He tried not to listen to his stomach leaping and turning over as he ran his hands down his body, though it was revolting. He wasn't sure that he had the physical ability to throw up anymore, which was most likely a good thing, because he would not have at all wanted to see what bile felt like rising in the back of a viper's throat.

His throat… Fuck, no!

His hands were hands, yes, but they were tipped with short claws, fine and to a point. He scowled, though his lips didn't want to form the expression all that easily anymore. No wonder they were so quick with claws too, possessing their own weapons. Why did vipers even carry guns? But he was not experienced enough to speak of the enemy, trying to convince himself that by exploring his new body like that he could gather intelligence in another way. He could explore what it was that made a viper tick, find a way back to his own body and then take everything he had learned to his crew, the wider team.

At least, that was what he told himself, licking his lips with a wet smack of his tongue, so wary of the fangs. He didn't know what he'd need to know to fill those with venom, but he didn't want to do anything accidentally. At best, it would make a mess in the room and reveal something wrong. At worst, well – could he even poison himself? He didn't know and, frankly, didn't want to know either.

“I ttthhhiii…"

He grunted, licking again, trying to talk. But his jaw opened too wide and he had to focus, concentrating hard on forming words.

“I thhhhiiiink I…"

But it would take some time, working on that, knowing that he needed to talk, one way or the other, whether he was getting out or staying there, gathering more information. He kept trying, working his tongue around his mouth and trying to keep his jaw hinged correctly, for the feel of it almost dislocating, even though vipers obviously could do so without facing any issues, just a feature of their twisted biology, was unnerving. If he could keep his jaw from unhinging, of course, he could talk a little better, though the hissing too was something that he would have to contend with.

But his body… There was so much of it, much larger than he had been as a human with more surface area. The scales were defined, every one of them, though he couldn't imagine how it was like skin, skin to be shed. The tail wriggled back and forth on the bed as he explored it, even though he couldn't reach it with his hands, not able to contract his abdominals in the right way to sit up properly, not for more than a heartbeat, a couple of seconds at best. Yet he could feel so much with that tail, how it wriggled back and forth, the tip dextrous. Even then, James could very well see how he could curl it around things and hold onto things, though he had never seen a viper doing that, not with his own eyes.

Maybe there was more than even he had come to see to the disgusting vipers… His lips would not screw up like that anymore. He hated how far he'd changed, though the bright orange of his snakeskin would have been appealing to the eye if on anyone and anything other than a viper…or any other alien scum.

There were brown lines too, an intricate, matching pattern that was appealing to the eye, though he shook that off, a lighter swathe of scales running down his front from the underside of his jaw, over the venom-sacs. Well, they were breasts, really, weren't they? He shook his head, the weight of it pulling it hard to the side when he tried to complete the motion, though his hands stayed there, roaming around, squeezing them. His breath caught, but James refused to think about it, not too much at least, for they were more sensitive than he could have expected them to be. And they were squashable too, giving lightly to the pressure of his fingers, though they were most certainly not like any flesh that he had felt so far in his life.

That had to be the venom inside them, where it was stored and produced, though it could not be borne down on, even if a viper's body must have had a way to store it even if it got pressed back. Maybe it just moved a little more into the chest cavity? He couldn't see much further down, his scales smooth down his front, to his tail, but it was not as if it was debatable that he was female, even if there was no evidence of that “down there". Not yet, anyway. He didn't know how he felt about that, truthfully, as he wanted to see how he was, but he wasn't so sure that he wanted to see explicit confirmation, beyond the breasts, that what had made him male, what made him feel male, before, well…was gone.

His backside, however, still retained a distinct curve to it, which was perhaps more evident while he was lying down, his body feeling as if there should have been heat curling through it. If only vipers weren't cold-blooded… It was disconcerting to feel one thing and expect another, shaking his head with a little more control, wrangling his tongue around his mouth as he hissed, felled there, even if getting up had to be done at some point.

With his hands under his backside, he tried to run his hands further up, the scales a little more defined against his fingers when he pressed in harder, as if his body was, in its own way, trying to make itself known. When he dug his fingers into the flesh as if desperately seeking something out, though James didn't even know what he was doing at that point. He just couldn't stop himself, feeling a feminine, female form and yet still not believing fully that it was his body. The round of his arse was too much for him, head spinning, panting through an open mouth, tongue flickering back and forth with every hissing breath.

Out… He had to get out. But how?

James panted heavily, jaws hanging open, though the breath came through his nostrils, grunting, panting.

“What the hell?" He tried to say, though every other word came with a strange sort of hiss, even though he had not thought there were any “S-sounds" in what he was saying. “Come on… No… Thisss can't be real… Get up… Ssstupid… Ssstop!"

He shuddered, clapping a hand to his face, though he yanked it back again, wary of the fangs, from which venom could be injected. He knew what he was, at least in part, though the small mirror did not show enough of him to really take in his new form, the true disgust he felt about it. If James could have stepped out of the body and fled from it right then and there he would have.

But he had to try to get out, even if no one there, surely, would know that he was not an Advent soldier – or what even was the viper anyway? An officer? That might be worse, because if others were looking up to her and she knew things that he didn't…

Fighting against himself, he pushed himself up with his arms, though it took several attempts for him to sit up. He couldn't move his legs because he didn't have legs anymore, but he could sort of jerk his body around, slinging his tail over the side of the bed.

“Oof… Ssstupid body. Ssstupid snake."

His lips pressed together, but he could not clench his jaw as he had before – that wasn't something that vipers did. But the hardest was yet to come as he tried wiggling his tail back and forth, trying to work out the muscles, how they layered down what was, in essence, a very long, elongated spine. It was hard, though his scaley snakeskin seemed to grip the floor more easily when he let his body touch it, so he leaned into that a little more.

At least his body had the muscle tone in the right places to support itself, so it was not quite starting from scratch, though he had to drag himself upright with great difficulty, half bent over still with his hands leaning on the bed. It left him twisted with his tail perpendicular to the bed and his torso twisted around so that he could still balance.

“Ssshit, this isss…"

He tried not to talk, feeling like his tongue was doing too much when hiss after hiss slavered from his mouth, though he had to do it, had to remember that he was a soldier. And he couldn't stay there forever! He had to get out! He didn't know whether he could consider it standing to get the serpent up straight, but the notion was the best he had as he tried to undulate and slither.

And promptly fell into the wall with a bang, smacking his palms into it as he cursed and hissed and tried to hide his pain. His second attempt was a little better, but every slithering undulation put his upper half off-balance, forcing him to sway or even topple to the side. He got around the room by leaning heavily on the wall and the bed, even falling half into the closet at one point, though he couldn't stay there forever. Learning how to move was imperative!

He, with great difficulty and juddering, stopping and starting, movement, undulated up to the mirror, which was clean at least, even if the room was not expansive. Maybe the viper was not an officer, despite her badge, though he wasn't surprised, feeling the revolting slither of her body. He couldn't imagine a viper, an alien like that, ever being in a position of power and control.

The mirror did not help him, allowing him to finally see the hood of his cobra-like head, how a purple tongue automatically flickered in and out of his mouth, though it was not his mouth even if it was. His body swayed back and forth even as he, horrified, raked his gaze down over the brown lines of the hood of his head, how the diamond markings ran down his back, shaking as he twisted, the venom-sacs that may as well have been breasts a little too obvious on his chest for any kind of comfort at all. It was such an obviously female body that he trembled and tried to look away, though the red eyes stood out, with the slit-like pupils.

“Freaky…"

He swallowed hard, though it was hard to move much saliva from his mouth down his throat anymore, looking over his neck, down his chest, how his body changed, how the snakeskin seemed layered, though it was probably just the pull of it over flesh and muscle. There was a lot more to a viper's body than met the eye – though James would have much rather have been uncovering that in a lab or on the battlefield, with a dead one.

His hands ran over his snout, how it was longer, narrower, though repulsive, as if a monster, a dull creature, was looking back at him. He didn't quite have the boldness of mind to touch the fangs, even if the ducts within his mouth did not seem to be plumped up, which was something that he had learned in training that he had to take care with, had to learn to avoid.

The longer he stayed there, the more chance he would be caught, he decided, even though the sinuous twist of his body made him feel sick all over again, his stomach leaping and roiling. He was just like everyone else, every other soldier, when it came to being repulsed by aliens, though he could not imagine what anyone else would have thought of him if they had found out that he was in the body of a viper.

They probably would shun him… But if anyone could get him out of a viper's body, perhaps even find his old body, his real body, it was his crew, it was his side. Staying with Advent was not an option.

Her armour had to go on, though he had seen some vipers go without it, for they were not really breasts. It was still embarrassing, making him squirm and hiss as he tried to find the most covering “boob armour" that he could find. He pawed through the limited wardrobe, his snout and nose wrinkling in distaste at the choices that he was faced with. To him, there was not much of a choice there at all.

He settled on one that looked like a chest plate, though it highlighted his breasts even more – he just couldn't stop himself from thinking of them like that, even though the logical part of his mind knew that they were just venom-sacs, nothing at all to be embarrassed about. Yet getting the thing on was another matter entirely, a back and a front plate made from some kind of metal that he didn't recognise, though they also made it so that he couldn't move his torso quite as much. If he had something on, covering him, however, it was something that James was going to have to live with.

With difficulty, he got the straps of the chest plate on over his shoulders, wriggling left and then right to tighten them and snap the closures into place on either side. The back plate was a lighter metal, thankfully, though they did not come up over his shoulders – only the strapping, which was a type of leather. The leather was probably made from some kind of alien beast.

“Ugh… This is…" He squirmed, wriggling, pushing against it, though he didn't possess the ability to blush anymore, not as a viper. “Ssstupid, vile armour… Where'sss the full body ssstuff… Oh, for fuck'sss sssake!"

He growled, trying desperately not to hiss, though it didn't help. Out! If he got out, things would go more smoothly, out of the facility, having more space to use his body properly. He wasn't prepared, though that didn't matter, not when he had to go, had to leave, had to take that chance.

He'd done it more than enough already with his limited time as a recruit, after all…

Dressed, he cautiously opened the door, which seemed to have a security code on the outside only, though could be exited from the inside without any issues. Well, that was something at least, especially as he slithered through, closing it after him, the airlock hissing as the door slid back into place. It seemed overkill for a sleeping chamber at…the Advent base? Yes, that was where he had to be, grey corridors stretching out before him, all in a way that it could have been nothing more than a maze, perhaps even designed to confuse soldiers who had infiltrated. Even then, it was working, though perhaps not the way that they had expected it to.

He focused on slithering, undulating back and forth, the rhythm of it, though it made him feel sick to his core to have to think so much about his body. It wasn't his, yet he couldn't keep his balance if he did not keep pace and rhythm.

Back and forth, back and forth…

_ _

At least the voice in his head was the same, though it was hard too to get those hisses out of his head. But, if he didn't speak to anyone or see anyone, he wouldn't have to worry about that…right?

There has to be an exit…perhaps past a meeting area? They've got to still have something like that here.

_ _

The hallway turned a corner, facing a crossroads, though his sense of smell seemed heightened, tipping against the wall while he sniffed carefully. Ah, yes… That was a mess hall, a food hall of some sort. He couldn't see honestly why that would be buried in the depths of the building, though there had to be multiple exists, completely lost and clutching at straws the best he could. Sometimes, that was all that could be done.

He took the opposite path down a lighter hallway, turning to beige with red tones, appearing as if it was less military, in a sense. He wasn't sure what Advent forces called themselves, though he should have been able to pull that information from his mind. There was too much going on, twisted into other things, that he could barely even think straight, keeping his body undulating, undulating, undulating, loathing the rhythm of it. Still, he bumped into walls as he cursed and hissed, keeping his torso more upright than before due to the armour. It made him keep his posture, though he was glad, at least, that his breasts were covered.

He didn't catch the viper soldier slithering up another passageway until it was too late. The green and black viper had dull, muted colours, though he still startled, flinching from them with a loud hiss.

“Sssssss!" He couldn't stop the surprise from getting the best of him. “Ah! Who goesss there?"

The soldier, another viper with the same venom-sacs as him, tilted her head, tongue flickering out. There was much less of a hiss in her voice as she spoke, controlling her voice.

“Officer Lyissass!" They said, standing up straight to attention, bracing against their tail. “I didn't think you would be here, after your trial on the battlefield! Are you feeling well? The commander wissshes to speak with you as sssoon as possible."

James fumbled. Who was that? Whereas that would be useful information if he had been able to get to a place where he would not be recognised as, well, “not a viper", he had to get through the moment, to forget that: to get out.

“Yesss," he answered, hissing a lot more heavily than the other viper. “I will sssee and ssspeak to him ssstraight away."

Oh, heavens, just how many s-words could he use when talking? Nodding to the other viper, who had to be of a lower rank than the one whose body he was occupying, he made his way on, snaking back and forth as he slithered. He bumped the wall once in his distraction, though the soldier viper did not seem to notice.

But he'd gotten through that as well as he could, even with the venom-sacs moving with every twist of his body. The armour didn't seem to contain them very well, only protect and cover them: there may have been better choices of clothing to be had in the closet, but James would not have known that. They swayed and they even jiggled as if they were something erotic, but he couldn't simply not think about them, not as his centre of balance was thrown off.

“Curssesss…"

Oh, he could barely even talk too, his backside swaying with every undulation, seeming to make a point of it. If he could have burned up with embarrassment, James would have been blushing furiously right there and then, though his cold-blooded body, even then, ached for sunshine, for warmth. That could have been one reason why he was having trouble moving – that he was too cold.

But that did not distract from the sway of his arse, which seemed determined to drag his tail back and forth with every undulation, holding his jaws together, trying to appear calm, controlled, as if he had had that body forever. It helped, however, that he could see in the dark, as was shown when, finally, he managed to find his way outside. It only looked like a side entrance, though there didn't seem to be an alarm and, like his room, it was only accessible via a code from the outside, allowing easy exit from the inside.

He took a breath, trying to get his bearings. It was not far from the facility, though the rocky, broken landscape was clad in darkness – not that that was any trouble to him. Cursing softly under his breath, but not bothering to seal away his hisses anymore, James struck off into the night, following the path of a river that was, most likely, polluted, no vegetation at all around, just rugged rocks, terrain that could hide foes and the river that was surprising to find, even there.

The actual viper, however, had not been idle while James had been recovering and escaping from her home base. She knew exactly where he would be, what a man would do. They were, quite often, simple creatures, unlike her kin in the vipers.

And Lyss was not a fool. She might have been in a man's body, but it had not been difficult at all for her to learn the ways of them, finding out how to set herself right, to walk, even though it would take some time longer for her to be fully comfortable with running. On a night stealth mission, looking to recover material that the XCOM thought had been dropped during the scuffle. The bodies, of course, would already be gone, but they thought that the vipers and soldiers would leave valuables behind. She could have scoffed at how they thought so little of Advent, but that was only because she would never have underestimated them. Everything that she thought less of when it came to XCOM was due to all that she had witnessed, first-hand, of them and their inadequacies.

Advent was superior in every way, more so the vipers. But she could not stay, not while controlled. With XCOM, or escaping from them too, there was a chance at a life, all that she had not been able to take for herself before.

“Quiet!"

She directed her crew, her friends as “James", with her hand, though she should not have taken an officer's lead there. They obeyed though, seeing what she did: the lone viper, her old body, snaking across the terrain. They were doing a fairly good job of controlling their body, all things considered, though were slow and clunky, frequently stopping to adjust their clothing, the armour across their chest.

Lyss smirked, stepping out while the rest waited, for she had picked up one thing from where the fight had taken place that would be of use to them. No rare materials interested her… Only the psionic device that had caused so many problems in the first place.

James stopped dead, nearly toppling forward over himself, lower jaw falling slack. No… No, that couldn't be… But it was! His old body in his old armour, though the helmet was removed entirely to show his short, brown hair and a grin that looked like it would have been better placed on a viper's snout.

“What? No… You…"

He hissed through the words, trying to snake backwards but getting tangled up in his own tail. It was weird, so weird, to see his old body from a higher perspective, taller than the man and yet not knowing what to do. And if he was in a viper's body, that viper's body, that viper had to be in the body of the man that he was, that he had been.

“Well, I didn't expect you to look quite so poised or get so far," Lyss commented, raising an eyebrow, though, of course, she spoke in James' voice. “Why don't you turn around for me, let me get a full view?"

James hissed, parting his jaws, though he looked behind her. Where was his crew? Where were his friends? Had they even seen him? He was not to know that they were waiting further back, trusting the sudden expertise that “James", who was really Lyss in his body, had come up with. They were on a standard mission, after all, and had not expected to come up against a viper.

She circled him, coming in close, though James stumbled, twisted up in his own tail as Lyss approached. Damn it – he should have been able to do something! He was even taller than her! Yet there was a cry from further back, a gun cocked and readied, his heart beating faster and faster.

The next thing he saw was the psionic device, which Lyss had brought with her on boarding the XCOM ship, pointed at him.

A reverberation crossed the air, trembling through as if the mere passage of it was enough to disturb the air, though he felt the impact of it against him. It was soft, but did not yield, a wave of energy that he didn't understand passing into his head, the skull of the viper.

His jaw hung open, shaking his head, suddenly weak, though that could have been from shock alone. Lyss grinned, the man's lips curling up cruelly.

“Now… I should explain, before you hurt yourself," she said, mockingly tilting her head to the side, the look not right on the man's face at all. “Don't bother trying to tell them anything – they're coming now. This device, now that I've had a little time to experiment, now stops you from speaking the truth about what's happened. You are Lyss, only Lyss, a viper female and no more than that. You'll have some of my memories, of course, enough to be able to confirm age and so on, though I didn't think you needed any more than that."

“That's ssstupid – no!" James fought back. “I'm Lyssss… Wait, no! I'm…Lyss…"

What was happening? She was clearly saying her name, James! But it came out as Lyss, not James!

“Lyss! Lysssss! I'm not a female viper, I'm a female viper!"

No! His words were all twisted! She couldn't even get her own proper name out, or even say that she was a human male!