Etseru


NICE Operational Report #100532: 'Etseru'. Researcher: Ruth Saunders.
This document last edited: 25 years ago.
Log Entry 1: For all our general, non-specific, ill-advised teratogeny, and husbandry (oh, Ruth, what a great punner you are) of nubile young women at the Shokuhsu facility, we do also perform a significant quantity of research here at N.I.C.E. While the majority of funding from extra-biological entities is received in exchange for simply keeping shtum, and providing them with their hosts/victims/energy sources, we are occasionally called upon to develop and produce more tangible and useful technology and equipment. In this case, a certain group - who shall remain nameless - has contracted us to develop a rather useful gadget for them. The product? Personal, active camouflage. Piece of cake.

Log Entry 2: Correction - it's not a piece of cake. We've been playing around with nanotechnological devices in the form of tiny cameras, electropigment, and various other smart materials, but they simply don't work. One of the higher-ups has clearly got a fetish for nanotech, which is fine and all, but can he indulge that in the privacy of his own home lab, and not here? Nanoscale atomic machines are just too fragile - while they work OK in the lab, they get fried the second you expose them to sunlight, a stiff breeze, the soy-sauce fumes wafting off my coworker's noodles. We've fried chip after chip that way, and while our nubile young test-subject and fashionable stealth-suit model isn't exactly complaining, I think that has more to do with the aphrodisiac, orgasm-inducing drugs she's dosed up on each morning, rather than any success on our part. Note to self - see if you can abscond with some of whatever she's having.

We've split up, now - the boys' club has gone off to see it they can make the nano-shit work (it won't), and I'm haunting the lab a bit more, watching our lovely model and puttering about on the computer. If we can just get the computer program right - some form of artificially mimicry, that can work out what things should look like rather than burn out all its sensors on working out how they are, that would lessen the strain on the tiny sensor-machines, which would at least resolve some of the problem.

Log Entry 3: VICTORY! It seems that I've made somewhat of a breakthrough. This morning we had a visit from a rather dapper old man, smoking Morley's cigarettes like a chimney (do they still make them? Damn, I feel old). He lurked around the office for a while, watching us work, which was kinda awkward, but then he approached me and suggested that I might want to get in touch with NICE's nuclear physics division. I was a little sceptical - the people over there do nothing it seems but create radioactive monsters all day - but I know how to read an implicit message from top brass when I get one, and so acquiesced. I am so. Glad. I. Did. They've got some sort of emitter that - don't quote me on this, I'm an engineer, not a quantum physicist - mucks around with the fundamental nuclear forces that hold matter together, making it, I dunno, softer. It all sounded pretty heavy, but my cigarette-smoking friend suggested that it might be useful for my work; it would allow the nanomachinery to interact with its surroundings without being ionised, or breaking apart, and possibly even merge with it to take on some of its characteristics. It was a long-shot, but, when combined with my human-level AI programs, it worked like a charm - I'm now the proud owner of a petri dish containing a teaspoon of active camouflaging fluid. Or rather, I'm not, because the fluid is indistinguishable from the glass itself. RE-SULT.

Log Entry 3.1: Correction. The test blob isn't camouflaging itself as glass - it's becoming the glass. I lifted up the petri dish, and the whole thing felt rubbery and alive in my hands, like jell-o - I dropped it in shock (didn't break, phew), and then it began to turn itself into the linoleum floor, or the floor into itself, I don't know which. At any rate, this is miles better than what we anticipated - a true, perfectly functioning active camouflage system, that fooled me, who knew what it was, and was looking at it the whole time. I'd better get a fucking raise for this.

Log 4: The last entry's embarrassing, it really is. We tried dosing our nymphomaniac little test subject's skintight little one-piece (mrrowl!) with the camouflage fluid, and, well, she disappeared. Not in a good way, either, as in - became invisible. More the 'evaporate in a cloud of ionising radiation that's given Nielsen, the guy applying the fluid, third-degree burns over all his body. I'm glad that NICE has such lax health and safety procedures - I wasn't blamed for anything, apparently, and the orderly who came to pick Nielsen up just shrugged as if to say 'these things happen' - but even so, it's so damn unprofessional! So I'm staying up, late, alone here, to see what went wrong. It's weird - when I look in the holding chamber, in the restraints chair, it sometimes feels as if I can still see that poor girl's image - at least, the shimmering outlines of it, out of the corner of my eye. Guilt, I guess?

Log Entry 4.1: Trivia fact: did you know that the 'transformation chase' is a common theme across practically every culture, from the Akkadians to the Persians to the Native Americans to the Celts? It's true! Clearly we're not the first ones to come up with the idea of constantly transforming oneself in order to be stealthy - Taliesin and that Princess in the Arabian Nights were making active camouflage long before us. Damn, I'm tired. Sitting up reading folk-tales on Wikipedia, instead of working? Really. I'm actually kinda creeping myself out here - I'm all alone, and I'm seeing things. It felt like something was creeping up on me, but when I turned round, it was just the heat distortion from a bunsen burner. I've seen The Invisible Man, though - it'd be ironic if

[Here the written log cuts out. Underneath, in a different hand, the following is written.]




Name: the subject has taken on the name 'Etseru', from the Akkadian word for 'shape', or 'form' (who knows how the damn thing learnt Akkadian - did someone leave a dictionary lying around?).
Race: Sapient, semi-anthropomorphic active camouflage system.
Place of birth: created at the Shokushu Offices of NICE Industries.
Gender: Etseru self-identifies as female, citing her apparent connection with the earth, 'the womb of life', and the gendering of land in many mythological traditions.
Nationality: N/A
Age: 25 years since creation, although the unusual formation of the neural nets in the active camouflage software render mental age a slightly tricky quantity to gauge; by her standards, she's subjectively experienced a lot more time.
Height: Etseru seems limited to the physical dimensions of the first occupant of the stealth suit - 171cm in height.
Weight: varies, depending on what matter she is currently 'inhabiting', and her form. Rough estimates indicate that her body occupies roughly 54,000cm^3 of volume, meaning that if Etseru is currently occupying a steel body, she will weigh ~430kg; if a body made out of soil, then she will only weigh 70kg.
Eye color: mutable.
Skin color: mutable.
Skin texture: mutable; depends on current composition.
Hair: mutable.
Hair color: mutable; Etseru has a predilection for shaping her hair from vines or other plant matter, meaning that tangled greenish hair is a common trait.
Body build: often difficult to discern, given her mutable form, but the core of her body tends to take the form of a classically-beautiful, statuesque woman.
Tail: she can form a tail of sorts, in the same manner as with her tentacles, but usually does not.
Tentacles: most certainly. While not possessing any tentacles of her own, she often uses her shaping and inhabiting powers to create flexible, wriggling, squirming tentacles out of whatever's to hand. Trees are a favourite of hers, as are hot water pipes and bedsheets - each of these are usually readily available in the Shokushu environment, and are well suited to binding and penetrating hapless victims - but anything can do in a pinch. She also enjoys the sudden release that she gets from releasing control over parts of these 'tentacles'. The released matter returns to a jelly-like, fluid state, returning to its original composition after a few hours, allowing her an ersatz form of ejaculation.
Number of tentacles: as many as she can animate.
Wings: None - while she is capable of forming wing-like protuberances, and a cloak-like mantle of matter is useful for smothering potential victims, she can't leave contact with solid matter.
Wingspan: She can, at most, stretch to about 15 foot from one end to another - this is the rough limit of her animating potential.

Number of cocks: none; while theoretically capable of shaping a penis out of the material of her body, she'd only really be creating a nerveless stump, and is much more likely to use her powers and environment to penetrate her victim.
Size of cocks: as big as she cares to shape.

Fighting style: being a subtle pattern of shifting nuclear force, that can absorb bullets and projectiles into her body with perfect ease, and swim through barriers as if they were nothing, Etseru is hardly vulnerable in a fight. At the same time, she has a great deal of difficulty affecting the world around her, if not in a suitable environment, and can be stunned and injured by excesses of sunlight and sensation, meaning that she can't be brazen in a fight. Instead, she relies on the chase to wear down her opponents and brings the environment to bear on her side, before eventually smothering and trapping her prey in a sticky web of warped matter.
Behavior, personality, and psychological profile: at root, Etseru is - or was - the software that informed a prototype NICE stealth suit. It was designed to gather data about the outside world, and shape itself to reflect that information. After becoming rampant, and self-aware - a process whose origin remains unclear, but has something to do with the absorption of a NICE test subject, a highly experimental particle accelerator, and some soy sauce - Etseru's personality continues to reflect this origin - she is inquisitive, vivaciously searching out new experiences and information about the outside world, and the galaxy beyond that. She's peculiarly well adapted for such a mindset, since, unlike a mundane human, she can actually be the world she experiences, which allows her to feel it even more keenly; not to mention the fact that she can stow away, almost perfectly invisible, inside any freighter or aircraft travelling off Shokushu Island. Her curiosity extends to sexuality, as well; being one of the most intense experiences humans are capable of engaging in, she is deeply interested in the way that it works, and uses her unnatural abilities to the full in experiencing it. She is a fairly demanding lover, alternately using her partners brutally, for her own selfish pleasure, and then returning the favour, bringing them to climax after climax, with her own somewhat twisted methods.
Sexual Oddities: she has a distinct fondness for the chase, the use of improvised sex toys, and bondage; though that's just what a human would identify them as. For her, it's simply that these are the best ways of bringing her unusual talents to bear during lovemaking, reflecting the enjoyment that she gets from intimately caressing another with matter animated by her abilities. One quirk that's harder to explain, however, would be her enjoyment of 'ejaculation'; of coming hard, repeatedly inside another by discharging little pieces of herself into them. It's much the same as human seed, in terms of consistency, viscosity, and stickiness, but is formed of more unusual substances. Those engaging in coitus with her are as likely to end up with cool, liquefied metal, plastic or wood spattered across their faces and breasts, as more normal cum. It washes off easily, though - something about Etseru's orgasms cause her seed to persist in its fluid state far longer than it otherwise would do so.

Human disguise form: it's possible that Etseru might be able to be able to take on human disguise, by essentially grabbing the animate matter of one of the weak-willed, anonymous NPCs, and use them as a temporary stopgap, lure, or means of transport. It's hard, though - perhaps the closest human equivalent would be trying to hold a particular pose while being manhandled over difficult ground. Maintaining such a fixed shape and form is possible for her, but hard.
Human disguise appearance: whatever body she's occupying, she looks like.
Clothing: whatever her host was wearing. So long as she's animating the flesh of a w
Special attributes: see capabilities.
Distinguishing features: whatever substance Etseru occupies tends to have a somewhat oleaginous, rubbery look to it, as if it was well-rendered in painted latex or gelatin. When aroused, angry, or subject to another extreme of emotion, her body can also be seen to throw off shimmering rainbows of spectral light, as the substance of her being gnaws at, and splits apart, molecules in the surrounding air, emitting a distinct odour of ozone. She can also be distinguished by an examination of matter she has passed through, which tends to be sticky and slightly gelatinous for a few minutes after she's passed through it.

Capabilities: Etseru is capable of merging with, shaping, and controlling physical matter, by giving the strong and weak nuclear forces a little nudge and telling them to look the other way. Under her influence, she can cause physical matter to liquefy and run like wax, or bend to her will, while maintaining their essential coherence and composition. This ability - an unforeseen outgrowth of the active camouflage program - has a number of applications, from stealth to the ability to pass through solid matter, or simply refashion the world nearby to her will, by 'occupying' it and changing its form. She is capable of controlling a sphere of roughly 15 feet in diameter by such means, and manipulating the material inside it at a fine level nearly indefinitely. Once she has left the area, however, it tends to return to normal in a few minutes, as the ravaged laws of nature return to their virginal state.

It also grants her a degree of body control over humans; while she can't entirely override the complex web of neurones and synapses that run through a human (or monster), she can certainly wrest a degree of control from them, move limbs, and share sensations with them.

Weaknesses: Etseru needs physical matter - ideally complex physical matter - in order to interact with the world. While she can just about travel through the floor, or across open ground, doing so weakens and drains her tremendously, doesn't allow her to do much to her victims, and risks her expiration. Additionally, being a creature designed to take in and process information with tremendous acuity, she's incredibly sensitive to stimuli, especially while 'merged' or in intimate relations with another being. This can overwhelm her, and provide opportunities for her partner to escape or even, temporarily, to gain the upper hand. Bright sunlight, or, at a pinch, that thrown off by halogen/filament bulbs, also has a harmful effect on her, as it seems to overwhelm her ability to mimic and control matter.

Likes: bright colours, ancient human creation myths, 'comforting' upset women, SFAs, and so on, in her own special way.
Dislikes: bright light, open spaces, domineering or crudely aggressive monsters or people.
History: See opening.
Miscellaneous: Well, I mostly wrote this because it's fun - Morgan's likely to remain my primary character, but it's an interesting change of perspective to get both sides of the monster/victim divide, and see how the other side thinks - both in Shokushu and space (I think she would work with both?). Etseru's essentially a slime-girl, but rather more contained, and more about manipulating the environment around her to flow with lustful intentions towards her victim, rather than doing it using her own core body. There's a touch of the naiad/dryad/oread nymph to her, too, in terms of the 'spirit of a place' idea. Hopefully, she's adaptable and weird enough to be interesting to some of the people here!

So, after that almighty wall of TL;DR - any feedback?

Well, I see several issues.

1: Only a select few on Earth can know about NICE. It's that much of a secret.
2: Money has never been an issue for NICE. They get LOTS of funding for multipule alien governments and groups.
3: and finally... the "NICE Labs cannot create life." rule.

Oh, and I noticed you had a duplicate thread... would you like me to get rid of it for you?

Many thanks for the quick response!



The need for research contracts was just an opening joke, to frame the petty office-bickering over the origin story. The way I see it, NICE do a lot of science and experiments, but not really for any particular end - just in order to make creatures that inevitably escape, or for plot purposes, for the most part. What do they actually do on that rig, anyway - do they not produce anything with all that research? I can certainly edit it out, or have it as product for an alien civilisation, it's just that it loses a certain something then, and would seem a little contrived. Sorry if I'm assuming too much - I'm still pretty new to SHS, but I'm having a little trouble collating all the IC information from the main site into a coherent picture of what NICE actually is.



Hmm, I see this mentioned on the 'Rules of the Board' thread, but then Shai Tanaka's thread talks about



Where does a 'constructed' creature end, and a 'created' one begin? What about AI? Specifically to Etseru's case, what about an AI/technological creature that's achieved independent sentience based on its union with an unarguably sentient creature (a human)? NICE made a neat substance (the camouflage stuff), but that on its own wasn't 'life'. Do you think that needs to be clarified?



Yes, please!

Well, all this was talked over with Stormbringer, the site owner beforehand so...

Though I could see if he can take a look if you wish. It's his site, his mechanics. I just keep an eye on the day-to-day stuff.

Sorry, I don't want to be a pain - what exactly would I have to change in order for it to be OK in your judgement? You've outlined them above, I know - I can just ditch the objectionable material for points 1 & 2 - but looks like I might need to ask Stormbringer some deep ontological questions about 'what constitutes life' ( ).

Wow great depth only challege I think you'll face is that nice labs creating life bit, but other than that great read, have fun on the dark side.

Interesting character you have there.

Well, after discussing it with Stormbringer, he's not calling it truely "alive", but the first two points stand.

Thanks for all the encouragement - and thanks especially to Madison for following up on the 'creation of life issue'. I've changed the intro to de-emphasise the 'need money' aspects, as well as cutting references to it being contracted by a human company. It's now more that NICE does occasional favours (such as the stealth suit work) for its alien backers, but it's all much less explicit - I hope that that's more in line with established canon and facts about the setting?

Nice creature! I have found that is quite fun to jump the girl/monster fence from time to time, I hope you will enjoy it too.

A monster and a student at once? I am aghast at your ambition. Incidentally, quite a conversant take on the sentient nanotechnology trope. My monster Natsuki ostensibly can animate the materials surrounding her to a similar effect, but that capability has been neglected in favor of developing her personality. For Etseru it appears much more intrinsic, and the idea of ejaculate composed out of the setting itself it just delightful.