11 Chapter 11) – New Shoes

With one eyebrow raised, Mara questioned, "Really? This is all you want from me?"

"Yes. All of the cameras were down shortly after it started, so I never got to see any of it."

Shrugging her shoulders, Mara replied, "I mean it's easy enough, but if this is all you want then sure."

Half an hour after Mara made her promise to the spy, which were noticeably less annoying for Natalie thanks to the change in our stratagem, the girls finally made it through the Los Angeles traffic.

Once they had made it through the delays, Mara was immediately made to follow through on her self-inflicted promise and thus apologise for her earlier transgressions.

Fortunately for her, all the super spy requested was to see her 'superhero armor', ergo our suit form. Due to us destroying all the cameras around the Monaco street circuit, Natalie was unable to see our suit… or at least she claims. Truth be told, Mara was extremely confident that the red head managed to get a good vantage point and watch over the, frankly, dominant performance we dished out, to put it nicely.

Needless to say, however, Natasha had no way to get close to our suited form without getting caught, and looking from a distance would most likely leave out some details.

Thus, with Mara presenting such an offer on a silver platter, the 'personal assistant' to Tony was more than willing to pounce and swallow it up. Instead of heading to their first sightseeing destination, Natalie parked her car behind a seemingly abandoned warehouse so that Mara could fulfil her promise without any curious eyes nosing around.

"I'll warn you in advance, it's not exactly the friendliest armour to look at-"

<Wow, rude much.>

"-since it was kinda intended to intimidate whoever, or whatever, I fight against. Like I've already said to Tony, psychology is half the battle, and a scared enemy is a weakened enemy. I might be paraphrasing there, but you catch my drift, yeah?"

Nodding once, Natalie confirmed she understood what Mara meant, "I can understand your logic, but I slightly disagree with some of it. Show me your armor first and if it is indeed that intimidating, we can have a discussion from another viewpoint. If that is okay with you?"

Slightly excited about receiving advice from THE Black Widow, Mara happily responds, "Absolutely, I'm always up for some civil discourse. Got your eyes peeled?"

Natalie took a step backwards from where she was stood, such that she could view Mara's entire person without moving her eyes around, which prevented her from possibly missing anything.

"Whenever you are good to go Miss Mara."

Smiling a little to herself, Mara decisively barks, "Mask!"

<Copy. >

The instant I replied to Mara, completing our short exchange that she requested over the weeks in Monaco specifically for when she wants to show off more than normal, I go through the process of encapsulating her body and donning our suit form.

The main difference from the normal transition was that it was more 'spine-tingling' as Mara described it.

Instead of ripples traversing her body like waves, it was instead small black and burgundy tendrils clawing their way around her body. Not only did they start from her feet, but they also came from the tips of her fingers at the same time. Transitioning from double the starting points, one would think the process would be quicker. But, with Mara's seemingly mandatory show-womanship at this point, she asked if the transformation could be kept at the same overall time. This thus resulted in me slowing the transformation down. 'for added effect' was the justification she gave for such a slow change.

Sticking with tradition at this point, once the miniature tendrils completely cover her from the neck down, I proceed with Mara's favourite part and 'ate' her head.

Also veering from the norm was the finishing touch, lifting all the tendrils that now constituted Mara's hair and coiling them in various patterns in the air. The goal was to imitate live snakes or, more accurately, the mythological gorgon Medusa, who had living snakes for hair.

"So… Like what you see hun~?"

Slack jawed, Natasha in her undercover guise, definitely didn't expect such a metamorphosis even after the warning she got. The previous bubbly, slightly irritating Mara, was nowhere to be seen and in her place was a vicious, borderline nightmare-inducing, monster. 'I knew it wasn't the most pleasant to look at from what I saw through the binoculars at Monaco, but I didn't realise the armor was so creepy when it was equipped. Mara also wasn't kidding when she said it was intimidating. I feel like if she were chasing down a mass-murderer in the dead of night, she would easily be confused as the murderer, hunting down another victim, herself!' She thought.

Noticing that Natalie was in a stupor from the transformation even after being forewarned, Mara walked closer to her, waved her hand, and called out to her, "Hellooo~ Earth to Natalie."

Still not getting a response even after walking up to within a metre in front of the stunned woman, Mara playfully thought, [El, how annoyed would she be if I pranked her like this?]

Not wanting Mara to owe the spy another apology favour, I swiftly answered, <I would assume very, so I naturally advise against it.>

Slightly deflated at being unable to prank Natalie, she clicked her tongue, [Tsk. Fine, let's take the gentle approach.]

Needless to say, Mara's idea of a 'gentle approach' was still fairly heavy-handed. Instead of doing the sensible thing and de-suiting or just waiting until Natalie came around naturally. She decided to combine some hair tendrils to make one, approximately two fingers thick, tentacle and incline Natalie's head upwards, due to her heightened stature of 6'2" in our suit form, with her chin so that their eyes met.

As Mara spotted Natalie's pupils dilate as she realised that she zoned out, my host gave the assistant a face splitting smile and said, as sweet as she could; "I know I'm jaw-droppingly beautiful, but it's gonna dislocate if you don't close it soon~"

Undoubtedly, from her reaction, our combined voices attempting to be 'sweet' was in fact not sweet at all. Judging how Natalie took a step back, it would be safe to assume that it was enough to make a normal human urinate themselves or just skip that stage and immediately pass out if what Mara said about the spy's previous accolades were true.

Snapping out of her daze, Natalie came back to her senses and confidently removed the tentacle under her chin as she slipped back into her 'personal assistant' persona. Coughing into her hand, "Ahem, I see what you mean now by intimidating. It is indeed quite… spine-chilling. Is it always like that?"

Although Natalie was seemingly back to normal, I decided to make an executive decision for our benefit and removed the face part of the suit while Mara had already begun her reply, so they could talk face-to-face. I also took the time to drop the hairs that still imitated snakes. With these small changes, Mara at least looked partially human to ease Natalie into our suited appearance.

"Nah not all the time. I put on more of a show of the transformation to really emphasise how menacing it could be. What did you think? Scary enough for you?"

With slight reluctance, most likely the result of a wounded pride, Natalie acknowledged, "As much as I hate to admit it, yes, it is frightening enough for me. I can really see how this would benefit you in a fight since if whoever you were fighting against was out of it for even half as long as me, you would be able to end it without much resistance."

Bobbing her head up and down like an excitable child being praised by their parents for a crayon drawing, Mara giddily chirped, "Yup, yup, aren't I smart?! Tony's suit is so child friendly it's no wonder the crazy Russian guy thought he could take him down with some sparkly BDSM equipment."

Contradicting Mara, however. Natalie started to explain the points she had previously mentioned wanting to talk about, which were dependant on how our suit looked, "I would be inclined to agree Mara, but most of the time Mr. Stark would be helping civilians instead of fighting serious enough threats to warrant changing his paint job. That brings me to one of the disagreements that I had with your psychology statement earlier. Most of your time as a superhero would be spent either interacting with normal people or, at most, fighting untrained combatants like criminals. So, psychological warfare isn't exactly necessary, no?"

If Mara had animal ears, they would no doubt droop like a puppy being told off for eating a pizza left unattended, after Natalie's very logical question. In all fairness, she made a very good point. Why would we model our suit around the 1% villain duelling exception, rather than the 99% more common scenarios? When we first bonded, I had only assimilated with the other Klyntar's and copied the style of their strongest forms. But, after filtering through all the human information they had absorbed, as well as the near month-long bond with Mara, it made sense to make a version of our suit that was more human friendly.

"But… but… doesn't it look cool though? I mean sure it's a little bit scary, but it's also cool right!?"

Rubbing salt in the wound, Natalie continued to plough ahead with her argument, "It's terrifying Mara. Sure, some people may like it and find it cool. But a good 90% of the populace would rather not be saved by you and take their chances with whatever danger they are going though. You were able to change your clothes pretty easily, right? Can't you do the same with the rest of it?"

Trying to muster some sort of resistance, Mara seemed to genuinely devolve into arguing like a child would, "But Natalieeee, I don't wanna change it! It's badass! It's not my fault people have no taste or are too pussy to handle it!"

With visible frustration, in the form of a bulging forehead vein, at Mara's childish antics added on top of the irritation from the car journey up to that point, Natalie's façade finally cracked ever-so-slightly. This allowed her blunt self to make an appearance for the first, but certainly not the last, time.

"HAAH, do I need to spell it out for you? You don't need to permanently get rid of that armor style. If you can freely change the form of it, just have two different ones. One for when psychological damage would be beneficial and the other for everyday jobs. How can you be so smart with some things and dumb as hell with others? It's like I'm dealing with a child."

Instead of snapping at her, Mara did the sensible thing for a change and internally asked me if what she suggested would even be possible, [El can you even do that? I thought you took this form because it was the strongest and most natural for you?]

Still outwardly silent, Mara telepathically answered, [Yeah, makes sense so far. It's a surprisingly good comparison I guess since it's so simple and easy to imagine.]

Satisfied with how simple and concise my analogy was, Mara responded, [Yeah, that actually makes perfect sense. How difficult do you think it would be to make like a half-suit form? Think like the combat suit I wore when we met, but with all our enhancements like the sonic manipulation, superhuman reflexes, etcetera from the suit form, even if they are weaker versions.]

While Mara and I were having an internal discussion, albeit it a fast one as it was using telepathy. Natalie was staring in confusion at how quickly Mara had shut up when she was thinking about something.

'If I had known all it would take for her to shut up was to seriously think about something I would have asked her riddles or something the entire ride here. Well, at least I know some information about her now considering her background check turned up nothing. She practically didn't exist up until just over 2 weeks ago, so either she's a spy like me with all her records scrubbed, some kind of escaped experiment from a lab or an alien that has just arrived, and none of those are particularly ideal when taking into account how strong she potentially is.'

With both women in their respective thoughts, a couple of minutes went by in complete silence. Well as silent as Los Angeles could be with the constant white noise ala vehicle horns, engines, and angry shouting. The quiet would have undoubtedly continued if it were not for Mara breaking the silence when she asked Natalie a question.

"Hey Natalie, what do you think I should change to make it more 'family friendly'? I think I've got a good idea of what I want the safe for work version to look like, but figured I should get a second opinion on it."

Instead of immediately replying to Mara's question, Natalie walked all the way around her 3 to 4 times getting a complete picture of her suit form except the face covering that was removed earlier.

"To be honest, the teeth are the main issue. They look like they're designed to crack open skulls and eat the insides.-"

A few drops of sweat formed on Mara's neck under the suit as she nervously giggled at that. If Mara wasn't so happy with the regular sexual stimulation for food, that is exactly what they would be used for.

"-You don't even have them showing now and I can still vividly recall them, so a child wouldn't be able to sleep for weeks from the nightmares. The eyes weren't much of a problem, but they look a bit too inhuman. Humans have a natural predisposition to fear, or be wary of, anything that does not look like us, so if you could make them more, I guess normal or natural, then you should be good. Oh, and the spider as well. Is it really necessary? Arachnophobia is one of the most common fears on the planet. You don't have to remove it if you really like it, but at least make it more ambiguous or something for the sake of others."

Bringing a hand to her chin, Mara took on a thinking pose while internally discussing Natalie's concerns/recommendations about our suit form.

[Okay El, going off Natalie's suggestions and what we discussed earlier, here's what I think we should do…]

As she described how the 'Agent Suit', as Mara dubbed it, should differ from the natural suit form, I made the changes in real time. Keeping the overall appearance as close to her requests as possible while maintaining adequate combat capabilities.

To being with, my form was compacted, tightly hugging Mara's curves and muscles imitating the latex her original combat suit was made out of before we bonded. This caused her overall height to decrease to 5'11", just an inch taller than her natural body height. Even with only a thin, but highly condensed layer of my form wrapped around her entire body, I was able to keep our abilities at roughly 50% maximum strength. My body that made up the combat suit was slowed down enough to where if someone wasn't focusing on the suit and looking for anything in particular, the material looked like latex or any other form-fitting black material. But when someone knew what to look for, or stared at a specific spot for too long, they would find it was shifting extremely slowly like when in the suit form. This increased the natural look of the suit while also keeping the flexibility of being able to create constructs anywhere from our body. The compacting also included shortening the tendril hair to Mara's normal shoulder length, whilst also still being coated in my body and could thus be extended at will.

The next changes were the ones Natalie suggested. Mara already had plans to change the teeth and eyes, but the spider was a new one. After listening to Natalie, however, she decided to completely remove the mouth, not even replacing it, just leaving a black covering. The white 'Venom eyes' were actually enlarged, but human eye slots were made inside of them. This gave the mask a clear distinction that she had human eyes and made them look more like extensions of her actual eyes.

The spider symbol, just above her bosom, was made less animalistic while keeping the same general shape as a 'homage' to the Spider-Man and Venom. What would be the abdomen of the spider was lengthened slightly and sharpened, appearing more like a stubby Cinquedea, pointing towards Mara's abs. The legs of the spider stayed joined together at the tips like previously, but the lines were thickened and refined, closer resembling a bat as opposed to a spider. If someone was told beforehand that the symbol was supposed to represent a spider, they would understand and be able to see the resemblance. But with no prior knowledge, it would look nothing like the animal, achieving what both Mara and Natalie wanted.

Although intimidation was not a factor in this new suit, that did not mean Mara didn't want to include some kind of mental manipulation to give us a leg up in combat. On her right thigh she requested a holster for a 'baton' so that it would appear that was the type of weapon she used. Additionally, on her wrists and ankles were shackles which, due to them being thicker than the rest of the suit, were the go-to points for creating constructs during combat. Needless to say, since the baton was an extensions of our suit, she could technically use the baton as a weapon, but that was part of the misdirection. The baton was there to lure the enemy into thinking they had an understanding of our range since the baton was a set length. However, since the baton is part of my form, I could extend and morph it at will to catch the opponent off guard. The same went with the shackles and, by extension, the constructs. The constructs could rapidly be created through the shackles for extra reach or mixing up the flow of combat by introducing other weapon types. This did not limit the creation of the constructs to the shackles though, which was another misdirection, making the opponent think the constructs can only originate from the four shackle points. This all meant that fighting us would be annoying as hell with all the misdirection, traps, and variables.

The finishing touches were some sharp nails on her fingers and colour changes on the suit itself. Her forearm area was now the same burgundy as her hair giving the impression that she was wearing bracers. The white from the spider now extended up, to the top of her neck, as well as down, tracing the outside of her abs and stopping after following her pelvis line to just before her pubic region. Instead of a holster like on her right leg, her left leg and biceps just had some burgundy-coloured pattern work. There was no particular purpose for this, Mara just said it looked good and that was the second most important thing to the show-woman after combat ability.

After the new transformation was finalised, Mara asked Natalie, "Is this better?" Since I did not have a mouth in this form, and they therefore weren't fused, Mara's voice came out normally instead of our combined voices.

Instead of the surprise or shock that she was expecting, all Mara saw on Natalie's face was irritation with a dash of jealousy. "Do you know how annoying it is that you're able to just change your outfit however you want like that?"

Nodding, she acknowledged, "Oh absolutely. I won't even mention that I can copy basically any clothing I see either, since you've already experienced that." Receiving an eyebrow twitch in response, Mara quickly continued before her teasing got the better of the spy again, "I assume by the fact that is your only complaint, that this suit is acceptable enough?"

Giving her the same walk around as she did last time, Natalie delivered her judgement, "Yeah I don't see any glaring problems like the other one so you should be good."

[How's it looking on your accelerator feathering El? Were your assumptions accurate?]

After I undid the agent transformation and reverted back to the clothing from the morning, Mara decided that they had strayed too far from their aim for the day and needed to get back to her important sightseeing, a.k.a. creating an opportunity for S.H.I.E.L.D. to visit her or Natasha to reveal herself as an undercover agent like she did to Tony in his movie.

"Well let's get back on track to the sightseeing Nat! It's only been about 30 minutes since we got here, so there's still plenty of time until Tony wakes up and possibly drags you away."

Shaking her head, Natalie replied, "Nope, still not letting you call me Nat. Do you have anywhere you want to go first MISS Mara?"

Clicking her tongue at how Natalie emphasised Miss, for the second time that day, Mara bit back, "Tsk, fine MISS RUSHMAN, I've got no idea where to go first. Never been here and have no idea what is fun or interesting, so you lead the way."

"I figured as much. I already researched the most popular route before picking you up, so you should be entertained for the day. Let's go."

Natalie turned around from Mara and began walking away without waiting for confirmation from the giddy tourist. Recognising that the red-headed assistant wasn't going to stop and wait for her to catch up, she quickly skipped after her and followed slightly behind, like a duckling waddling after its mother.

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