Jekyll and Hikari (OC Mad Scientist TF)

Apologies for the late patron poll story. I wrote this late at night so I also apologize if it's in need of some proofreading. 

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Hikari didn’t come to Matsushita University’s campus often, taking most of her classes online - the flexible schedule in asynchronous classes made it a lot easier to balance with her magical girl life in a way that rigid schedules really wouldn’t allow. Of course, being frequently transformed into assorted minions, non-humans, and even occasionally inanimate objects, nevermind splitting control of her body with Izanami, played merry hell with her education whether it was on campus or off. But at least this way Chihaya could pull some strings for her so her professors would understand her situation.

So no, she didn’t normally go on campus or attend classes in person. Natsuki, however, did go in person, and that was why Hikari was there that particular day.

“Thanks for the help! My lab partner’s down with something but I really couldn’t do it alone.” Natsuki was saying, as they cleared away the equipment.

Hikari waved her off. “It’s fine, it’s fine! I’m happy to help a friend!” she said cheerfully.

Meanwhile in her head, the local not-quite-a-ghost sighed. “You say it’s a lab. You call this glorified chemical storage closet a lab. No wonder you’ve been so slow to advance…” she said, and despite the woman’s current immateriality Hikari got the sense that Izanami was shaking her head.

“Oh, come on. Not everyone is a supervillain. You’re not even a super techy one yourself, what do you know about labs?” Hikari chided her. By this point, she had gotten quite used to the passenger, and even the other aspects of their strange relationship, so having a disembodied voice that sounded like it came from inside her wasn’t quite as disorienting as it had once been.

“Hmph! I see no reason to divulge such secrets to one like you!”

Natsuki tilted her head. “Izanami?” she asked.

“Yep, as usual,” Hikari said, “She’s complaining about how this isn’t really a proper ‘lab’. I think she’s more used to big old supervillain laboratories.”

“Oh, oh! What sort of labs are you used to? Are they fancy? Do they have cute robot girl lab assistants? Secret entrances?” Natsuki asked, too fast to actually get answers to any of the questions she asked.

“Hmph, of course the laboratories of my world would be better than these ones. Most scientists were quite secretive, with expansive hidden facilities for magical and technological research. They did often have secret entrances, yes.” Izanami said. Then, realizing Natsuki couldn’t actually hear her, asked Hikari to relay that.

“Oooh, cool…” Natsuki said, nodding mostly to herself. “What about here? If there was a secret entrance here, where do you think it’d be?” she asked.

“There surely will not be one here, but if there was…” Izanami started. Hikari sighed, and let her have momentary partial control - enough to move Hikari around a bit and use her to point stuff out. “It would have to be somewhere students neve have reason to touch, if it had to be in such a public space. If I were arranging it… there’d be a false button under the professor’s desk to divert attention, and then the real one would be in the chair itself.”

She pointed out the locations - and to everyone’s surprise when she felt around under the professor’s desk, she found something with a bit of give. Hikari at first thought it would be something like old gum but it turned out to be… a button…

Hikari looked at Natsuki. “Say. Which professor’s room is this?” she asked. As she did, the button she’d pressed seemed to have caused something to shake up the supply closet not far off.

“Oh, it’s a general lab space right now, without a dedicated professor. It used to be Professor Mori’s lab though, before they… ohhhhhhh…”

Hikari already suspected the answer, but she had to ask. “Before…?” she prompted.

“Before they got arrested after turning into a villain…” Natsuki said.

“Hmph. Amateur, then.” Izanami scoffed. “You can tell. Especially by putting her secret button in the obvious place.”

“Well, come on then. We’ve got to investigate this.” Hikari said, walking over to the closet and peeking inside. Where not long before had been a standard closet with the assorted tools and materials one might need for the lab, now was a sleek metallic elevator.

The pair stepped inside, and found themselves swiftly carried beneath the school. It was hard to imagine how the professor had so discreetly built her lab. Or maybe it wasn’t that discreet, seeing as she’d been captured as a villain not long after first becoming one.

“Hmph. Just a bit below the basements, then? Not that secure.” Izanami scoffed again. She would refuse to give any so-called mad scientist of this world the credit of the title. At least to one so clearly amateurish.

The doors slid open, and the pair soon found themselves in a huge room cluttered with machinery and devices of all sizes and any number of purposes. The only ones Hikari could really figure out were ones storing magic for powering the other machines - she detected the magical energy from it. She couldn’t even begin to guess what just about any of the others did.

The important thing that Hikari realized soon though was that the lab was still active. It’s owner had been caught quite a while ago, and yet it ran on without her. “We should report this,” Hikari said.

“After poking around a bit~” Natsuki said, “Maybe we can find something useful to the MGA!”

One short debate later, the pair were investigating each device for its function and active status. Of course, actually figuring out what did what was an exercise in futility if one didn’t test it - and given the kinds of villains common to Matsushita city (was there something in the area that caused people to go crazy a specific way? Hikari often wondered about it. Not that she was complaining - it was a lot easier to save someone hypnotized than to revive someone killed), it would be an easy bet that the devices needed a human target.

Still, they were thorough, and at least made sure to turn off devices as they passed. For the best to avoid accidental discharges when the MGA sent a team down to clear the place. The machines and devices were strewn haphazardly around the space with that particular lack of concern for anything but invention that mad scientists so often possessed.

Natsuki was digging through a particularly dense pile of gadgets - thick enough she actually had to climb on top of it at parts. It was near the center of the lab and Hikari was investigating a bit further. Natsuki didn’t mean to do it - but she accidentally activated a device. She slipped, and in her haste to grab onto something to steady herself, her hand landed on a lever and pulled it down as she tried to recover her balance.

Hikari whirled around as the device she’d just finished investigating - a metallic chair with some kind of machine installed - came to life. A faint light spread from a crystal on top of it, forming a dome around the chair that trapped Hikari in it’s radius. “Natsuki, what did you do?” she called - and her voice sounded just a bit off as Izanami asked the same question in a rather more demanding tone.

“Sorry!” Natsuki called, but she’d fallen over again and was in no position to push the lever back - one of the devices strewn on the ground, as it turned out, had rendered the area around the lever slippery and Natsuki was unable to regain her footing.

As Hikari summoned her staff and prepared to blast her way out of the shield, something grabbed onto her back and she was yanked from her feet, pulled into the chair. The metallic arm returned to it’s compartment after doing so. Restraints clamped themselves down around her wrists and ankles, and her magical staff was tossed away. She struggled to free herself, but before she could make any progress a helmet came from the back of the chair and fastened itself around Hikari’s head. A machine voice began to speak. “Scanning. Subject not recognized. Doctor Mori not detected. Initiating Apprenticeship Protocols.”

“Apprenticeship…? See here, machine, I am nobody’s apprent-” Izanami started to shout from inside Hikari’s mind, but the thought was derailed as the helmet began to flash with light and sound.

The transformation was quick and merciless. The change wasn’t overly physical; it was mostly in the mental, in the brainwashing helmet attached to the chair. Knowledge was shoved into Hikari’s brain at a speed impossible to truly process, knowledge of technology and magitech and building things. And the machine forced an association of those things with joy - it forced Hikari (and Izanami, watching through her eyes and hearing through her ears) to love the idea of building new magitech devices.

The helmet continued - scenes of people transformed and bending to her will, of a dozen minor variations on the same change as she worked towards perfection. It was joyful to change people. They deserved it, the helmet whispered - lesser minds should be honored to contribute to greatness like hers. As much as this ran counter to Hikari’s own beliefs, the helmet persisted, forcing ever more dramatic changes and ever greater pleasure in causing them into the girl’s mind.

Metallic arms came out and replaced Hikari’s clothes, leaving her with a bodysuit and a labcoat rather than her former casualwear. When the helmet came off, it attached a pair of goggles to Hikari’s face, spirals spinning within to keep her on track. The process of rewiring her brain had done a number on the young woman, her hair going as frizzy as if she’d been struck by lightning.

The shield vanished, freeing Hikari, and she stepped out with a smile. Natsuki approached, trying to seem nervous and not excited and perhaps a bit aroused at wondering what had happened to Hikari. “H-Hikari? How’re you feeling?”

Hikari whirled on her, a mad look behind the spirals, and grinned widely. “Great! Great! I feel great! My mind’s never been so alive, so clear! I can think so fast now! I was so dumb before!” she laughed, really more of a cackle, “I have so many ideas! So many things to try! I’ve just got to see if this stuff works, I can already think of improvements- ah! You’ll help, right? Hahaha, can’t do this myself!”

Natsuki, being Natsuki, probably would have responded yes, but Hikari didn’t wait for her. She snatched up one of the devices from the floor - a ray of some kind - pointed it at Natsuki, and fired.

It probably helped that the girl was always so eager to change, but by the time the light cleared the transformation was complete. In the blink of an eye Natsuki had become a robot, a silver-skinned assistant in crime. “Huh?” she said in her newly synthetic voice.

“Hehehehe, it worked~! It worked!” Hikari cackled.

The chair was a contingency plan by the doctor - a way to create a successor to continue her work. And now that was what the brainwashed Hikari was. But even the Doctor couldn’t have foreseen just how well it would work - you didn’t often get two souls in one body.

Hikari’s hair bleached white as a new personality took over. The cackling subsided, and she stood straight and firm. Izanami smiled. “Ah… that was an interesting experience, wouldn’t you say, Natsuki?” she said.

“Yes, Mistress!” Natsuki said automatically. That part was only partially the new programming.

“Come here, Natsuki.” Izanami commanded. When the robotified girl arrived, Izanami turned her around and opened a slot in the back of her neck.

“What are you do…ing… standing by, owner.” Natsuki’s voice trailed off, before coming back in a monotone as Izanami put her into standby mode. She didn’t need an eager but clumsy assistant - she needed a dedicated machine and helper. “Personality replicator deactivated. This unit serves.”

“Good, good. I can’t get Hikari to shut up, but I’ll get some relative peace this way.” Izanami mused. While she was a villainess in her own right, she was actually no less brainwashed than Hikari - while Hikari had become a cackling, manic mad scientist, Izanami’s insanity was a methodical and cunning one.

“Robot, clean the place up, would you? And then go find some test subjects.” Izanami said as she settled into a chair. She and her other self had much to do, much to do indeed…