Another theory was that it was failure that did it. The rise, the fall, the deed… all in a trigger that tied into a power that had a higher barrier of entry.

For Crock o’ Shit, that barrier of entry was lies, it empowered her other form, in a reaching way.

Except… she didn’t need lies to change. She could change either way. The lies were… background.

“What happened out there? You joined the Marines, you had a natural sense of justice, you tried to do something or right a wrong?”

She’d changed more over time, darkness seeping in.

“Was there corruption?” he asked.

“Boys and girls, using their access and station in various ports to ship drugs back home to Lousiana,” she said, her voice taking on a monstrous note. “They don’t check naval vessels like they check other shipments from overseas.”

Her braided-together tangle of a body was only barely human in silhouette now. Branching, forking limbs formed a webwork between one arm and one leg, bristling with claws. The overall form was more like something between a naked mole rat and a bat without wings, with skin like callus, only resembling scale when it was pebbly and not a sheet of the stuff. The tattoos stood out and multiplied as the skin did, casting whole areas of her in blue-green.

There was more to it, he saw. Folds and flaps parted as she breathed or moved one way or the other, and he saw hidden teeth or limbs, buried within.

Nothing at all like a crocodile, tattoos aside.

“You tried to stop them?” he asked, holding his composure.

“I was them. I was one of the ones in charge. I shipped drugs and people back home cut it wrong and killed friends of friends of mine,” she said. “There was an investigation. I worried every second of every day that my life was ruined, until I got powers from how it tore me up inside. I was the one they would finger as the boss, the top dog. And it was all for nothing.”

“Nothing?” he asked. Top dog… is that a component to why she grows?

“They swept it under the rug. I turned over a new leaf,” she said, and she sneered in a way that made him unsure if she was joking or if her face was just transforming that much. Her words were less intelligible now. “But others didn’t forget or sweep it away. They blamed me for us getting caught, want money. So I dealt with ’m.”

“What you’re doing now, you’re just repeating those mistakes.”

“What I do now is what I’m good at,” she said. “I break you. I drag it out as long as I can. Director Armstrong.”

She made his name and old title an epithet.

“No you don’t,” he said. He pulled the phone from his pocket. He held it out. “You’ve been recorded.”