The young lab tech walked out the front door of his third story apartment and headed down to his car. He had just recently joined the Jihad, specifically TRES Corps. He never thought he would be fighting in any type of battle, he had always been a brilliant chemist and planned to stay that way. If the need came however, he was well trained in hand to hand combat, with an enourmous build. He hopped in and slipped Rage Against the Machine's "Evil Empire" into the CD player. He pulled a bottle from a six pack of Jolt and started to chug it down, he finished it, grabbed another one and started on it. 'Going to need the caffeine, night shift is always a drag.' he thought. After a few minutes he pulled up to the TRES Corps HQ and parked his car in his reserved spot. He got out of the car and headed for the main entrance.

As he neared the doors to the TRES main entrance they hummed and slid open. He stepped into an autopiloted cart with 'TRES Corps HQ Internal Transportation' on the door, and drove through the long corridors to one of the science hallways. He hopped out and the car sped off to recharge.
"See you after my shifts done," he whispered with a slight wave to the departing cart.

He walked into his lab and took a seat at his terminal, checking his duties list for the night.
"Hmm, gonna be another long, boring night, I see." He then heard a beeping sound coming from his pocket.
"Oh yeah, forgot about you." he said as he reached down to grab his personnel comlink.
For security reasons, TRES personnel weren't allowed to bring in their own comlinks, and the one supplied in the lab was constantly monitored, so they couldn't talk to anyone that wasn't involved somehow with their work. Any outside transmissions could be picked up by a screener located in the HQ. However, in his spare time he had put together a main-frequency bouncer, and was able to transmit across the lesser-used frequencies without being detected.

He flipped the comlink open and smiled as he saw the face of his friend, Weasel. Weasel was the quintecessence of slacker. He spent his 'working' time looking up virtually useless and worthless stuff.
"Hey Paul, guess what I found! You're gonna love it."
"Lemme guess, a nose hair clipper that cleans your nose while clipping the hairs." Paul said sarcastically.
"I wish man, but no such luck. But I did find a radical formula for 'New Jolt'. It supposedly tastes better and has more kick to it."
"Where did you find it?" Paul asked with some suspicion as to the reliability of the source.
"Relax man, I was just hacking into some loonies comlink log and found it. Anyway, I was thinking since you're at a lab and all, and have these ingredients..."
"No way, don't even think about it. This is a military lab, they'd have my head."
"Aw, come on wuss. I tell you what, I'll hook you up with... Catherine."

Now this was an offer Paul couldn't refuse. Weasel had well established connections with all the fine dames, and he sure knew how to use them to his advantage.
"Fine, but if this doesn't work..."
"Great! Here, I'll fax you the ingredient list."

After finishing his assigned duties ahead of par, he had the time to put together one tube of the 'New Jolt' before his shift was done. Paul packed up his stuff and closed down his terminal. He stuffed the tube of 'New Jolt' into his bag and headed out. A little fiddling with the supplies list had sufficiently covered his tracks for the missing chemicals required for the Jolt ingredients.

The cart pulled up and drove him to the main entrance, where Weasel was excitedly waiting for him, and moreso the Jolt. Paul walked out the doors.
"Cool dude, time to test that tube out."
"Me first, I risked my hide making the stuff."
He bought the bottle to his mouth and drank, and drank and drank.
"Come on man, you're wasting it all, save some for me!" Weasel whined.
"Wow! This stuff is incredible!" Paul said as he finished off the tube uncontrollably.
"You drank it a... whafuk?"

Weasel stepped back in astonishment as he saw his friends eyes dialate to enourmous proportions, and then turn a shade of purple. Paul grabbed his head and screamed, then fell to the ground with a thump.
"Paul!" Weasel yelled as he reached down and shook his friend.
"Get up buddy!" Weasel said desperatly shaking his friend.

Suddenly Pauls body jerked vigorously and started to transform slowly. The body's clothes changed first, into a red t-shirt and black jeans, exactly what Weasel was wearing. Then the body jerked again and the legs grew a little shorter, the arms a little shorter, and the body slimmer and weaker. His face transformed into an excact duplicate of Weasels, except with glowing purple eyes. Paul stood up and reached his hand out to Weasels forehead and touched him. Weasel stopped moving and became a lifeless zombie.

"I am Ate the Liberator. I have cleansed your intelligence, now you are truly happy. For without intelligence, you cannot experience sadness. Without experiencing sadness you must be happy. Now I go and increase my powers, so that I may began my quest to liberate the ones called 'Jihaddi', sleep well." Ate laughed manically and walked away.

That moment, Grand Admiral Marburger got up from his desk and decided to go out for a movie break. He hopped in his cart and made his way to the main entrance. As he walked out the door he stopped cold as he saw Weasel standing motionless in a hideous slouch, his jaw slack and drooling, his eyes groggy and dilated. Not seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking.
"Holy Cow!" Cyberpyro growled.

He pulled Weasel through the doors and onto his cart. He switched to manual control and sped towards Mel's office going 40 kph. 'Hope there's nobody in the hallways, could be messy' he mused. He slammed on the brakes and slid across the floor until he stopped in front of Mel's office. He lugged Weasel through the door and through him on the ground to Mel's astonishment.
"What the...?" Mel asked.
"Thats what I want to find out. I found him standing outside the main entrance in his current state. Acess the video logs, I want to see what happened to him."

Mel tapped a few keys until she found the time when Weasel met his untimely spongification. They watched in astonishment as the whole scene played out before their unbelieving eyes.
"Thats Ensign Paul Marker coming out the door, and this," she said pointing to Weasel "must be some civvie friend of his. Paul is a lab tech in sector 7G."

They got into the cart and started towards sector 7G. They arrived at the Ensign's lab a few moments later and walked in. Cyberpyro started searching through papers and chemical lists as Mel went to work at the terminal.
"Here we go. Looks like this rookie doesn't even know how to properly doctor a supplies list. Here, run a check on these chemicals..."
Mel picked up the fax sent by Weasel and read it.
"Judging by this those missing chemicals are ingredients for a "New Jolt'.... now where Marker got this formula from...."
"Doesn't matter now, we need to find this 'Ate' and get rid of him ASAP! We'll have to make it quiet though, covert, maybe a one squad assassination mission. We don't want to make too much noise, so keep it low key."
Mel grinned at Cyberpyro, "It'd be a pleasure."
"Good, gather your squad up and get them to the central briefing room in fifteen minutes."

The squad filed into the briefing room bewildered as to what was going on and exactly why they were here. Cyberpyro spoke.
"Welcome ladies and gentlemen, please be seated. We have an urgent matter on our hands that must be dealt with immediatly, and the seven of you are going to deal with it. Last night Ensign Paul Marker, a lab tech in sector 7G, made a solution that transformed him into what we would we're calling a SWM, 'Super Wyrm Minion'. He calls himself Ate. He virtually sucked the brains out of his friend. Your primary objective will be to hunt him down and eliminate him. Ate has at least some shapeshifting abilities, so watch who you trust. We believe it is possibly this incindent is connected to the sponge minions seen in Britain recently, as there are some similarities, we are investigating this further at the moment. A secondary objective of this mission is to gather any evidence you can which will help us find out who is making these Minion Maker formulas."

The briefing isn't complete yet, I'm going to add in the rest of it when Tenderfoot is far enough along that putting some plot details from it in the briefing won't give stuff away. - Mel