Reading The Label - Part 1 (Commission for Axel1)

TAGS: Growth/Expansion, Muscle Growth, Giantess TF, SHORK

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Surprisingly, not that much had to change to keep her transformations from taking place.

It wasn’t as if she had a fish-rich diet before, so it was really just a case of making sure she didn’t suddenly start devouring half her weight in food produce every day. Slightly easier said than done, given the changes to her also came with a noticeable shift in appetite, but she was a grown-ass woman and she could control her urges; if she could avoid binging on sweets, she could avoid devouring fish just because of an unfortunate genetic accident.

To be fair, it was entirely her fault that she turned out the way she did; Mako had been warned that experimenting on herself was far more dangerous than it was unethical, nevermind how much she insisted otherwise, and the proof, while not in the pudding specifically, was still clear as day: her old laboratory had been utterly destroyed, and now she actually had to make use of her fortified safehouse whenever she felt the cravings start to sneak up on her.

In many respects, she could still keep her old life as it was. Most of the time, no one would be able to tell that she, a presumably regular-looking person, was hiding a ravenous monster just a few bites away; just as long as she kept fish away from herself, Mako could be certain that nothing too bad would happen. Yes, she did have to explain why she suddenly grew a full foot in height and developed a physique best befitting that of a career athlete, but given how much time she spent locked away in a lab… well, it wasn’t easy, but there was enough time spent in isolation that she could bullshit up an excuse.

The rest wasn’t nearly as easy, especially once news of her rampage reached media outlets and reporters began scouring the city for any clue as to who might’ve been responsible for all the damage to the docks a few weeks back. It was Mako’s luck that the company’s records were sealed and inaccessible to the public barring an internal leak, and just her luck that no one but herself and a handful of people who did not want to be implicated knew what her research line was on. Self-interest, maybe, but as long as it kept her safe, then she didn’t really care.

Still, life had to carry on; she couldn’t just lock herself in her home and wait for everything to go away just because her genetic code had been spliced with some foreign sequences… especially since most of her pantry was completely empty on account of her subsisting mostly off sandwiches and whatever was served in the cafeteria any given day. Now that she’d been removed from the project pending reevaluation of her mental and physical state, Mako had found herself with a surfeit of free time and absolutely nothing to fill it with; thus, she took up cooking.

Not only was it a useful skill she’d put off learning for far too long, but it allowed her to exert a much greater control over what came through your mouth and it gave her something to do, either through actual cooking or learning random recipes she’d never put to practice. Interspaced with a number of other, far useless activities, it was the best the young woman could do to keep herself from becoming consumed by the monster within; hopefully, in short order, the company would synthesize a counter-agent and bring her back to normal, and then she could rest easy.

In the meantime, it was grocery shopping day. Luckily for Mako, no one near where she lived had any idea where she worked at; big city, large numbers of people, absolutely no familiarity between them, precisely how she liked it. As far as anyone in her apartment block was concerned, she was just another regular person, and the reason why the -5 button on the elevator didn’t work was because there wasn’t a fifth floor below the ground one. A precarious position, perhaps, but one that Mako had navigated just fine up to that point.

Thus, when she left her home and made her way to the closest supermarket, no one in the street paid much attention. There might’ve been some minor ogling, sure, but that was mostly due to her keeping her new musculature on display; not necessarily by choice as much as she could never find something that fit her that she actually liked wearing, leaving her with a limited wardrobe both in terms of style and actual coverage. Nevertheless, nothing out of the ordinary; pervs would be pervs.

Though she’d only recently begun shopping for food in earnest, Mako had already developed something of a rhythm and plan to it; she had to, in order to make sure nothing entered her diet that ran the risk of accidental exposure to fish. Not that she didn’t enjoy her transformation, but… there was only so much that the world could accept, and no matter how powerful she was during her rampage, no matter how good it felt, she literally couldn’t afford to hulk out again, not when the company would most likely cut her off and sic the authorities on her.

So, she kept to aisles that contained nothing but land meat, as she’d come to call it. A bit of humour, perhaps, to keep her from losing it entirely; that and a preponderance of vegetables, just to make sure she was as far away from piscine matter as possible. Oddly enough, despite her prior beliefs, it turned out that one could have a delicious, tasty diet using only non-animal ingredients; after years of suffering through overcooked broths and half-melted bell peppers, being able to actually make something delicious opened a new world of possibilities.

In between her responsible purchases though, was something entirely different: free samples. Contrary to what one might expect, that particular supermarket wasn’t part of any massive chain, despite being smack-dab in the middle of a large city; indeed, it prided itself on it being a “local” establishment, and one of the quirks that came with it was the “Chef’s Weekly Special”: a fancy name for what were, effectively, a bunch of free samples prepared by the store’s owner, who definitely wasn’t using his customers to test what would and wouldn’t sell in his entirely-separate restaurant literally across the street.

Everyone knew what the game was, but no one complained: it was free food after all, and more often than not delicious one that they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise without paying an exorbitant amount. Terrible for one’s diet, and awful if one wanted to develop healthy habits, but for Mako, it was the one little “cheat” she allowed herself to have, and that day would not be any different… even if, for whatever reason, the special that week looked to be ice-cream sandwiches.

The line was long enough that Mako didn’t think twice before surreptitiously sneaking her way to the table and using a random distraction to yank one of those things off the tablecloth; plenty of people to “accidentally” bump into and apologise to, and plenty of experience for her to draw from, having spent years picking and choosing the good bits out of the cafeteria slop back at work. She didn’t bother reading the panel listing the ingredients; for whatever reason, those things smelled amazing, and her mind bypassed its usual checks to go straight to a near-ravenous desire for consumption.

It should have been a warning, but Mako had unfortunately slipped into that most dangerous of places: a false sense of security. After spending a few weeks without any incidents, and after convincing herself that her routine left her perfectly safe, it was easy for her mind to switch off the very vital warning signs that had been prevalent in the immediate aftermath. Perhaps some time afterwards, when Mako found herself engaging in blatantly unsafe behaviour, her usual self would shine through again; then and there, however, she didn’t think it necessary to doublecheck the ingredients on that “ice-cream” sandwich. It was perfectly safe.

At least, until the first bite, when it became apparent that she was not eating ice-cream, nor anything of the sort. It was actually warm, enough that the bread substitute, which turned out to actually be bread, was deliciously moist and just soft enough to break apart in her mouth; the filling’s taste was familiar, though lost in the major overtones of spices and condiments that gave it enough of a kick that Mako had to keep herself from opening a water bottle just to wash it down. She’d eaten something like that before, but it wasn’t until she felt the warmth radiating from her stomach that she figured out what it was.

Looking at the sandwich in her hand, staring at the bite itself, she could tell the interior of the snack was some sort of meat: condensed and packed together, but laminated in a nearly symmetrical manner, eager to be sliced off and eaten with some olive oil on the side, had it not been for the overabundance of flavour enhancers it was already drenched in: cod. Fresh cod, in fact, an absolute rarity among those parts, and enough of a unique taste that, once the signals fired in her head, Mako had no doubt on what it was.

Her reaction was twofold. On the one hand, her subconscious urges immediately took over and she downed the rest of the snack; it was small enough that it could fit in a single mouthful, and besides, it was delicious enough to warrant being gulped down in one big bite rather than savoured with several tiny ones. On the other hand, she’d just eaten fish, and now had to deal with the resulting chain reaction once the transformation process began in earnest.

It was deceptively simple to get lost in it. By the time the warmth registered, Mako was already feeling the tightness spreading across her body, leading to her clothes feeling far too small on her frame. It was entirely psychological… at least for the time being; she wasn’t yet so massive that her attire didn’t fit her, but she wouldn’t remain as such for long, this being her brain’s way of letting her know that if she wanted to take her sports top off, this was her last chance.

Of course, she wouldn’t. Once the transformative process kicked in, her mind split into two, with one side being significantly more powerful than the other. While there was still some part of her reasonable self remaining, most of her brain was taken over almost immediately by the gene-spliced Mako, the one that wanted nothing more than to manifest the powers she had given herself and worry about consequences never. If she had any amount of self-control or restraint, it was placed under siege by an ever-escalating need to get off and enjoy herself while doing so, dwindling in its ability to guide the young woman until it lost all ground to the encroaching storm.

She didn’t have much time. Having gone through that process once before, Mako lacked the necessary knowledge to know how to stop it, but she did know that it was coming, as well as the fact that she had to go to her bunker. If nothing else, this was what had to happen: if she was to completely lose herself to her bestial side, then at the very least she would do so within the safety of a fortified safehouse, where no one could see it.

Letting go of her shopping cart, much to the confusion of the employee who’d walked over to ask her if she was fine, Mako promptly left the shop… or tried to, at least. There was an unfortunate aspect of her transformation that she hadn’t accounted for, a permanent fixture that, while in human form, she was capable of suppressing most of the time, but one that ran wild once her gene splicing kicked in: hunger. And not just any hunger, but a hunger for fish, as befitting the DNA she had merged with her own.

It was insidious in how it acted, insinuating itself into her every move, pushing her in just tiny enough increments that Mako didn’t notice she was taking the long way to the exit; rather than just going through the aisles towards the double doors, she instead barged through the line of customers waiting to get their free sample and promptly devoured all of them.

There were no thoughts there: she just walked up to the table, dragged every fish sandwich into her mouth, and gobbled them down with about as much grace as any beast could have. She wasn’t thinking about what other people would think about her, nor how this would reflect on her or the company; she just wanted fish, and there was fish, so she went and got some fish. Simple as that, no need to overthink it.

And as a result, her transformation truly kicked into gear. It was no longer just an undercurrent flowing beneath the skin, but something more, something visible; it was no longer Mako wanting to do something, or being pushed towards that direction, but rather her very physical self being warped and reshaped to better fit the gene spliced self she actually was. It was the revelation of her true self: the unveiling of what lay beneath the seemingly unassuming exterior, and the destruction of the illusion she’d been maintaining for several weeks.

She could feel her heartbeat… literally. It wasn’t merely her heart beating, but her entire body going along with it; she could feel herself pulsating, as her blood was pumped faster and faster, pressurization growing to levels that would’ve killed any regular person, but, to her, served only to prepare her physical form for the incoming changes. She could feel her very boundaries expanding whenever her heart pumped more and more blood, as if each beating of it forced her to swell outwards just to accomodate.

For anyone looking from the outside in, this was exactly what they would see: a seemingly normal young woman, suddenly hunched over a table, fingers digging into its hardened surface, practically throbbing as her muscles grew in real time. Raw mass seemingly deposited from nowhere, tearing her clothes to bits, ripping them apart as her form grew and grew uncontrollably; it was the heartbeat, with each one leaving her slightly larger than the one before, until the air filled with the sound of shredding cloth and torn denim… and Mako’s voice, groaning in an ever-deeper tone.

The warmth in her stomach became outright heat, her body unable to control the chemical reactions forcing it to grow and reshape itself into a more bestial form. Anyone caught touching her would likely having to pull their hand back to avoid being scalded; if anyone threw water onto her, it was highly likely it would turn to steam near-instantly. And yet she still grew, until such a point as she couldn’t hold onto the table anymore: a combination of pent-up energy, her becoming too large, and the animalistic instincts kicking in all led to Mako picking the poor thing up and splitting it in two with her bare hands, before throwing the remains at the wall.

She turned to the gathered crowd, her eyes practically shining, her mouth wide open to reveal a set of teeth that sharpened themselves into serrated edges, triangular in shape, multiplying into higher numbers with every exhale. She glanced about, hoping to find some measure of prey, before her eyes landed on the fish section of the supermarket, an aisle dedicated entirely to her preferred sustenance.

When Mako walked, the entire establishment felt it. Not only was she bigger, but she was denser, as her body didn’t suddenly stop obeying the square cube law. Slow, sluggish even, as her form was still being reformed into something greater, but with each thunderoud step, the whole building shook, and people outside in the street wondered just what in blazes was happening for the ground to be quaking.

Within, the giantess-in-the-making could do little but watch herself grow further. Her eyes, her perspective grew further away from the ground, taking up overwatch on most of the aisles as her back came closer and closer still to the ceiling. She wasn’t paying attention to her actual muscles anymore; if she did, there was a good chance she’d be unable to focus on getting her food, being so enamored with the way they developed.

The gene splicing had left her in a highly volatile state, mostly on account of her muscular development being tied entirely to the amount of strain her body was placed under. While initially this felt like a perfectly reasonable attribute to add to someone, it became apparent as soon as Mako initially transformed that the gene factor had been seriously overtuned; rather than simply encouraging the development of muscle mass, her body was made to react to any stress in real time, developing additional muscle fiber whenever it was placed in any form of strain.

On the one hand, this did make it stupendously easy for her to bulk up and bulk out; in fact, all she had to do was flex, and her biceps would visibly swell right in front of her eyes, not to mention how just walking was so much of a physical impossibility that her body adjusted by giving her progressively more muscular legs. On the other hand, the sheer amount of food needed to maintain this sort of metabolism was ludicrous, forcing Mako to seek higher and higher forms of sustenance until her growth plateaued and she could begin shrinking down… whenever the hell that happened.

Not that she was thinking about the end; in fact, thinking about anything at all was a complete waste of time when she could instead be finding more fish to throw down her gullet, further fueling her transformation.