Tesch looked at the vial in his paw. The liquid inside it was a light shade of green and looked exactly like Health Juice. “What…is this stuff exactly?”
“It’s Health Juice!” The Lab Lab looked much like others of his profession: lab coat, floppy ears, clipboard. A nametag identified him as “Dr Linus Pawling”. “An experimental new version to be precise. We’ve added some stuff that should make it more effective, but it needs to be tested before we can roll it out.”
Tesch looked back at the vial. Drinking modified Health Juice hadn’t been what the skullcat had expected when he signed up to assist with research. Ten thousand Carl Coins were ten thousand Carl Coins though, and if he didn’t have to get shot in the process so much the better. Tesch shrugged, lifted the vial to his mouth and downed its contents in one gulp.
“Hmm…it doesnt taste any different from regular Heath Juice,” Tesch said. “Are you sure I’m not a control group or something?”
“No, this is definitely the modified stuff,” replied Pawling. “At any rate the fact it tastes the same is good. Do you feel any healthier than usual?” He paused. “Say, did you always have that patch of yellow fur on your face?”
“What?” Tesch put a paw to his face, but he didn’t feel anything unusual on it. If Pawling saw something, that could only mean his fur itself was discolored. As he drew his paw away, he noticed with a start that it was also turning yellow!
“What’s going on? Is your drink supposed to do this?” Tesch was beginning to panic. If the juice had been toxic that would have been bad enough, but at least it wouldn’t be changing his body! Dr Pawling didn’t answer, too busy scribbling notes on his clipboard to pay attention. Tesch’s thoughts were interrupted by a sudden feeling of fullness. He looked down at his stomach and gasped. A lifestyle of running around and shooting his fellow Super Animals kept him slim, but his gut had ballooned to twice its size and was still growing!
Tesch’s expansion wasn’t just stopping at his stomach though. His butt was bloating up too, looking like two purple beach balls behind him, and his chest was beginning to swell and merge with his oversized belly. The yellow color was also spreading to the rest of his body, at this point it covered all of his upper half leaving only his skull plating its usual white.
“Doc, snap out of it! Your juice is turning me into a blimp!” Dr Pawling looked up at last and noticed the swelling skullcat for the first time. Tesch’s body was nearly spherical by now. His bloating arms stuck out at his sides, and his stance widened as his legs rounded out. The yellow color now covered his whole body, making him look almost like…
“Of course!” Pawling exclaimed, startling Tesch and causing him to lose his balance, rolling onto his rounded back with a “Whoa!” “You must be turning into into a health fruit! The swelling you’re currently experiencing is from your body producing juice. One of the compounds we added must be a mutagen of some kind, we’ll have to look into this in more detail…”
As the Lab Lab continued talking, Tesch could only lie there and whip his tail (which felt more like a thick yellow salami now than an appendage) around and feel how impossibly full and round he was. He was completely immobile at this point, his paws and head sunken into divots in his massive orb of a body. Everything felt tight, and he worried that he might not hold together. Even if he could be revived from a clone, he didn’t relish the thought of bursting. “This better not be permanent! You can fix, this, can’t you?”
“Probably,” Pawling replied. “Anything’s possible with science after all. But first I’d like you to stick around for further testing. This is a really big breakthrough and it needs to be explored thoroughly!” As he rolled Tesch off to a forseeable future of experiments, one thought hung in the skullcat’s head.
Inflation story inspired by watching IndigoRho stream Super Animal Royale. A skullcat tries an experimental new Health Juice and discovers an unusual side effect.
IndigoRho stream Super Animal Royale. A skullcat tries an experimental new Health Juice and discovers an unusual side effect.
