“Order up! Who here had the calamari?”
The call echoed in the small restaurant. The chef was about to repeat himself before a sharply dressed man walked up to the counter, followed by a bespectacled brunette. “That’d be me.” He flashed the server a smile and slipped him a $20. “Keep the change.”
“Domo arigato!” The man waved, unable to keep his Brooklyn accent from his Japanese.
Mark laughed to himself, opening his fresh container of takeout. “You sure you don’t want any?” He asked the woman beside him as they stepped outside. Doctor Victoria Marcus kept herself in good shape, a trim blonde who didn’t look like she had been out in the field for the past twenty-odd years.
She waved, looking slightly green. As a marine biologist, she refused to eat any fish. Something about keeping her work off of her plate. Mark didn’t understand it, but if he was one to keep work off his plate, he’d starve. And speaking of starving... He conjured a pair of chopsticks and popped a piece of calamari into his mouth.
He chewed on it happily, savoring the juices. “Mm! You don’t know what you’re missing, Doctor Marcus.”
She waved him away. “Trust me, I do. You know what those things eat?”
Mark shrugged. “Can’t say that’s any of my business. What is my business, on the other hand, is why you’ve found me.” He turned on his heel, munching on another bit of seafood.
“Well... Yes. Um.” She fidgeted with her glasses nervously, glancing around them. Though it was a little after ten at night, the streets were still crowded.
“Want to discuss this in private?” He grinned knowingly. People were always shy about talking about these sorts of things on the streets. She nodded and he waved her to an unoccupied alley. Victoria wrinkled her nose at the smell; this was where they dumped processed fish. Mark copied her motion and rolled his eyes. Why was it that empty alleyways were always disgusting? He patted her on the back, whispering in her ears. “Think about your office and close your eyes.”
Victoria did as he asked, then yelped as he pushed her into the pile of fish guts. Her arms windmilled, and she took a deep balancing step, realizing too late it would leave her ankle-deep in dead fish. To her surprise, her foot met tile, and she snapped her eyes open to find herself in a dark room.
The lights flashed on, and she blinked her pupils back to service.
“Nice place.” Somehow Mark was right behind her. She’d ask, but he’d probably explain it as magic. Not that that was too hard to disbelieve; she was definitely in her workplace. The scattered sheets on the table, the old and worn computer, even her beanie babies: an orca, a shark, and a squid.
“It is.” She nodded.
He dropped down onto a recliner that hadn’t been there a minute ago. “So, business?”
Victoria nodded. “Business. You’re obviously a magician, and I heard that you might be able to help me with a little problem I’m having. I’ve been running a study on the giant squid, but I haven’t had much success. I want to know if you can help me record their migratory movements by...” She flushed slightly. “Changing me into one of them. I’ve already put a tracking device in my arm, and I have a good sum of cash on hand to cover any fees incurred.” She pulled out a briefcase from her cabinet.
Mark arched an eyebrow. “Well, you certainly came prepared.”
“I’m a scientist for a reason. Plus, your charge was a few orders of magnitude less than renting a submersible.” Victoria spoke with an anticipatory grin on her face, pulling out her hairband with a flourish. “Just as I trust you’re a magician for a reason?”
Mark bowed. “Of course.” When he lifted his head, he had a pair of sunglasses on. “Ready for a trip to the beach?” The magician extended a hand chivalrously.
Victoria grinned happily, taking his palm in hers. She gasped as the world around her started to swirl, the greys of her office room changing to teal sandwiched between tan and azure. The scent of the sea filled her nostrils, and she smiled as she felt gravel underneath her feet. Victoria gasped as she realized she wasn’t wearing shoes anymore—or any clothes, for that matter.
Mark noticed her accusing glare. “What? It’s a nude beach.” He shrugged, sweating slightly in his suit.
Victoria stammered incredulously, redoubling her glare.
“Fine, it’s not.” Mark grinned teasingly. “But I did want to see you naked.”
A flush crept its way across Victoria’s face, and she started to pull her hand away from his. She blinked as her palm moved, but her fingers remained where they were, stretching out as she withdrew.
Mark pulled her fingers from his palm one by one, and Victoria noticed an odd sticking sensation, small suction cups on her hand keeping them affixed. He grinned at her startled expression. “Plus last time I checked, giant squids don’t have clothes.”
Victoria’s fingers fell limp, and she flopped her right hand, finding it was now boneless. Her bones continued to dissolve up her arm, leaving her with a mass of muscle and skin attached to her shoulder. Her fingers started to expand, the divisions between them stretching up her arm until she had five sets of arms.
Victoria spun to her other side, finding the changes were mirrored there, a set of squid’s tentacles hanging limp from her arm. She laughed, flopping her arms around gleefully. “Oh my God, this is great! But give me a little warning first!”
Mark returned her smile, pointing below her waist. “Mind the fall.”
Victoria squeaked slightly as her legs collapsed beneath her, and she managed to catch herself on her foremost tentacles. She rolled herself onto her back to find her feet flattening out, the webbing on her toes expanding to cover her feet. Victoria’s middle toes continued to lengthen, until her feet were a pair of spade-like appendages conjoined to her legs. They too started to change, the skin becoming thick and rubbery, her bones dissolving to form her longest pair of tentacles.
The woman opened her mouth to speak, but ended up gagging as her lungs deflated, absorbing themselves into her body. She looked down, watching her torso begin to sink into her body. These aches were soon joined by one in her skull.
Her head started to ache as it inflated, her dissolved organs reforming themselves in within her developing mantle. She gasped, finding herself able to breathe again. “I don’t think I liked that so much.” She muttered, watching her legs continue their way up to her arms. Those were sliding up too, as her shoulders made their way to the sides of her jaw. It looked like her chin would be the lowest part of her body once she’d completed her transformation.
She bit her lower lip as her jaw started to tingle, and she spoke again as the lower half of her face started to slide down towards the bottom of her chin. “Oh wow, this is strange.”
Mark laughed, petting her rubbery head. “Well, you did ask to become something from a different kingdom. Shame to see your breasts go, though.”
Victoria opened her mouth to respond, but paused as she felt a tingling in her jaw. Victoria’s teeth merged, her incisors growing to points. She poked one of her tentacle at it, feeling how smoother her teeth felt as they reformed into a beak. “Oh my God, this is really really really strange.” She muttered, her eyes sliding apart until they were a little more than ninety degrees apart.
She blinked her eyes as they slid apart, darkening and becoming thick and bulbous. She blinked her new eyes, trying to get used to her new range of vision. No doubt it would be better for seeing underwater, but their new position also kept her from seeing the rest of her changes.
Not that it kept her from feeling them, how the top of her massive head felt against the sand; how her tentacles surrounded her beak, surrounded in turn by a thick and fleshy mouth. It felt like her legs, her longest limbs were now located between her other—her fingers? Arms? Tentacles.
“This is really weird.” Victoria kept on talking to Mark, to ease the pressure of her changes. She blinked, suddenly remembering that she didn’t have vocal cords. “Wait, can you understand me?”
Mark nodded, an embarrassed grin on his face. “Well, I decided to hook up a radio transmitter to your body, so you can report your findings back to your lab.” He caught the widening of her eyes—much easier now thanks to their new size—and continued. “I saw you left a little extra in the briefcase, and...” He trailed off.
Victoria blinked, her mouth twitching into what approximated a smile. “That was a tip, silly! Thanks, though.”
Mark chuckled. “Well, tips are generally given for good service, so I figured I should give you the best. And in case you were wondering why you’re not that big right now...” He stomped his foot on the ground, a sand catapult forming beneath her. “Bon voyage!” He grinned, firing her into the North Atlantic.
Victoria flailed her tentacles as she sailed gaily through the air, landing in the water mantle-first. Her entire body sank beneath the water, and she flexed her tentacles, sailing through the water with a powerful stroke of her tentacles.
She continued to dive deeper and deeper, each stroke taking her farther. With a start, Victoria realized her body was expanding, inflating like a grocery store toy. Her head felt like it was nearly two meters, and her tentacles had to be more than twice that! She flexed her tentacles one at a time, sending her into a corkscrewing spin that ended with her blossoming her tentacles like a flower’s bloom.
She felt so strong, so powerful now! She continued to expand, maturing to what might be a record-breaking twenty meters tip to tentacle. Mark had taken care of her, making sure that she’d be large enough to outfight any of her natural predators. It was almost a shame nobody would be able to scientifically document her size, but the data she’d be collecting would be well worth it. Victoria sent out a few questing clicks, searching for pods of squids that would put her research in the textbooks.