Fruiting Bodies, ch. 14 (Patreon)

“Where are we even going,” Tom asked, blinking and shaking his head as he hurried down the sidewalk behind Dave.  His vision kept shifting between the bustling, mundane city he knew and the creeping, fungal nightmare waiting just on the other side of reality.  The transitions weren’t subtle fades, either, but jarring cuts to a world of infested horror.  A person would approach on the sidewalk appearing perfectly normal, only for his vision to shift and show a shambling, humanoid collection of fruiting caps amongst towering mushrooms and other myconid growths that replaced the street signs and buildings around them.  “Can we…can we just stop for a second?  And we still need to address whatever the fuck we did to those guys back at the office!  How the hell did we…”

Dave looked back over a broad shoulder, thumb wedged firmly in his mouth as he scanned the street behind Tom for any sign they were being followed.  He didn’t think Ethan needed to resort to anything as commonplace as people tailing them to know where they were, but he didn’t want to take the chance.  He also hated that he had to resort to a thumb, especially in public.  His sleek pacifiers weren’t any different, he knew that, but they at least felt more dignified.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know where we’re going, I don’t know what the fuck is happening…I just want to put as much distance as possible between us and that building,” he said, nodding at the Spore headquarters looming in the background.  Like Tom his vision shifted, one moment showing a familiar outline amongst the city skyline, and the next showing a budding spire that stood beneath a sundered sky.  The sun had recently set, the lingering ombre of sienna and crimson only adding to the surreal view above while the lengthening shadows created an ominous labyrinth at ground level.

“Okay…enough’s enough,” Tom growled, reaching out and grabbing Dave’s wrist.  He pulled his friend into a nearby alley and pushed him up against the wall, his frame expanding to match the other man’s size.  “We can’t just run for the sake of running, man.  We need some kind of plan here.”

“Don’t look at me,” Dave said, his tense frame gradually relaxing in his friend’s grip.  “It was my plan that started all this in the first place.  I’m officially done planning.”

Tom slipped a hand up under the other man’s loose muscle shirt to rub the furry gut underneath.  “Pity party later, bud.  Right now we need to talk about how we did whatever it was we did to the security team.  That was…a lot.”

Dave took a deep breath, his ever-eager cock swelling as Tom’s body did the same.  He desired comfort and security more than anything at the moment, which meant his friend was going to get big.  “I don’t know how I did it.  I just…felt it?  Like flexing a muscle I didn’t know I had.  I could literally feel the energy in the air and I just…pushed?”

Tom nodded, grateful for the excessive elastic of his top and shorts as his body expanded further.  He’d grown to the point where he had to look slightly down at his friend, and he was fighting the urge to wrap his meaty arms around the other man.  He knew it was what Dave wanted, but they didn’t have time for that at the moment.  “Same.  It was almost like a hose or a squirt gun.  It was just, like, flowing out of me.  Did you see that shit in the air react to it?”

Dave nodded.  “It moved the second I even thought about it.  The ‘party boy’ thing was a hell of a choice,” he grinned.

Tom’s rugged expression went sheepish.  “Like you said, it moved the second I even thought about it.  I honestly didn’t do that part on purpose, but once things started heading in that direction it seemed like an easy way out.  I mean…those guys’ll be fine, right?”

“They seemed to be having a good time when we left,” Dave shrugged, throwing Tom’s arm around his shoulders as they stepped back onto the sidewalk and resumed their flight at a more leisurely pace.  “Do you think it was a one-time thing?”

Tom shook his head.  “I can still feel it.”

“Me too,” Dave nodded.  “I was sort of hoping you’d say otherwise.  It’s wild…even talking about it makes me, I don’t know, tingle?  Like it’s still right there just waiting to be let…out…”

The burly bear trailed off in a gasp when a familiar release wormed its way out from behind his wide eyes.  He couldn’t stop it, he’d barely even felt it coming, which left him powerless to do anything other than watch, as, just like in the suite, a swirling cloud of spectral spores gathered around the unsuspecting man on the sidewalk in front of them.  From what Dave could tell having only seen him from behind, the stranger looked to be middle-aged, with a head of black, short-cropped hair and a beefy build that filled out his polo straining polo and khakis to an impressive degree.  The man’s shoulders were broad, his arms thick and sturdy beneath a wiry coating of raven hair, and they learned that same hair evidently covered his lower half as well when his meaty legs were suddenly laid bare.

In the blink of an eye the man’s khakis vanished along with whatever underwear he’d been wearing, exposing the ample cheeks that Dave had just been eyeing.  It hadn’t been an intentional ogling, merely a reflexive acknowledgement of how good the stranger’s thick rear looked filling out his pants, but now it turned into a chain reaction.  The muscled cheeks ballooned into a set of huge, gravity defying spheres that rippled like water when the man stumbled.  He clutched a nearby parking sign for support, his back arching when a large, silicone object jutted from between the jiggling pillows.  Like a man possessed, he then started bucking and writhing, wagging and shaking his impossible bottom as the invading vibrator sent waves of ecstasy shooting through him.

“Fuck!  Dave!  Did…did you just do that?!”  Tom’s voice was a harsh whisper as they passed the man, his own eyes going wide at the sight of the handsome hunk’s bliss-torn face and the fat, leaking cock that wagged wildly as he writhed in place.

“I didn’t mean to!  I swear!  We were talking about it and it just…it just happened!  I couldn’t stop it,” Dave cried, a wave of nauseating guilt washing over him.  “Everything I was thinking just…” he trailed off, taking a reluctant look at the man who’d stumbled over and was throwing his meaty new cheeks back against a nearby wall.  “I thought his ass looked nice, and big, and then it…it turned into that!  It was like free association…I didn’t consciously think about any of it.  One thing just led to another and another and then…”

“But you didn’t just change HIM, you changed his clothes.  And where did that vibrator come from?  Can we…should we go help him,” Tom asked, hesitating.

Dave shook his head.  “And risk making it worse?  I don’t even know what I did, let alone how to fix anything!”

“Okay…okay…we definitely need to find somewhere to hole up.  Maybe we can…oh no…” Tom said, scanning the street for any potential refuge as they turned the corner into a worst-case scenario.  Instead of the largely empty office and industrial spaces they’d been passing up to that point, they found themselves stepping out onto an avenue lined with bars and restaurants.

The chaos was immediate.  Before either of them could even contemplate turning around, Tom’s eyes landed on a pair of young men walking in their direction.  Both were fit, one tall, blonde and lean, the other a short, brawny brunette, and each clad in similar outfits of thin t-shirts and chino shorts.  Like countless other young men in the city they appeared to be out for an evening of dinner and drinks, probably intending to be each other’s wingman, but all of that changed in an instant.

The toned blonde’s shirt was the first to go, the straining heather fabric vanishing to reveal the tanned, sculpted torso that the bulging outlines had hinted at.  The pretty-boy’s arms were a little bigger than the rest of him, a trait that quickly became magnified as the chiseled appendages tripled in size.  His modest pecs and trim shoulders followed quickly behind, both inflating until the surprised blonde’s upper torso looked as if it had been taken from a heavyweight bodybuilder and dropped on top of his otherwise lean frame.  His pecs were plump, juicy mountains with large, nubby nipples between a set of comically broad cannonballs that left the piston arms the size of his thighs hanging at a far distance from his tight, unaltered waist.  The comparison of his inflated arms to his thighs proved apt when the blonde’s pants vanished next.  Tom tried to rein his thoughts in as the young man’s stuffed boxer-briefs began to change, but, like Dave said, the whole process was a chain reaction.

He’d seen the pair approach, and before he even realized it he was thinking about how they clearly liked to show their bodies off, and how the taller of the two looked like he worked his arms more than the rest of him.  That then led to the fleeting thought that he was probably one of those guys who focused on arm and chest day more than anything else, which led to a mental image of how he’d look if he really worked them, which then led to the thought that was playing out now, about how guys like that were probably compensating for something.  From the quick glimpse he’d had before, that didn’t actually appear to be the case, but it certainly was now as the man’s underwear settled into a pair of small, powder blue briefs that left nothing of his petite, diminished package to the imagination.

At the same time, the man’s shorter friend was undergoing an equally drastic transformation.  Tom’s immediate thought was that the burly bruiser had probably stunted his growth by lifting at a young age, which made him wonder how he’d look if the man had started even younger.  This played out when the stocky stranger, who looked to be no more than 5’7” to begin with, dropped a solid six inches in height, his shirt and shorts vanishing as his body swelled.  Unlike his friend he was covered in bulky, unsculpted muscle that perfectly matched his square, puggish features, that last trait spiraling into the transitions that followed.  Pug-faced meant dog, which meant leash, which would need a collar to connect to, all of which apparated seemingly out of nowhere as fast as the thoughts flashed through Tom’s mind.  He thought about how, especially at his new height, the stocky little stud was built like a wrestler, leading to a straining, low-cut singlet forming around the meaty man’s curvy bulk.  And, of course, short, stocky guys like that were usually hung like horses, a trait that rapidly manifested when the brunette’s already-hefty cock thickened and swelled until the tip of the footlong monster poked up and out of the singlet’s scooped front while a pair of oranges appeared wedged between his thighs.

Tom was horrified.  He knew nothing about the men other than how they’d looked, and yet he’d just irrevocably changed their futures.  In the blink of an eye he’d turned a blonde pretty-boy into a top heavy, micro-dicked exhibitionist leading his shrunken, horse-hung meathead jock-pup down the street by a leash.  Whether they’d been friends, strangers, or a couple to begin with, Tom had thought how cute they were together, and as he turned to watch them pass he saw their fingers intertwine, now standing so close they pressed into each other as they walked.

“Oh god…oh god…we need to get off this street,” Tom groaned, his eyes glued to the sidewalk.  When Dave didn’t respond he lifted them as little as he could, his stomach dropping at what he saw.

The bald, burly man stood transfixed next to him, a look of horror on his face as the world changed around them.  A nearby patio had erupted into a carnal frenzy as a small crowd of uniquely shaped men went at each other with wild abandon.  Tom had seen the patio when they first stepped onto the street and knew it hadn’t been an exclusively male crowd, but Dave had apparently changed that.  Now, men whose legs were far too short for the rest of them bounced on the laps of men who alternated between round, rotund piles of flesh and towering sculptures of chiseled muscle.  Some were impossibly hung while others were spread eagle on tables getting plowed through the eager slits where their cocks should be.  Some had pecs like iron while others had bouncing, supple tits.  Some were lithe and smooth while others were broad and hairy, and some had voices like rumbling thunder where others chirped like a flock of birds, the sound rarely matching the shell that contained it.  Some even appeared to be connected on a more literal level, their bodies somehow sharing a set of arms and legs while they merged near the hip.  It was a roiling sea of fleshy chaos, the result of unfiltered, unchecked desire running rampant through a wounded reality.

“Dave!  Get it together,” Tom cried, his body swelling to gigantic proportions.  He tore past the stretchy fabric’s limits as he grew big enough to scoop his hulking friend up like a child and stagger back to the empty street they’d come from, his every thought focused on stopping whatever forces they unintentionally commanded.

“I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!  I couldn’t…I couldn’t…” Dave stammered, screwing his eyes shut as his naked behemoth of a friend hefted him away from the crowd.  “This is too much…it’s so much bigger than we ever…how can we possibly stop this?!”  He shoved his thumb in his mouth, not caring about the optics of sucking on the stubby digit while his towering friend literally carried him like a baby down the street.  He’d never seen Tom grow this large before, but it was far from the most dramatic discovery that evening.

“I thought…I thought this stuff just changed bodies,” Tom stammered, his thundering voice matching the thundering steps that slowed once they were on an empty side street.  “But we were actually changing…” he trailed off.  “All that stuff Ethan said about cosmic alignments and power bleeding through ‘in spots’…we’re those spots, aren’t we?”

“Looks like it,” Dave said meekly.  “Feels more like a ‘hole’ than a ‘spot’ though, especially if we can’t shut it off.  All those people…”

“We’ll find a way to fix it, alright?  If we can DO it, then we’ve gotta be able to UNDO it, right?  We just need to get a handle on it,” Tom said, unsure if the conviction in his voice was real or just what Dave needed to hear.  He patted his friend’s plump bottom, marveling internally at his fourteen-foot stature.  Between his size and the power they suddenly had he felt godlike, a sensation that terrified him.  “But we can’t do that if Ethan gets his hands on us and locks us up again.”

“Oh…oh shit,” Dave gasped.  “What if he knew this would happen?  What if he wanted us to get out so we could do exactly what we just did?  He seemed real happy about the chaos at HQ…we’re probably just making that rift bigger and bigger, aren’t we?”

“But he said too much too soon was a bad thing, and this sure feels like a whole fuck of a lot right now,” Tom sighed, gently setting Dave back on the sidewalk as his frame began to shrink.  Though his friend was calming down he still stood nearly eight feet tall, a hairy, handsome statue of a man that still made Dave’s beefy frame seem small by comparison.  He gave a short laugh when he looked down at his naked girth and leaned back against a building to catch his breath.  “Sure hope the old mojo that makes this seem normal,” he said, gesturing down at himself, “stays in place.  Otherwise things could get real awkward real quick.”

“We can always MAKE it stay in place,” Dave said, looking surprised when he heard the words leave his mouth.

“Let’s not even go there,” Tom warned.  “First priority is still finding a place where we can catch our breath and not put anyone else at risk.  If we can…” The bulky goliath was cut off when a sparkling sliver of energy appeared in the wall next to them.  He instinctively positioned himself between Dave and the glittering apparition as it sliced up, then over, then down, forming a large rectangle.  Once the shape was in place the golden strand vanished, replacing the brick inside with what appeared to be an old, wooden door.  “What the…” Tom let out a short, surprised laugh when it suddenly opened, the familiar sight of Will’s round, grinning face waiting for them on the other side.

“Looks like you boys are having a hell of a night,” he said, motioning for them to step through.  “Come on in…we need to talk.”

Voting Options

With the four friends once again reunited, the Learned…

Option 1: undo as much of the damage caused by Tom and Dave as they can, but find that several of the affected men don’t want to change back.

Option 2: attempt to fix the damage Tom and Dave caused only for it to backfire, sending pulses of reality-warping energy through the city.

Option 3: Bring Dave and Tom up to speed on the work Tyler’s been doing to stop Spore, introducing several members of the group who’ve been altered by HB&L in the process.

Option 4: try to use them to seal the rift over the city, but the energy is hijacked by Ethan who uses it instead to send a warning by making an example of a nearby campus.